Chapter 17
seventeen
The engine was still ticking when Greta leaned her head back against the headrest and stared at the ceiling. Atlas stood in the back seat, pressing his muzzle into the gap between her headrest and the window, his breath warm against her neck.
Three days.
Six hundred miles.
One woman in a Spokane apartment complex who had auburn hair and pale eyes and was not her sister.
She’d known it before Ashley opened the door all the way.
Not Alice.
Barely a shadow of Alice.
She’d introduced herself anyway. She’d said, I think you might know my sister. She’d watched Ashley’s face go careful and remote, watched her do the math behind her eyes, and then the door had started closing.
I don’t know anyone by that name.
Greta had pushed, one more time, because she always pushed one more time. Ashley had looked at her with something that might have been pity, might have been warning, and said she was sorry for her trouble, and the door had clicked shut.
She’d stood on the landing for a beat, listening to the absence of sound behind it. Then she’d walked back down the stairs to the parking lot where Naomi and Corbin Brandt were waiting.
Another dead fucking end.
How many more could she face? How many more
She didn’t know, but she was starting to think the answer was a fixed number, and she was getting close to it.
Atlas pushed his nose harder into her neck.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m moving.”
She got out. The air was clean and cold, pine-sharp, and it hit her face like the return it was.
Home. She’d driven the last two hours on muscle memory alone, her mind replaying the hallway landing and the sound of that door.
She opened the back, and Atlas landed in the yard and immediately trotted to the corner of the fence to pee on the same patch of grass he always hit first.
She was lifting her bag from the back of the Jeep when she heard the thunk. It was a clean, dense sound—the flat crack of an axe splitting wood—and it came from across the street.
She glanced over and saw Bear was in the side yard by the woodshed. Shirtless, jeans low on his hips, work boots unlaced. He had the maul raised over his head and brought it down in one clean arc, and the log split and fell in two halves, and he reached for the next one without pausing.
She stood with her bag strap in her hand and watched him set another log on the stump. The axe rose. Came down. The wood split into two perfect halves.
The muscles in his back shifted and gathered under his skin with every swing, the ink on his arms catching the afternoon light, and she was aware—specifically, inconveniently aware—that she had been in a car for the better part of six hours and had not thought about anything beautiful in three days.
He was objectively beautiful.
It was annoying.
And exactly what she needed.
She dropped her bag on the porch and crossed the street. She leaned against the fence rail, crossed her arms, and watched him work.
“Paul Bunyan,” she said. “Didn’t know you made house calls.”
He set another log on the stump. “You’re back early.”
“I’m back on time. Wednesday, like I said.”
The axe came down. He kicked the halves aside and reached for the next log. “How was Spokane?”
“Riveting.” She watched his back move. “Really enriching experience. Would recommend.”
He glanced at her, taking in her face—the dark circles, probably—and said nothing. He looked back at the wood.
She hated that he could read her that fast and still not say a single word about it.
She glanced around the yard. King was stretched out in a slice of afternoon sun against the house’s foundation, watching them with half-open eyes. His tail wagged once when Atlas joined him,
“Where’s Logan?”
“He’s staying at the ranch tonight. Helping X with some PR thing.”
“How is he?”
His shoulders relaxed a degree. “Better.”
“Good.” She meant it. She’d thought about Logan on the drive home—thought about the forest, the downed log, the way he’d called out for his dad in that small, raw voice. She’d thought about what she’d said to him and whether it had helped or just been her own baggage dressed up as comfort.
“He’s taking the summer job Cody Simms offered him at the hardware store,” Bear added.
“Wow. That’s huge.”
“It’s a step in the right direction,” he agreed.
“And how’s Lila? I’ve been meaning to check in.”
Bear set the axe against the stump and reached for the water bottle on the fence post. “Worried. Luke’s been at it again.”
“Badly?”
“Yeah.” He drank, set it back. Didn’t elaborate.
“I’m not going to say I told you so, but…”
He looked at her.
“I told you so,” she said. “He needs help. Not for you and Lila to cover for him.”
Bear’s jaw tightened. He picked up the axe again. “I know what he needs.”
“Then why aren’t you pushing harder?”
“Because you can’t push a man into wanting to live differently.” He set a log on the stump. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“So you just watch him drink himself into a ditch?”
