Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
MELODY
D awn breaks, thin and silver, a new ice threading the air. No rose, no gold. Warmth itself has gone missing.
Even the light sounds brittle, like frost cracking beneath its own weight.
Silence follows, too deep to trust. The hum is gone. At first it’s a relief. Then, it feels like a held breath, the world waiting for something to break—like the air itself is bracing.
The stillness presses against my ribs until I realize I’m holding my breath.
The radio crackles once and dies. I switch it off, though I’m sure I did that last night. My fingers find my lips. No heat. No ache. The burn of the cowboy’s kiss is gone, like it never happened. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just fever and lightning.
Yesterday, he kept to the far fence line, back turned each time I looked his way. Pretending nothing happened. Perhaps I should, too.
I pull on high-waisted jeans, a sage tie-front blouse, a soft dusty-rose sweater. The air smells of lilacs and rain—washed clean, like it could forget. Maybe what I need to do: forget.
Downstairs, Grandma hums an old Paiute lullaby. When she sees me, a smile softens her shadowed face.
“The mountains are awake today,” she says.
“No,” I answer, glancing toward the window. “They feel … gone. Like they’ve pulled their breath back.”
She huffs a laugh, goes to the glass, and studies the ridge. “Still there,” she murmurs. “Though my grandmother used to say the sky carries messages when the peaks go quiet.”
Her words settle like dust motes in sunlight, ancient and ordinary all at once.
Is she joking? Can she really believe this?
“Messages?” I step beside her, searching the heavens. Dark swirls, faint colors shifting like bruises. Maybe just tricks of light, but the air presses close, listening.
The house feels too small for both of us and whatever’s moving outside.
“Is Grandpa better today?” I ask.
“Much. Out mending fences since before sunrise.” She nods toward the hills, morning light spilling across the kitchen.
My eyes catch on the brown Carhartt draped over the porch rail—Maveryk’s jacket. Heat still clings to it, or perhaps that’s my imagination. The sight knocks the air from my lungs.
“Mind if I take a horse? Go find Grandpa?” The lie tastes thin. My hand grazes the silver bracelet on my wrist. Warm. Almost pulsing.
Grandma follows my gaze to the jacket. Her knowing smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
“No need,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. “Our neighbor’s gone for the winter.”
My pulse skips. Gone. Relief rushes in, followed too quickly by something else—want or loss. I can’t name it.
“Still,” I say lightly, “I should return his coat. Wouldn’t want him to freeze before he makes it out of the valley.”
She studies me for a long heartbeat, then nods. “Take Sunshine. She likes you.”
“Thanks, Grandma.”
I pull the coat from the rail. Smoke and pine rise from the fabric—the scent of rain and memory. The smell tangles with my heartbeat, slow and unsteady, as if the coat remembers more than I do.
I shrug into it, tell myself it’s just for safekeeping. But when the weight settles across my shoulders, it feels like gravity itself.
The path winds upward into the high pasture, air thinning with each rise. I ride Sunshine, her saffron coat bright against the pale grass, her breath ghosting in the chill. Above us, starlings twist in murmurations—black ribbons in a silver sky, scattering, reforming, alive with impossible order.
The higher we climb, the louder the quiet feels. Even Sunshine’s hoofbeats seem to hush themselves, afraid to echo.
Every sound folds into itself. The wind seems to hesitate before touching the trees. Then a note—low, constant—threads through the stillness.
It shivers through the reins, the saddle, my bones. The mountain tuning itself to his frequency. A vibration I can’t place. If a man could be distilled to a single tone, this would be Maveryk’s.
The forest shifts from gold to green-shadowed. Leaves turn the color of embers before they die. My bracelet pulses once, hard enough to sting, as the trail narrows. The Starborn Range looms ahead, half-shrouded in mist, its peaks veined with faint red light like arteries under skin.
“Just his coat,” I whisper, as if the lie will protect me. “Just the coat.”
Sunshine tosses her head, ears flicking.
My eyes dart to the treeline, searching for movement, a mountain lion or bear. Nothing.
We push on, vegetation pulling tight overhead like a shadowy hug. I ride into tight-clinging clouds like an invisible cloak. We should turn back. Instead, I pat Sunshine’s neck, unwilling to acknowledge the pull, unable to deny it.
The trail grows damp and close. Mist curls around us, cool fingers tracing my throat. When the drizzle starts, I pull his jacket tighter. Smoke and pine. The warmth of someone who shouldn’t matter but does.
Through the wet hush, I glimpse it—the cabin tucked into the valley below, small and plain, half-swallowed by aspens and fog. Its roof gleams slick with rain. A thin curl of smoke escapes the chimney, then falters.
