Chapter Five
Gabe hadn’t realized how much he missed this room until he walked into it again.
The long tables of the dining hall were already half full, and the smells of roast chicken, rolls and coffee hung in the air.
Voices overlapped, mingled with the occasional rough laugh and silverware clinking. Gabe glanced around. Some new faces. Some old. Back when he joined the program, the noise set his nerves on edge. Now it felt like a homecoming.
A couple of the guys spotted him right away. Luke gave him a lift of the chin from down the table, the silvery scar along his cheek catching in the light when he grinned. Zayne waved him over with a fork in hand.
Carrying his own tray of food, Gabe slid onto the bench beside him.
“You’re back?” Zayne asked without preamble.
The guy was in his mid-twenties. Far too young to be hit with what life served him. He’d entered the program toward the end of Gabe’s own stay. He couldn’t quite remember what they talked about, only that they’d spent a lot of hours working in the sun.
“I’m still figuring it out.”
“Civilian life didn’t treat you well?” Zayne asked between bites.
“The work was good. Nice to see family.”
“But you’re back here.”
He lifted his own fork and knife, cutting into the juicy chicken breast. “For now.”
That seemed to be enough for Zayne. They talked about which therapist had a stash of candy, how Navy, the therapy baby, babbled about neigh-neighs for half the session. And how Crew and Vander were battling for top spot in the lodge for most hands won at the poker table.
They chuckled over the stupid topics that sounded like nothing to anyone else but stitched together a group of men who’d lost a lot of themselves before they came here.
Then conversation turned to the new guys. Gabe looked around the tables. Even though he didn’t know a single one of their names, he knew what they were all going through.
One bite later, he heard a different kind of murmur run through the group. Usually the sound that meant Willow Malone had walked in, since everyone loved her sweet nature.
But when he looked up and saw Felicity in the doorway—hair loose, book tucked under her arm, looking a little careworn from the day but still bright in a way men couldn’t help staring at—he understood. Every guy in the room had turned toward the pretty woman without even thinking about it.
She crossed the hall, tossing waves and smiles at everyone she saw. She set down the paperbacks she was carrying and turned toward the long buffet.
Honor joined her, and they began filling trays with food. Turning his attention to his own dinner, he listened to the talk around him. He didn’t tune in to the topics, only registered the rise and fall of voices.
When he looked up from his plate, his gaze landed on Felicity.
Who was looking at him.
His chest tightened with a sensation he couldn’t put a name on, only knew he felt it a few times throughout the course of the day—when he stood on that ladder looking down at her, and later when she tested him about the book content.
Even though Felicity had a terrible day, being with her was easy in a way he hadn’t known for a long time. He only wished he could do more to help, to smooth that worried furrow above her brow.
An image filled his mind, of leaning close to her, breathing in the sweet perfume he caught several times today, and brushing his lips over her brow.
He tore his gaze away from her, scraping back his chair. He grabbed his tray and crossed the room to empty it into the trash. Soon everyone was getting up. Honor rolled in a small podium to the front of the room near the stone fireplace.
“Here we go.” Zayne nudged him. “Story time.”
Felicity took her position behind the podium and opened a book on the surface.
Chairs scraped in unison, and he turned his with the rest of the men to face her. She straightened her shoulders and scanned the group, her stare landing on a man here and there. She smiled, a little tired around the edges, but real.
“Tonight, we’re doing something new. This one’s not a thriller. No car chases.” She grinned along with several in the group. “I thought we might go easy on the blood pressure.”
A few chuckled at her joke.
“This is from The Spring Below Timberline. It’s about a mountain valley and the water that runs through it.”
She glanced down at the page and began to read.
Her voice shifted to a stronger version as she found a rhythm. The words painted a picture so vivid he could almost see it.
A narrow path winding through tall pines.
Rocks warmed by the sun. A clear spring sliding out of the earth and running cool and cold over mossy stones.
The air on the ridge thin and crisp, smelling of wet granite and new growth.
The ground soft underfoot where moss grew and sunlight twinkled on the water, casting patterns over the bottom.
