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Page 22 of Beneath the Mountain Sky (McBride Brother Lumberjacks #1)

This is limbo.

That strange state of hanging between worlds—the old and the new. The past and the future.

I blow out a long, heavy breath, unable to explain it to him when I don’t even understand it myself at times.

The calloused pad of this thumb scrapes across my jaw. “Okay.”

That was too easy.

I expected some sort of objection or even an argument from him. “Really?”

He nods. “If this is what you think you need.”

It isn’t just about me.

That may be the way he sees it, but this is about far more than just my missing memories. This affects him. His future. His life.

“You need it, too. You can’t keep ignoring work, ignoring the business, to run off to the mountain to solve this mystery.”

The corners of his lips curl up into a smirk. “I’m the boss. I can do whatever I want.”

That draws a half smile from me. “But all your employees depend on you. It’s not fair to take you away from them.”

He snorts. “Believe me, Connor and Liam are enjoying having their chance to boss people around while I’m not there.”

I chuckle. “Liam would never.”

“You’re right, it’s mostly Connor, but they have everything well in hand. I’m not needed there.”

“Yes, you are. You’re always needed.”

My words somehow soften his gaze even more, and his eyes dip to my lips as he brushes his thumb across my bottom one, sending a little shiver through me that’s full of heat rather than a chill.

It centers low in my belly, blooming between my legs because I know that look.

I craved it for so long, relished every time I saw it in his eyes, wanted it as badly as I do him right now, despite everything that’s going on.

“You’ll take me up there?”

He nods. “Let’s pack a bag and go. But I want you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“That you won’t push yourself too hard. I know you’re feeling better, that some of your bruises and aches are starting to go away”—he slides his hand down to my side, resting it gently over my ribs—“but you’re still going to be sore for a while, and where we’re going is steep.

A lot of hiking. We’ll have to spend the night up there.

You need to tell me if it’s too much. You need to promise me you will. ”

“I will.”

His lips tip down, concern drawing frown lines around his mouth and eyes. “I can’t watch you hurt anymore. You understand that, right?”

I nod and lean into his touch. “I do.”

He draws in a breath, his slick chest rising enough to almost brush mine. “Then let’s go. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the answers we’re looking for.”

* * *

KILLIAN

I shouldn’t have brought her up here.

After hiking for hours, navigating the unfriendly terrain, I can already see how exhausted and uncomfortable she is.

The slight tensing of her facial muscles with each step she takes. Her labored breathing. The way she keeps reaching over and grabbing her side and then quickly pulling her hand away before she thinks I’ve noticed.

But I see everything.

I notice everything.

I always did.

Because I’ve always been obsessed with her.

Even in high school, years before anything but friendship existed between us, it was always her .

She was the only one who ever caught my attention, who ever held it.

The way she laughs.

The way she smiles.

Even the way she cries is beautiful.

But I never want to see the look on her face that I have every night since she came home with me.

I never want to see her tears.

Those strange flashes of memory that she can’t piece together haunt her, making her gray eyes violently stormy. A tempest rages inside her, threatening to drag her into the dark, menacing abyss of her unknown past.

And so far, being up here has done nothing to improve her situation or give us any more information that might alleviate any of her suffering.

All it’s done is make her hurt even more than she already did.

Emotionally and physically, she’s dancing a fine line of complete burnout.

Still, she pushes on.

Never complaining.

Hiking through the dense, treacherous foliage. Climbing over fallen trees and weaving around trunks bigger than her as we follow the river up the mountain.

She scans the bank intently, the same way that I have over the last two weeks, every damn day I have been able to get up here, hoping to find something I missed before.

And it is wearing on her.

We can’t go on much farther, or she’ll drop.

I trail behind her, watching for any signs that she’s too wiped to continue. “Anything yet?”

She glances over her shoulder at me and gives me a tight smile that doesn’t reach her eyes before she shakes her head. “Nothing new.”

“I figured you’d tell me, but…”

I had hoped.

Prayed that being up here might trigger something for her that could end this ordeal.

A sigh slips from her lips filled with the frustration I share with her—though, what she’s feeling must be a thousand times worse than what I do.

She reaches back to adjust her ponytail to keep the hair off her neck, now matted down with sweat, the physical toll of the hike hitting her hard.

