Chapter 19
nineteen
The next morning, Greta stood in Bear’s bedroom in the gray morning light and did a quick inventory: sore in the places she expected, bruised in the places that made her grin, and completely without pants.
She found his flannel on the floor and shrugged it on over her bra.
Her shirt was downstairs somewhere. Her jeans were ruined, the buttons ripped off.
She picked them up off the floor anyway, rolled the waistband twice, and put them on. They held. Barely.
She looked at the bed.
The sheets were twisted beyond any hope of reconstruction. The top blanket had migrated entirely to the floor on his side, as had the pillows.
The wreckage of a very good night.
She grinned and went downstairs.
King spotted her first and threw himself sideways into her legs, nearly taking her down.
Atlas came in behind him with more dignity but equivalent enthusiasm, pressing his muzzle into her palm.
She got both hands into both dogs at once, which was the only way to manage mornings in this house, and looked up.
Bear was at the counter, mug in hand, already dressed, already watching with a faint smile as she greeted the dogs. He set the mug down and crossed to her, and she tipped her chin up. He caught the back of her neck in one hand and kissed her.
“I need to go. I have to open the shop,” she protested when they came up for air.
“Okay,” he rumbled against her lips. “Text me when you get there.”
“Bear.”
“Text me,” he repeated.
She shook her head. “I’ve been getting myself places for thirty-one years.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but she pushed up on her toes and pressed a kiss to the crease between his brows—the one that lived there permanently, like it had been carved in. “Stop worrying, Care Bear. I’ll see you later.”
“Greta—” He started as she went to the door, then cut himself off.
She glanced back at him, saw the internal war he was fighting with himself clear as day on his face. He wanted to talk about last night. About what it meant.
“I’ll see you later,” she repeated and walked out before he started a conversation she wasn’t ready to have yet.
Outside, the rain had thinned to a fine mist that fogged glasses, found collar gaps, and made every surface shine with a thin, cold gloss. She got her jacket halfway zipped, took two steps off the porch, and heard the truck.
X’s truck. The new Ram pulled up to the curb with the radio cutting off mid-bass note.
Logan climbed down from the passenger side.
X leaned over the center console and took in the scene through the open door: the mist, Greta on the porch steps in jeans that were clearly held together by stubbornness and a prayer, wearing a flannel that clearly did not belong to her.
His face went through three expressions in about two seconds before it landed on a grin so wide it ought to have required a permit.
She pointed at him and mouthed, “Don’t.”
He threw both hands up in surrender and reversed out of the space, still grinning.
Well, fuck. Everyone at the ranch was going to know about her and Bear within the hour.
She turned to Logan.
He’d made it to the bottom porch step and stopped. He was fifteen years old and already taller than the average man, putting his gaze even with hers. He had his father’s eyes, and right now those eyes were doing a complete inventory of the situation.
“Hi, Greta.”
“Hi, Logan.”
His cheeks flushed, and he looked away first. At the street. At something down the block. But then he must have decided he couldn’t avoid this conversation and looked back at her.
“Please don’t mess my dad up.”
She opened her mouth. She wanted to make a joke. She had jokes ready—she always had jokes ready, it was her best and worst quality—but right now every single one of them died somewhere in her throat.
He deserved better than a joke.
“I’m going to try really hard not to,” she said.
He thought about that. She watched him turn it over. He wasn’t looking for reassurance— he was looking for honesty, and she’d given him honesty, and she watched him decide whether it was enough.
He nodded. “Okay.”
Then he went up the steps past her and pushed through the front door, and she heard King’s frantic barking erupt from inside, heard Logan’s low voice saying “hey, buddy, hey, big dummy,” and then the door banged shut.
She stood there another second. Watching the closed door. Thinking about a fifteen-year-old boy who’d asked her, quietly, in the rain, not to hurt someone he reluctantly, grudgingly loved.
Then she turned and walked across Maple to her own house. Before heading inside, she pulled her bag and her phone out of the unlocked Jeep where she’d left them twenty hours ago.
The note was wedged into the storm door at chin height, folded in thirds, her name in the square block print she unfortunately recognized.
Daniel Goodwin.
It gave her a chill to know he’d been here.
She pulled the note free, walked it straight through the house, and dropped it in the kitchen trash without unfolding it. The lid swung shut.
“We’re not playing his games anymore.”
Atlas thumped his tail against the cabinet in agreement.
She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket to plug it in on the counter, and her stomach dropped when the screen lit up. Dozens of voicemails. Even more missed calls.
She didn’t listen to them. She held the power button until the options appeared, then powered the phone down. She leaned both palms on the counter and looked at the grain of the wood until her breathing evened out.