She read the line about the way a man could kneel there, cup his hand and drink, and feel the chill shoot up his arm and into his chest in one long, bright streak.
Gabe noticed how his shoulders dropped. And his jaw unclenched. That, for the first time in a long time, his mind wasn’t racing, but calmed by the cold and the sound of water babbling over stone.
He sat transfixed. His hands rested loose on his thighs, gaze on Felicity, the room fading until he felt like he was the only person in the room listening to that sweet voice.
He wished the reading sessions existed when he was here as a resident.
Back then, nights stretched into long, restless torture.
If he’d been able to listen to her voice wrap around the quiet story about a spring in the mountains—or even the car chase from the thriller she mentioned—he might’ve slept more than two hours at a time in those early days.
And her voice…that rasp, low and feminine, like she’d talked all day and kept reading anyway. That voice made him think of her perfume, sweet and light but not sugary. It fit her.
She read on from the passage, turning pages with care. If Carson announced they were staying in these chairs all night long, letting Felicity read every book in her shop, Gabe wouldn’t complain.
He noticed more things about her now that he let himself look.
The way she braced the book with one hand and turned pages with the other.
The concentration in her brow when she hit a phrase she liked.
How she found individual men in the crowd when she read a certain line, checking their faces to make sure they were still enjoying the reading.
The way her hair hung in a loose cascade to the tops of her breasts and a strand near her temple seemed to whirl in a direction of its own.
While he looked on, she reached up to smooth the lock as if she felt him noticing. She finished the passage with the image of the spring running on, season after season, while people came and went from the mountain.
Then she closed the book gently with her thumb tucked in to mark the place. “We’ll pick up there next week. Unless you all demand a car chase.”
“Water’s fine,” one of the vets near the front grumbled, and the room chuckled.
Gabe didn’t laugh. Not because it wasn’t funny, but because his mind had gone sideways. Away from the valley and the spring and back to the shop.
To the back door with its improved lock. The new cameras installed. The way the glass looked, glittering on the floor. And the expression she’d worn when she realized someone had gone through her things not for money but to wreck it.
Darkness pressed at the edges of his thoughts, old battles trying to replay themselves in a new setting.
He dug his fingertips into his knee under the table to pull himself out of it.
No. Not now. Not here.
A burst of laughter to his left pulled him back fully. People were standing, pushing in chairs. Someone called out from the doorway that the bonfire was going.
He waited for a beat to see what Felicity was doing. When she met Honor at the exit and headed out with the others, he followed the flow too.
Bonfires were important around here. What began as a place to sit and watch the flames dance while dealing with his haunted thoughts had morphed into a cozy gathering he looked forward to attending.
The scent of woodsmoke carried on the air, and the flames blazed bright in a circle of stones. The Malone ladies were already there, as if the ritual made them feel closer to the men in their lives away on some security detail.
Honor laughed, and Willow made a comment that made a couple of men snort. Aspen and Rhae chatted together while Juliette cradled a sleeping Navy in her lap, bundled against the chill of the spring night so only her little round face was visible.
He drifted to the far side of the fire where he could see everyone without being in the center. He wasn’t ready to answer questions about his reason for returning to the Black Heart—hell, he didn’t know himself.
Felicity stood a little off to one side, talking to one of the older vets. Someone loaned her a thick coat that hung almost to her knees, swallowing her frame. She smiled gently at whatever the vet said, and he could see her visibly relaxing as the flames shot higher into the air.
This—laughter and the crackle of burning wood—was the best medicine, and it seemed to be helping her too.
He listened to Carson speaking to Crew, a discussion about the ranch operations.
When he caught movement from the corner of his eye, he turned his head to see Felicity staring down at her phone, her lips flattened.
Before he thought about it, he crossed the distance between them. “What’s wrong?” He kept his tone low but even.
She looked up in surprise. “I just got a notification from the security camera at my house. Person detected.”
“Can I see?”
She angled the phone so he could see. “Gray set up a ton of security for us when Honor’s ex was lurking around. It’s probably just the postman.”