Page 87 of Jealous Lumberjack

Because if this is all I ever get—one perfect day—I’m fucking strangling every moment out of it.

Lily

Two days after the fair,we’re in the barn again.

But this time, it isn’t laughter or sweat or me squealing when he throws me across the mat.

It’s tarps and dust motes and silence as thick as molasses.

Bear hauls ropes down, coils them with the careful precision of muscle memory. I tug fabric over one corner of the ring, smoothing it flat, my chest aching like it’s already the end of something. Like I’m already saying goodbye to a new friend I barely know but deeply love.

“Do we need to put everything away?” I ask, my voice too small in the cavernous space.

His eyes move over me, slow and deliberate.

They linger on the bruises, the ones fading to dusky purples, the fresh ones blooming in shades of crimson. Forty-eight hours, and we’ve added new marks to old. Each one a bestselling story written on my skin.

“Getting too carried away. Need time to let you heal, petal,” he says finally, his voice gravel-low.

It feels like he’s saying more than those simple words.

But then… haven’t we both?

Haven’t we been saying everything with silence and sex, letting the sweat and the bruises carry the weight our mouths and hearts won’t?

I tug the tarp a little tighter, my throat burning. Because I know what I need to do. What I need to say.

I can’t stay locked here forever while a part of my past stays unresolved, no matter how much my body craves it, no matter how much my heart wants to. If I don’t face my past, it’ll hunt me down.

Brandon will hunt me down.

And worse—I can’t ask Bear to stop running, to stop letting those who hurt him win, if I’m too much of a coward to do the same.

The words swell in my chest, hot, heavy. “Knox,” I whisper, and he stills, lifting his head. “I need to tell you something. I need to go?—”

The out-of-place sound cuts me off and it takes several seconds to register what it is.

Engines.Several. Rumbling, snarling, echoing up the mountain where no one should be.

Knox’s head snaps toward the open barn doors, dark eyes flashing black.

Then another sound pierces the air.

A siren. Sharp, ugly, foreign in our woods.

My heart drops into my stomach.

Knox’s body goes rigid, then he springs like a coiled serpent.

He drops the rope in his hand, every inch of him shifting from man to beast, shoulders squared, jaw hard, the air vibrating with his growl.

“Who the fuck is stupid enough to bring that shit onto my mountain?” he snarls, already stalking toward the doors, steps like thunder. At the last moment he turns. “Stay here, petal.”

Again he’s saying more than his words. But I shake my head. “No, Bear. I won’t.”

A wave of panic drenches his face before his jaw tightens.

He nods.