Page 12 of Don’t Make Me Fall (Mountain Men of Cinnamon Creek #1)

Chapter Twelve

Hudson

“What the hell happened to you?” Dash Sullivan calls out to me when he spots me in line at the Cinnamon Creek Bakery.

“Nothing happened to me. Why are you…smiling?”

He laughs at my accusation, and I’m starting to wonder if I lost that battle with the mountain lion after all.

Maybe hit my head on a rock. That’s the only thing that would explain this alternate reality I’m currently experiencing.

Dash is one of Mason’s longtime friends.

He’s a local, and a recluse. He typically hides out at the fire lookout all season, then at his remote cabin most of the winter.

It’s rare to see him in town. Even rarer to see him smiling.

“You already close up for the season?” I ask him, confused by his presence almost as much as I am by his chipper demeanor.

“Nah, still got a couple weeks left yet.”

The line moves forward, closer to the door. The Cinnamon Creek Bakery is the most popular spot in town for breakfast pastries. I’d come here even if Mason’s wife didn’t own the place. Sweets have always been my vice when my life turns to shit. Better than cocaine.

“Seriously, man. You okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“It’s about a woman, isn’t it?”

My head snaps to attention before I can think better of it, which only gives Dash ammunition he didn’t fucking need.

“Do you love her?”

“Doesn’t matter if I do.”

“Yeah, I told myself that lie too.”

I’m not in the mood for gossip, unlike several locals in line. Fuck me, I bet half the town will be discussing my love life after this little exchange. They’ll be relentless until they figure out who the woman was that got away. So much for this not getting back to Reid.

“I thought you were done with all that,” I say, hoping to focus the conversation on Dash instead of me.

“I was.”

“And?”

“Now I’m not an idiot anymore.”

“You’re calling me an idiot?”

“I think you just called yourself one,” Agnes Collins chimes in from the line in front of us.

“I’m not—”

“Then what are you doing here?” Ivy asks as I step up to the counter.

“Ordering a cinnamon roll. Is that a crime?”

“If stupidity was a crime, you’d be in serious trouble,” Agnes says.

There is way more attention on me than is comfortable, and I feel my shield of anger cracking.

I want to be pissed at Alanna, but how can I be?

I’m basically asking her to uproot her comfortable city life to start a life with me in this small town in the middle of nowhere.

I’m not the one giving up a damn thing, but she’d be moving away from all her friends and everything familiar to her.

“Here’s two cinnamon rolls,” Ivy says, handing me a bag. “On the house as long as you understand what you’re supposed to do with that second one.”

“Do you want me to spell it out for you?” Agnes asks, adjusting her purple rimmed glasses. Are those tiny cocks on the chain? I rub the sleep from my eyes, but the charms still look the same.

“I’m good,” I tell them.

“You’re sure?” Dash asks, still smiling despite his obvious concern for me. After I fix this with Alanna, I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s made him so damn cheerful. Make sure the man doesn’t need to see a doctor or something.

“I’m sure.”

“Then hurry your ass up,” Ivy insists. “Fred will be at the lodge with the shuttle van any minute.”

Shit.

I grab the back and rush out the door, sprinting for my truck.

I don’t know what I’m going to say to Alanna. I still don’t know how we make this work. The only thing I do know is that I’m done being an idiot. I will do whatever it takes to figure this out with the woman I love more than life itself.