She was not afraid of Daniel Goodwin.
She was furious with Daniel Goodwin.
And it was about time she told him.
The wipers thumped a steady beat against the rain, the highway gray and wet, the Bitterroots barely visible through the low cloud.
Atlas had his face in the two-inch gap she’d left in the passenger window, ears streaming back, rain speckling his muzzle, completely unbothered.
She’d tried closing it on him three times, but he wouldn’t back away, so she’d given up.
Some dogs were weather dogs, and that was that.
She kept both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road, and rehearsed what she was going to say. Mainly, it was going to be some variation of leave me the fuck alone.
Goodwin’s Outfitters sat at the edge of Hamilton in a converted barn with a new tin roof.
A huge antler chandelier was visible through the front window.
An offensive, hand-carved wooden Indian stood by the door that should’ve been retired about the same time dial-up internet was.
The parking lot was small and gravel, and she counted two vehicles: Daniel’s black F-250 and an older Subaru that probably belonged to whoever was inside buying fishing tackle.
She parked the Jeep right by the door, in full view of the front window.
“Stay,” she told Atlas.
He turned those amber eyes on her. It was the look he used when he disagreed with a decision but would honor it anyway because he trusted her.
“Stay,” she said again. “I mean it.”
She locked the door behind her.
The shop smelled like gun oil and cedar. She’d been in here twice before, both times on professional business. Both times, she’d left feeling vaguely ill.
Daniel Goodwin just had that effect.
He was behind the counter, ringing out a man in an orange vest, and he didn’t acknowledge her until he’d walked the man out. Then he turned from the door and grinned.
“Greta,” she said, like she’d made his morning. “He leaned both palms on the counter. “I was hoping you’d stop by. Did you get my message?”
She walked to the counter and stopped three feet short of it. “I didn’t read your note. I didn’t listen to your voicemails. I’m not going to. And you’re not going to call me anymore. You’re not going to stop by. I don’t want to see you. I am not interested.”
He tilted his head, and a rueful, concerned expression crossed his face.
“I understand you’re upset. I might have gone a little overboard.
” He kept his voice low and reasonable, as one might when speaking to a hysterical person.
“I’ve just been worried. After the trouble at your shop, and the tires, and you alone over there on Maple—” He opened his hands. “You shouldn’t take it the wrong way.”
“I know it’s you.” She kept her voice level. “The trailer hitch. The padlock. The office. The dead bird on my hood last Tuesday.”
Something dark shifted behind his eyes. Annoyance. Anger. It was just for a half-second, and then the smile came back. “You’ve been under enormous stress, searching for Alice—”
He came around the counter.
She should have taken a step back then. She should’ve left the shop and gotten as far away from him as she could.
But she didn’t.
He put both hands on her shoulders. “I understand why you’d start seeing patterns, but I’d never hurt you. I care about you. It’s why I—”
She pulled back. “I. Am. Not. Interested. In. You. I don’t know how many more ways I can state that.
He didn’t let go. “Now, Greta, I know you’re not serious…”
“How’s this for serious?” She got her hands up between his forearms and shoved out and down, breaking his grip. She stepped back, rotated, and put every pound she had into the right cross.
Her knuckles connected with the side of his face.
His head snapped. He staggered back into the bear spray display, canisters clattering off their hooks and hitting the floor like a dropped card game.
Her hand screamed. She’d hit his cheekbone instead of jaw.
Atlas barked from her Jeep. It was his deep, pissed-off bark. She wanted to go soothe him, but she had to make sure her point landed first.
“I’m done being polite about this,” she said, hands on her hips.
“The next time you come near my house, my shop, my trailer, or my dog, I’m not calling Hank.
I’m calling the state police.” She kept her voice even and her eyes on his face.
“I have a folder. Every voicemail, every note, every slashed tire, every incident with dates and photos. I will put it in front of people who aren’t your brothers, and I will ruin you. ”
Daniel touched his jaw.
She’d expected the charm to reassemble. It didn’t. A flatness came over his face, and she suddenly understood with cold clarity that she had just handed him exactly what he’d been escalating toward for months.
She’d hit him.
He had a reason now.
Daniel came at her fast, and his hand closed around the front of her throat.
He slammed her back into the wall between the elk mount and the door, and her skull cracked against the pine paneling, and the world went bright and sharp for two full seconds and then swam.
She couldn’t breathe. She clawed at his hands, and could hear Atlas outside, frantic now, and the bell over the door was jangling— the wind, or the latch not caught, or—
And then his weight was gone.