Chapter Nineteen
She came to at the familiar sounds of boots on wet gravel, the groan of a truck idling, the heaters blasting, the rustle of wind across trees. The scent of nighttime in a fall forest on the Appalachians.
And then a voice.
Low, steady, rough with control.
“Amara. Hey. Stay with me, baby.”
Her head ached like the inside of her skull had been scraped hollow. Her limbs didn’t feel real. But she knew that voice. Knew the way it grounded her. She cracked open her eyes.
The world swam.
Light from the truck’s overhead lamp spilled across the cab in soft gold. She was slumped in the passenger seat, soaked, muddy, her hair clinging to her cheeks. The door was open. A breeze ghosted through. Her teeth chattered.
“Eyes on me,” Ethan said, crouched between the truck and her. “That’s it. You’re doing good.”
She blinked. The dark outline of him sharpened—jacket sleeves pushed up, hands busy. One at her wrist, thumb pressed firm over her pulse. The other gently brushing her cheek, checking her pupils.
“Fucking freezing,” he muttered, almost to himself. Then louder, calling over his shoulder, “She’s waking up. Concussed, maybe. No major bleeds. Right arm looks clean, left hip’s bruised. Consistent with being thrown.”
“Shit,” Brock’s voice came from somewhere out in the dark. “She okay?”
“She’s alive,” Ethan snapped. “That’s enough for now.”
Amara tried to speak. Her throat hurt. She coughed once, swallowed hard, and rasped, “Ethan…”
He was instantly back in front of her. Both hands now cupping her face, thumbs dragging warm circles along her cheekbones. His jaw was locked. Eyes sharp and unreadable. His control sat like armor over his worry.
“Talk to me,” he said. “What happened?”
Her lip trembled. She shook her head a little, tried to sit straighter, and winced.
“Hey,” he said, easing a hand behind her neck. “You’re okay. Just tell me what you remember.”
“There was…a truck,” she said slowly. “South line. Mining road.”
His eyes sharpened.
“A man. He had—night vision maybe? Goggles. He—he pulled a gun. He chased me.” Her voice cracked. “He shot at me. I think the horse—”
“You got thrown?” His hands stilled.
She nodded weakly. “I fell into the creek,” she whispered. “Thought I was gonna drown. Thought…”
Ethan’s jaw ticked. His thumbs stilled on her face, just resting there now like anchors. Like he needed her skin under his palms to keep breathing.
“You’re safe now,” he said finally, voice a degree lower. “I got you.”
She could see it—the glint in his eyes. The fire he refused to let out. His focus was surgical, clinical even, like the soldier he used to be. But his chest was rising fast. His hand trembled at her neck.
She leaned into his palm. “You stayed gone,” she whispered, tears threatening. “I thought you’d left again.”
“I didn’t,” he said, hoarse. Then, cold again, “I’m not leaving.”
He let her rest back against the seat and turned away, already barking orders at Brock in a tight voice—triage, lights, get the med kit, call someone to look at the stallion.
But for one brief second before he stepped back into soldier-mode, he pressed a kiss to her temple.
She trembled, and he reached over to crank the seat warmer and check the truck’s heat vents. They buzzed low, already warming the wet cold from her skin, but she still couldn’t stop shaking.
Not only from the cold.
From everything.
From the man standing right in the truck doorway, jaw ticking, voice low, deliberate, commanding.
Her head throbbed too loud to think, but she could make out the shape behind him—Brock in the ditch, untying the stallion from a birch with whatever rope he’d scrounged.
The poor beast stood wild-eyed and lathered, breathing hard through blood at the flank.
Brock was whispering to it like an old friend.
She heard Brock say, “I’ll get you healed up soon, big guy. I’m getting someone for you. You did good.”
The man had a good heart.
“Where you taking her?” Brock’s voice broke through the night.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. “Somewhere safe.”
“Safe?” Brock straightened, narrowed his eyes. “Off the grid, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“You still don’t trust me?”
Amara groaned from the passenger seat. “Come on, Ethan…”
“It’s my family’s hunt camp,” he said, tugging open the driver’s side door. “Up near Brushback Ridge. No one knows where it is.”
Brock leaned on the truck’s frame. “I thought you didn’t have any family.”
Ethan slid in behind the wheel, calm as a closed fist. “Everyone’s got family,” he said. “I just don’t have any left. And the only thing my old man left me was that camp and a scar on my goddamn childhood.”
That shut Brock up.
The engine hummed to life. The headlights poured out onto the gravel and trees, catching dust motes like fireflies.
Amara blinked against the light, head still swimming. “I didn’t know that,” she murmured, voice thick.
“Didn’t know what?” Ethan asked without looking at her.
“That you had a place like that,” she said, dazed. “That you even had a dad.”
He cut a glance her way. “You know everything you need to.”
She looked at his profile—hard lines, clenched jaw, eyes full of old roads—and thought, No. I don’t. Not even close.
And with her skull pounding and the taste of iron in her mouth, she wondered what else she didn’t know about the man who just pulled her back from the edge of dying.