We used to go on hikes far harder than this regularly, but this type of exertion after what she went through borders on torture. It doesn’t matter that she asked for it and wanted this, or that we both had hoped it would offer her something she couldn’t get anywhere else.

She can’t keep going.

Any pain she’s feeling now will be ten times worse tonight and tomorrow.

“It’s getting late, Honeybee. We should probably set up camp soon.”

We didn’t get nearly as far as she had wanted to, but given how slow she has to move and the late start we got after spending time packing up what we needed to spend the night and talking to Raven, Connor, and Liam about our plans, that’s to be expected.

At least I expected it.

But given the way Willow now looks at the water, she apparently never counted on this being so taxing. “How much farther until we get to where you found me?”

I motion up the bank. “Another half an hour or so.”

Her lips twist as she contemplates the bubbling waters flowing beside us and the heavy brush we have to move through. “I want to keep going.”

“Willow…”

I grab her wrist to stop her progress, and just like every time I’ve touched her since her return, heat flares through my body at the simple contact.

She allows me to pull her to a stop. With a gentle tug, I turn her toward me. Restless gray eyes plead before she even says a word. “Please don’t, Killian.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t try to stop me from doing this.” She swallows thickly, as if she’s trying to keep something down. “I have to.”

“I think you’ve done enough for one day. There’s a place just up here where we can set up camp. We can start up again tomorrow.”

I hold my breath.

Please, Honeybee, just accept that you need to rest.

But the longer she waits to answer, the more sure I am that I’ve lost the battle.

She finally smiles at me softly, and that steely determination I always loved so much about her settles into her gaze. “I’m all right. I appreciate your concern, but I want to push on. We can camp there, right?”

I grit my jaw to keep myself from arguing with her, from trying to push what I think is best for her onto her because that’s gotten me in trouble in the past, and the last thing I want to do is upset her right now.

She likely wouldn’t sleep anyway if we stopped here and would lie awake all night thinking about what we might find tomorrow.

“Okay, but we set up camp there. We don’t push farther.”

She nods. “All right.”

I allow my fingers to slide off her wrist slowly, immediately missing the feel of her skin against mine.

It’s ridiculous how completely obsessed I am with this woman. What she does to me…

Every waking hour is spent thinking of her.

Every night is spent worrying about what might come when she climbs into our bed and tries to sleep.

And as we start walking again, I can’t drag my eyes off her instead of searching like I should be.

I readjust the heavy pack on my shoulders and force myself to return my focus to the task at hand.

She’ll be okay.

We’ll rest soon.

Comfortable silence settles over us, only the sound of foliage crunching under our boots and the birds overhead and animals in the forest breaking it.

As we near the place where I found her in the water, my stomach tenses, and even she seems to sense it, her footsteps slowing, becoming more cautious.

We turn the slight bend in the river, and my gaze finds the log and tree roots her body was tangled up in, still protruding out into the water near the rapids.

She stops and stares at that exact spot for a moment, her head tilting slightly before she slowly turns and looks at me. “Was that it?”

I grit my jaw. “How did you know?”

Her brow furrows, and she shakes her head, turning back toward the river. “I don’t know. I was unconscious when you pulled me out…”

“Yes. And all the way to the hospital. You didn’t wake up once.”

And I didn’t take a single breath the entire time.

At least, it felt like that.

For hours , carrying her down this mountain and then driving to Asheville to the emergency room, all I did was pray.

Seeing her vulnerable, so hurt, so near death…

Seeing her at all when I thought I might never again.

She purses her lips and slowly approaches the water. “I may have been unconscious, but I must have been somehow aware of what was happening.”

I sure as hell hope not.

There were things I said to her, things I shouldn’t have, as I held her in my arms and trekked down the mountain. Things that would be hard to explain without delving deeply into the very reason that we broke up in the first place.

She pauses beside the bank, the water rushing over the rocks, boulders, and the tree where she was hung up. Willow stares at the spot for what feels like an eternity before she starts walking farther upriver.

“Willow, where are you going?”

“I…” She glances back at me but keeps moving. “I don’t know. I just need to go this way.”

“The path you came down is just across the clearing, through those trees.”

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