Page 30 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

Not more questions, which is all anyone seems to have right now.

But where the hell am I going to get them?

Killian rinses the conditioner from my hair, threading his fingers through the smooth strands in a rhythm that causes a low hum of contentment in my chest.

Almost instantly, he stops.

His hands slide away, and I sense him retreating from the tub. “I’ll leave you to enjoy your bath.”

My eyes snap open in time to catch him tossing a towel onto the rack, his shoulders tense, jaw locked tight.

He pauses for merely a second at the jamb but doesn’t look back. “I hope it helps.”

With that, he closes the door with a deafening click.

It somehow feels like he was closing the door on something else—whatever this electricity still sizzling between us is, the feelings I can’t pretend to ignore when—for me—they were alive and well only a few days ago.

None of this makes any sense.

And finding the answers just may destroy the one person I’ve ever loved in this world.

4

KILLIAN

“Are we really not going to talk about it?”

Liam’s question cuts through the peaceful silence of the forest—previously broken by our own footsteps through the brush—and I scowl at him as he walks next to me along the western bank of the river.

“Talk about what?”

He snorts and gives me an incredulous look, his green eyes narrowing the same way Mom’s used to when she was waiting for us to crack. When she knew there was something we were hiding, something weighing on us, and it was only a matter of time before we had to get it off our chest. “I don’t know, the fact that your ex-fiancée showed up half-drowned in the fucking river and is now at your place?”

Fucking hell.

Leave it to Liam not to know when to let something go—or not bring it up in the first damn place.

“There’s nothing to talk about…”

Absolutely nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

Certainly not the way my hands still tremble from touching her.

Not the way her scent still lives in my lungs and every breath.

Definitely not the way my heart finally started beating again the moment I saw her, even in that broken condition.

If I breathe a word of what I’m feeling, it will unleash a tidal wave I won’t be able to stop, and Willow has already almost drowned once.

I won’t put her through that again.

Sheriff Briggs and Connor motion to us from the other side of the river, indicating that they still haven’t found anything, so we keep moving, just like we have been for the last three hours, searching the banks, the rocks along the shore, the trees and branches that hang out into the rushing waters, and as far into the woods as we can go with the limited daylight we have left, trying to cover as much ground as possible.

Liam stares at me instead of focusing on the ground in front of him that he’s supposed to be searching. “Really? Nothing?”

There isn’t any point in trying to avoid his inquisition.