“I watch him.” The axe came down. “I stay close. I don’t turn my back on him.” He kicked the split halves aside. “That’s all you can do for someone who isn’t ready.”
She stared at the back of his neck, the tendons there, the dark line of his hairline. “That sounds like an excuse to avoid a hard conversation.”
He turned then, axe loose in one hand, and looked at her with that flat, dark patience she found genuinely infuriating. “And that sounds like someone who’s been in a car for six hours picking a fight because she doesn’t want to think about why she went to Spokane.”
Bullseye. The words landed directly in her heart, and she hated him a little for it.
“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me now?” She scoffed. “Stick to chopping wood, Pooh Bear. You’re better at it.”
He slammed the axe into the block and faced her, his expression dark as the storm clouds gathering over the mountains. “Stop trying to piss me off.”
She had to tilt her head all the way back to meet his gaze, and her breath caught. “No.”
He stared down at her.
She stared back.
Then his big hand was at her jaw, and his mouth came down hard on hers. The kiss wasn’t sweet. It was punishment and relief and surrender. It was everything she’d been goading him toward for two years and so much more.
His free hand closed hard around her hip, and he backed her until her shoulder blades hit the wall of the woodshed. He kissed her again, rougher, like he was trying to see how much pressure she could take before she’d break.
But she didn’t fucking break. Ever.
She arched into it, greedy for all of him, and bit at his lower lip, just to see if he’d flinch.
He didn’t.
His hand was huge at her jaw, callused thumb rough against her chin. The edge of it pushed her mouth open wider, the threat of it clear: he could take, if he wanted. She let him. For a second, she just let him. She dug her nails into the sweat-beaded skin of his back.
He pulled back enough to look at her. His eyes were almost black, pupils huge and ravenous, and she could see herself reflected there—flushed, wild-haired, snapping with want.
“Tell me to stop,” he rumbled, but his body said the opposite: don’t.
She laughed, breathless. “You’d hate it if I did.”
“You’re right.” His voice was a low, dangerous scrape.
“So don’t fucking stop.” She hooked a finger in the waistband of his jeans and dragged him all the way in, so there wasn’t a molecule of daylight between them. She flipped open the button, yanked the zipper down, and slid her hand in.
He wore nothing underneath.
Of course he didn’t.
She wrapped her fist around his cock and squeezed. He was huge there, too, just like he was everywhere else. He jolted, chest stuttering once, and she grinned up at him because she liked knowing she could make a man his size twitch.
She tightened her grip, feeling the pulse in his cock shudder against her palm, and the muscles in his body went taut. Bear made a noise deep in his throat—half threat, half hunger—and buried his mouth at the hinge of her jaw, biting hard enough to leave a mark.
She shifted her hand, stroking from base to tip, and god, he didn’t just move into it—he bore down, trapping her against the shed, making her feel impossibly small and caged and safe.
He bit her again, this time at the shell of her ear, and his breathing turned ragged and heavy.
It made her want to ruin him for all other women.
“Is this what you want?” he rumbled and thrust into her hand. “My cock in your hand, your mouth, your pussy?”
“Took you long enough to figure out, Care Bear.” She licked the sweat on his neck, tasted salt and heat. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
He hoisted her off the ground and pinned her between the woodshed and his body, the rough pine scraping her back through her shirt.
She hooked her ankles behind him, using every inch of her smaller frame as leverage, and ground down until she could feel the blunt line of his cock through the denim of her jeans.
The friction set off sparks along every nerve ending in her body.
She was already soaked—had been since the second she saw him swinging that axe—and moaned into his mouth.
He fumbled with the button on her jeans and growled with frustration. “Fuck, these are tight.”
She opened her mouth to tell him to put her down so she could get them off, but then heard the pop of buttons, the rip of fabric.
She looked down and saw four shiny copper buttons on the ground, like shotgun pellets. She laughed, wild and sharp. “You owe me a pair.”
He didn’t answer. He just set her on her feet again and yanked the denim down past her hips.
He slid his massive hand between her thighs, his palm so broad it covered everything, from hipbone to the seam where she wanted him most. Then his hand was inside her underwear, his fingers thick and callused and gloriously rough.
“Shit,” he groaned, voice shredded at the edges, “you’re already wet.”