Hidden Away with the Mountain Man (Valor In The Mountains #5)

Chapter 1 Charisma

CHARISMA

The tears made it impossible to see. Or maybe that was the snow.

At this point, the two had blurred together into one white wall of misery, and I couldn’t tell where my breakdown ended and the snowstorm began.

I shouldn’t have been driving. I knew that. But I also shouldn’t have gone to work tonight, and I definitely shouldn’t have smiled at the man in the corner booth when he waved me over.

I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, apparently. The internet had made that perfectly clear in the four hours since my life imploded.

“Does anyone know where this man’s mother is? She missed a lesson.”

The words had felt so good coming out of my mouth.

Righteous. Justified. His hand had been on my ass, his fingers digging into my hip as he tried to pull me onto his lap, and I’d had enough.

Enough of the leering and the comments, enough of pretending not to notice when customers “accidentally” brushed against me, enough of smiling through shifts that left me feeling like I needed to scrub my skin raw in the shower afterward.

So I’d said it. Loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear.

And someone had recorded it.

Of course, they had. Everyone records everything now.

But they hadn’t recorded the part where he grabbed me.

They hadn’t captured the bruise already forming on my arm where his grip had been too tight.

They’d just caught the crazy girl in the too-tight shorts screaming at a customer about his mother.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and squinted through the windshield.

The wipers were going full speed, but it wasn’t helping.

Snow came down in thick sheets, swirling in my headlights like something alive, and I had no idea where I was anymore.

Somewhere on the mountain, heading toward Dagger’s cabin, but the GPS had lost signal twenty minutes ago, and the road signs were buried under white.

Dagger. My brother. The word still felt strange after twenty-three years of not having one. We’d found each other at Christmas, connecting through one of those DNA websites, and he’d been trying to get me to move to Wildwood Valley ever since.

“Come stay at the cabin,” he’d said. “Get out of Springfield. There’s a honky-tonk here where you could work. Tips are good, and you don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to wear.”

I should have listened sooner.

My phone buzzed in the cupholder. Again. I didn’t look at it. I’d stopped looking three hours ago, when the notifications became too much to bear.

The video had spread faster than I could have imagined, picked up by one of those accounts that posts content for people to mock. Last time I’d checked, it had over two million views and climbing. The comments were a nightmare.

She literally works at the Naughty Fork. What did she expect?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I’d grab her too lmao

Imagine being this unhinged over nothing.

Nothing. Like his hand hadn’t been under my shorts. Like I hadn’t told him twice already to stop touching me. Like I hadn’t been doing my job, trying to earn enough to cover rent and groceries and the electricity bill that was already two weeks late.

The road curved sharply, and I jerked the wheel, overcorrecting. My tires slipped on something slick beneath the snow, and for one heart-stopping moment, I felt the back end of my car start to slide. I eased off the gas, held my breath, and somehow managed to straighten out.

I needed to stop. Find somewhere to wait out the storm. But there was nothing out here. Nothing but trees and darkness and endless white.

Then I saw it. Through the curtain of snow, something dark and hulking appeared in my headlights.

My brain—exhausted and tear-soaked—took a moment to process what I was seeing.

A bear? Standing upright. But it was small and completely still.

And positioned in a way that made no anatomical sense, like it was hugging something.

I blinked. The shape didn’t move.

That’s not a bear, I thought. Bears don’t stand like that. Bears don’t—

Whatever it was, my car was heading straight toward it. I pumped the brakes, but the car continued its forward movement, the bear getting closer and closer—

My front bumper connected with something solid, and the impact jolted through the car hard enough to snap my teeth together. I slammed on the brakes, skidded another few feet, and finally lurched to a stop.

For a long moment, I just sat there, hands shaking on the wheel, heart pounding against my ribs. What had I hit? A bear? A figurine of a bear? I didn’t understand.

I killed the engine and shoved open the door, stepping out into the howling wind. Snow drove into my face immediately, stinging my cheeks, but I stumbled toward the front of the car anyway, squinting through the white.

The bear lay on its side a few feet in front of my bumper, one wooden paw still raised toward the sky.

Not a real bear. A carved one. A chainsaw sculpture, the kind you see at roadside stands in tourist towns.

It had been holding a mailbox, I realized.

A regular metal mailbox that was now dented and half-buried in a snowdrift.

I’d hit someone’s mailbox.

The laugh that escaped me was somewhere between hysteria and exhaustion. Of course. Of course, I’d fled my apartment in the middle of a viral nightmare, driven four hours through a snowstorm without stopping, and ended my journey by murdering a wooden bear.

I could just leave.

The thought slithered through my mind like a snake. No one had seen me. The snow would cover my tracks. I could find Dagger’s cabin, pretend this never happened, and deal with everything else in the morning.

But that wasn’t who I was. That had never been who I was, no matter what the internet decided to believe about me based on a fifteen-second clip.

I paid my bills—when I could afford to. I showed up to work on time.

I didn’t take things that didn’t belong to me, and when I broke something, I owned up to it.

Even when the world didn’t offer me the same courtesy.

I grabbed my hoodie from the passenger seat, pulling it on over my uniform.

The thin fabric of my work shorts offered zero protection, and my legs were bare from mid-thigh to my ankle socks.

Not exactly snowstorm attire. But a cabin was up ahead—I could see the faint glow of lights through the trees—and I wasn’t going to freeze to death in the thirty seconds it would take to walk to the door.

The wind hit me like a fist as I started walking. Snow drove into my face, stinging my cheeks, and the cold bit through my hoodie like it wasn’t even there. I wrapped my arms around myself and stumbled up what I hoped was a driveway, my sneakers sinking into snow that was already past my ankles.

The cabin materialized out of the white, a solid shadow with warm light glowing behind curtained windows. A porch. Steps. A door. I climbed toward it like a woman possessed, teeth chattering so hard I could barely think.

I knocked. Too loud, probably, but my hands were numb, and I couldn’t feel how much force I was using.

Nothing happened. The wind howled around me, driving snow down the back of my hoodie, and I knocked again.

This time, I heard movement inside. Heavy footsteps. A lock clicking. Then the door swung open, and I found myself staring up at the largest man I’d ever seen.

He filled the doorway like he’d been built to block it. Broad shoulders, thick arms, and a chest that strained against a plain gray T-shirt. His hair was dark and disheveled, like he’d been sleeping, and his jaw was covered in a few days’ worth of stubble.

But it was his eyes that caught me—held me. Dark brown, almost black in the dim light, and absolutely furious.

“It’s midnight.” His voice was low and rough, sandpaper over gravel. “What the hell do you want?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but my teeth were chattering too hard to form words. I must have looked insane, standing there in my tiny shorts and soaked hoodie, mascara probably running down my face, shivering so hard my whole body shook.

His eyes dropped from my face to my bare legs, then lifted again. Something shifted in his expression. The anger didn’t disappear, but something else crept in alongside it—something I was too cold and too tired to name.

“I hit your bear,” I finally managed through my chattering teeth.

“The mailbox. I’ll pay for the damage. I just—I couldn’t see, and I thought it was real, and I’m so sorry, but I had to tell you because I’m not the kind of person who just runs away from things she’s done, even though everyone apparently thinks I am now, and I know it’s late, and I know you’re probably really angry, but I couldn’t just leave without—”

“Get inside.”

He reached out, wrapped one massive hand around my arm—gently, so gently it made me tingle all over—and pulled me through the doorway into the warmth.