My pulse stutters.
“Maveryk!” My voice disappears into the gray. Only the rain answers.
“Maveryk,” I try again, the name braided with relief and something darker.
I could leave his coat inside, escape without notice. Say, I see you without meeting his eyes. A goodbye letter I don’t have to write.
I dismount, tie Sunshine outside at the trough, and cross the clearing. The door hangs ajar, sighing on its hinges. The air inside tastes of iron and ozone.
A storm’s breath held captive.
The walls seem to breathe, cradling memories of their own. I’ve been here before, though so long ago it feels like a dream.
To one side, bunks line the wall. In the center, a long table. To the left, a rustic hearth looms, amber firelight flickering from the smoke-blackened rock.
He’s here. Close.
Maps and sketches sprawl across the table.
I brush my fingers across them, then freeze at the sight of a small box wrapped in strange fabric, silver as starlight.
My hand trembles as I pull the cloth aside, remove the lid.
Metal and stone fuse together inside, humming faintly—a heart made of both earth and sky.
I should turn away, but curiosity has gravity—and I’m already falling. I stretch a shaking hand, touch it. A whisper sears my mind—my name on the cowboy’s lips.
Cold floods my hand. Fingers bloom with blue fire, bioluminescent like Maveryk’s tattoos.
I gasp, stumble back as visions pour through me: stars collapsing, fire raining down, judgment cold and swift. The air smells of metal and burnt honey.
My pulse staggers. The world reassembles one breath at a time.
“Maveryk.” His name breaks from my throat before I know I’ve said it.
He fills the doorway, rain steaming off his bare chest, tattoos alive, glowing like molten silver. “You shouldn’t be here,” he rasps, the hum of the range threading through his voice. His eyes drop to the coat, dwarfing my frame, his expression unreadable.
I open my mouth, a thousand excuses rising. Instead, I whisper, “I couldn’t stay away.”
“No.” His brows furrow, voice thickening with conviction. “You have to go. Now. Before we draw any more attention.”
“Attention?” I look around, puzzled. He and I are the only two people in this solitary valley.
“What happened in the barn—” he braces his hands on his hips, legs set apart like he’s holding the world still “—can never happen again. It was wrong.”
Outside, thunder murmurs low, as if even the storm disagrees.
His words cut, but his eyes—feral, turquoise, burning—cut deeper. Each searing glance only makes his tattoos pulse brighter, the faint hum off his skin rising until it fills the cabin.
My bracelet vibrates softly, answering. He steps forward, haunted, his hand closing around my wrist, thumb tracing the refracting silver.
“You have to go,” he orders gruffly.
He turns his hand slightly, and I register the raw, blackened flesh on his palm. I gasp, eyes bobbing from his wound to his face. “What did you do?”
He shrugs, tries to wrap his mouth around words. Bows his head instead.
I rise, heat thrumming through my core, light-headed, as I locate a First-Aid Kit down the hallway. I make him sit, fuss over his hand.
The smell of antiseptic burns my nostrils, but he never grimaces as I clean and then bandage the injury. The runes on his arms pulse and shimmer like quicksilver beneath my touch. I try not to notice, but I can’t deny the heat simmering behind his eyes.
Or the visions his touch awakens. They swirl behind my eyes: ancestors fleeing towers of light, a woman carved from starlight pressing a child into mortal arms, a mark searing the air between two peoples. One of starlight and cloud, the other of earth and fire.
Tears slide down my cheeks. The images aren’t seen—they’re felt , like everything about this man. The flare fades, yet he still holds me, thumb rubbing circles into my wrist, an unreadable expression meeting mine.
“Now, you know why I can’t touch you,” he says.
My eyes lift to his. “Too late.”
Thunder booms, distant and deep, the storm matching my pulse. He drops my wrist. Rises, then, steps back, but I won’t let him retreat. I follow, my fingers brushing his arm where the tattoos still glitter.
“If you stay,” he warns, voice fraying, “I won’t stop.”
“Don’t.”
Light and sound swell. The cabin hums, walls trembling with the same frequency that’s been haunting my bones since the day I drove up.
“Melody.” My name leaves him like a prayer, like surrender.
The word collapses the space between us. I lift my face as his lips descend—not spontaneity this time, but inevitability. The roots of the same tree finding each other again.
Heat, light, breath. The cabin disappears in his kiss, leaving only the sound of our names dissolving into each other.
The hum threads through us, a living current. My hands on his burning chest, his heartbeat answering mine. Everything dissolves into radiance; desire weaves the air into something sacred.