Page 60 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

I push back slightly so I can look up at him. “I want her to.”

“No, you don’t.” He clenches his jaw. “I know you can’t remember it, if you had been following the site over the last year, but the stuff she posts? It’s no better than a fucking gossip magazine.”

“This won’t be.” I take his face in my hands, running my fingers through his beard. “People need to know that something might be happening on the mountain. That there could be danger… Don’t they?”

A muscle tics along his jawline, and I can see the debate raging in his agitated gaze. “We don’t know that, though, Honeybee. If we get everyone stirred up for no reason, it could cause unnecessary panic.”

“You know I don’t want that, but what if someone else was involved? What if…” I struggle to swallow, trying to work through both the jumbled mess in my head and what my heart is telling me. “What if I tried to come back to you, to Raven, and what if someone stopped me?”

His entire body stiffens underneath me, every muscle going tense and hard as stone. “Why do you think that?”

The tears burn in my eyes. “Because this feels right, being here with you. I know we argued about something. I know I left. But would this still feel right, even if I couldn’t remember? Wouldn’t I know, deep down, that something was wrong between us if I hadn’t forgiven you? Hadn’t gotten over whatever you said? Whatever happened?”

Killian is quiet for far too long, so long that I start to think he is going to shut down completely.

“It isn’t something you can just get over, Honeybee. What I did, what I said, it was unforgivable.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you, Killian McBride. I know the kind of man you are. I know how your mother raised you and your brothers, and you may be rough around the edges, but here”—I press my hand over his heart—“you’re a good man, and you’re always doing the right thing.”

“You have way too much faith in me.”

“Maybe you don’t have enough.”

He shifts me off his lap, setting me on the mattress, and climbs from the bed, releasing a heavy sigh as he shoves his hand through his hair. “Try to get some sleep.”

“You’re leaving?”

He glances back at me. “I’ll be right in the other room if you need me.”

I want to beg him to stay.

I want to tell him I do need him.

But the look in his eyes tells me it would only make things worse, harder for him if I did, so instead, I simply nod and let him walk out, closing the door behind him and leaving me in the room in the bed we once shared with nothing more than the memory of the nightmare that may or may not be real.

8

THREE DAYS LATER

WILLOW

Everything is exactly as I left it.

After all this time, I expected cobwebs, dust, and any number of animals to have infiltrated my workshop and filled it with nests, but all my candle-making supplies are still stacked in neat rows on shelves.

No cobwebs.

In their place are entire buckets filled with honeycomb waiting for me to process it for the pure wax I use for my creations.

When Killian told me he kept things exactly as they were in the cabin, I never anticipated it would extend out here.

Not to my space.

Not when he didn’t know if I’d ever come back.