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Page 18 of Beneath the Mountain Sky (McBride Brother Lumberjacks #1)

After several minutes of the sound of my crying and ragged breaths, he leans back and cups my face gently, searching my eyes. “You want to tell me about it?”

I shudder.

Of course, I knew he would ask.

How could he not when we’ve been trying to get me to remember, praying it would happen?

There is no judgment in his gaze.

Only understanding, even though I haven’t told him anything yet.

He would let me say “no” and just keep holding me if all I want to do is cry. He would give me space if that’s what I asked for. He would do anything I want in this moment.

And as painful as it is, reliving the panic coursing through my system…I want him to know what I saw.

I swallow through the final sob, taking several deep breaths to gather the strength to tell him. “It was storming. Thunder. Lightning. I was soaked. The ground was cold under my bare feet. Rocks dug into them. Branches kept catching on my clothes and cutting my skin. I?—”

So cold.

So wet.

So loud.

So dark without the moon.

I squeeze my eyes closed, simultaneously trying to force the vision of the dream to come back with clarity while not wanting to remember that fear I felt.

The frantic panic.

It consumed me in the memory.

A kind of all-out terror I’ve never experienced before, even during everything I went through with Mom, never knowing if I would find her dead or if one day she would not come home.

Nothing compares to what I felt during that dream.

What’s starting to seize me again now as the flashes return.

So vivid.

I can feel the bite of the rocks. The scratch of the branches. Hear the crunch of the twigs under my bare feet and my own panting breaths as I race through the forest along a narrow trail.

It’s so real.

Only Killian’s firm grip on me and his familiar touch remind me I’m safe in the cabin with him. He keeps running his hand soothingly along my back, keeping me grounded. Keeping me here while allowing me to explore there.

“I was trying to run, but it was so hard…”

I fell.

Several times.

Stumbling over fallen logs I couldn’t see in the near pitch black that overtook the thick trees.

But I didn’t dare move out of them to where the flashes of lightning could make it easier for me to see—because it would also mean it would be easier to be seen.

That thought makes me clutch my chest.

It feels wrong.

Empty.

Like something’s missing that should be in my hands, that should be pressed to me.

“I think I was carrying something. Something important. And then…” A sob works its way up my throat as the visions from the dream flash again. Something jerked me backward, stopping my progress. My scream. “And then someone grabbed me.”

I open my eyes and find Killian watching me intently, his beautiful gaze filled with so much concern.

And anger.

Red.

Hot.

Fury.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he tries to tamp down his rage so he doesn’t scare me. Because he never directs it at me. Even when he feels like he’s out of control, he can rein it in around me. Find his center. But now he trembles as if he’s on the verge of losing it. “That’s all you remember?”

I nod.

He presses his lips together, brows drawn low in contemplation.

“It might not be a memory. There isn’t anything you just described that you couldn’t have picked up based on the information I’ve told you we’ve found.

You might be piecing together all of that subconsciously and forming it into a dream that you are mistaking for a memory. ”

Even before he finishes saying the words, I’m vehemently shaking my head. “No. I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.”

It makes sense what he’s saying.

My brain is still trying to process the emotional and physical trauma of whatever I went through, and to do that, it could be grasping at the tiny pieces of evidence Killian has found and using them to create a story that might not be real.

But deep down in my gut, I know it is a memory.

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, letting his fingers linger at my temple. “How can you be so sure?”

I place my right hand over my chest again, clutching at something that isn’t there—a gaping hole where something should be. “Because I can feel it here .”

“Feel what?”

“The weight of whatever I was carrying.” My voice breaks as I try to figure out a way to explain this to him when I can’t even understand it myself. “I can feel it as if it were really there when I was running…and now…it’s not.”

All that remains is the empty, hollow feeling that matches the dark abyss my memories have disappeared into.

Killian’s gaze softens, the last of his anger washing away on a wave of some tender emotion I recognize but am too afraid to act on. “I’m so sorry, Honeybee.”

He tugs me up against him, burying his face in my hair, and I let myself relax into his hold, like I did last night. Just like I did for so many nights through so many years.

It feels like home.

Like where I’m supposed to be.

I’m safe.

It doesn’t make any sense.

Why would I leave McBride Mountain?

Why would I leave this?

Him?

I brush my hand over his chest, feel his heart thudding under my palm and centering me, pushing my own heartbeat back to a normal rhythm. Slowly, the panic brought on by the memory dissipates until the warmth permeating my palm replaces the knowledge that I no longer have whatever I was carrying.

My fingers brush across the neckline of his T-shirt, tracing the tattoos on the bare skin there. The ridgeline I know so well—an exact depiction of McBride Mountain with the central peak right at his throat.

His breath hitches, and he stills, his hands tightening around me gently.

Being here like this with him, back in his arms, feels so right.

This energy between us still so powerful.

So real.

And I know it’s going to shatter the moment to tell him what I decided while he was away today. But I have to do it, no matter how bad the backlash might be. Especially after the fear and panic of that memory, I have to go through with it.

I keep my gaze trained on his ink, tracing the peaks and valleys of the place that has always been home—the mountain and him. “Raven’s going to do an article about me coming back.”

“What?”

There it is.

The incredulity in his tone.

That vibrating anger tied to his dislike of Raven and anything associated with her.

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.

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