Page 4 of Rugged Mountain Man (Cold Mountain Nights #1)

Chapter four

Cormac

“Shit,” I grumbled, staring at the tree in dismay. That was going to slow us down. “I have a chainsaw in the back. I’ll cut a path. Stay here.”

I shoved my door open and snow filtered into the car, melting in the blasting heat.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Mika called after me.

“Keep the engine running,” I replied. “I don’t want you wandering around out here in the storm.”

Retrieving my chainsaw, it took a few tries with the pull cord to get it going in the cold. But it finally revved to life and I set to work on the tree. The wind and snow lowered visibility and made my footing treacherous.

I carved off the broken, jagged branches to reach the thick tree trunk. My body temperature was dropping by the minute. In the cabin, I had been warm enough, but Mika still wore my coat, and there was no way in hell I would take it away from her.

Cutting into the tree trunk, sawdust sprayed across my boots, clinging to my clothes. Snow blinded me, slashing at my face. When I hit a knot in the wood, my chainsaw threatened to jam.

I wedged my boot against the wood, adjusting my stance for a better angle to dodge that knot. When my chainsaw lodged in the wood, I braced myself and yanked.

The chainsaw came free. I lost my balance, pitching back on my heels.

Pain seared through my lower leg as my chainsaw blade chewed through my jeans like a meatgrinder. Blood spilled onto the snow, garish red against the relentless white.

“ Fuck ,” I hissed, clamping my hand to the wound. It wasn’t deep, didn’t reach the bone, and it burned like fire. But the blood loss would be a major problem.

Limping back to the car, I fought to keep my breathing steady despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins. If I couldn’t stop the bleeding, I would be unconscious in a few minutes. Before that happened, I needed to make sure Mika was safe.

“Mika—” I rasped, pulling open the car door.

Her face went ghostly white at the sight of me.

“Oh my God. What happened?”

“Slipped,” I said, hauling myself into the car.

Blood smeared my hand, staining everything I touched. Damn it. Mika started to reach for me, then pulled back, looking uncertain.

Fuck, I hated doing this to her. I was supposed to protect her, not leave her to fend for herself while I passed out.

“I’m going to need your help, KitKat,” I added.

She blew out a breath of disbelief, staring at me.

“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how—”

She broke off, watching the blood that dripped from my leg, pooling on the floor of my car.

“You’re smart,” I said. “You can do this. We just need to slow the bleeding. I’ll walk you through it. I left my rucksack at the cabin, but there should be a tarp in the back we can use.”

Mika nodded and scrambled over the seats. She returned with the tarp. I grabbed her hand, squeezing it tight.

“Good girl,” I whispered, growing dizzy already.

For a split second, she recoiled at my touch, looking like she was ready to fling herself into the storm if it meant getting away from me.

Then she squeezed my hand back. Taking the tarp from her, I wrapped it around my leg.

“In the glove compartment,” I said. “There’s a satellite phone. Call my brother. He’ll come get us.”

Mika shot me a bewildered look.

“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?”

I huffed a dry, pained laugh. God, I felt so sluggish, like moving through molasses.

“Too stubborn. Besides, the sat phone is for emergencies only, and it wasn’t an emergency until now.”

Mika yanked open the glove compartment and pulled out the satellite phone. Her hands were shaking so bad that she struggled to press the ON button.

“Mika,” I whispered. “Look at me.”

Her gaze darted up to meet mine. Worry clouded her brown eyes.

“This is my fault,” she whispered.

“No, it’s not,” I said, firmly.

“But if I hadn’t—”

“I chose to get you back to town in this storm, Mika,” I said. “It was my decision and I stand by that. My cabin wasn’t built for company. And you would have been miserable, snowed in for days with a man you didn’t know.”

She said nothing, lips pressed into a tight line of chagrin.

“For the record,” I added. “I could have slipped with that chainsaw when I was alone. That would have been worse. So, I’m glad you’re here.”

Mika seemed to relax a little at that. I gave her my brother’s number and she punched it in. I sighed with relief when I heard the phone ringing on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” came Rafferty’s voice.

Mika glanced at me as she spoke.

“This is Mika Hillard. I’m with Cormac.”

Raff paused.

“What’s going on?” he replied, suspicious.

“Your brother has been hurt. He needs medical attention.”

“Damn it,” Raff grumbled. “Give me your coordinates. And tell Mac he could call for a chat once in a while, instead of stressing me out like this.”

Mika shot a confused look in my direction. I told her the coordinates of our location and she relayed them to Raff.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

Mika chewed her lower lip with concern.

“Cormac said he had an accident with a chainsaw.”

“Christ,” Raff hissed. “Please tell me he didn’t cut off his own arm or some shit.”

“No, but he’s…bleeding a lot,” Mika replied.

“Is he conscious?”

She lifted her gaze to meet mine. I nodded. Darkness pulsed at the edges of my vision, but I was holding on. Barely.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s very pale though. Please hurry.”

When Raff hung up, Mika returned the phone back into the glove compartment. She shifted in her seat to fully face me, twisting her fingers together.

“See? You’re a natural,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Handled it like a pro.”

Mika slid my coat off her shoulders and draped it over me, tucking it beneath my chin.

“You should save your strength,” she said.

“Then talk to me,” I replied. “Keep me awake.”

She opened her mouth then closed it again, surprised.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

Mika grappled to come up with a topic. I don’t know what convinced me to do it—maybe it was the shock settling into my system—but I reached out and brushed my thumb along the bruise marking her cheekbone. She didn’t flinch away from my touch this time.

Fuck, I could drown in those eyes when she stared at me like that.

“Don’t ever regret getting away from him, all right?” I said.

Mika nodded.

“The only regret I have is loving him in the first place. I should have known he could never love me back.”

I frowned.

“Why?”

She shrugged and pulled her knees up to her chest.

“Because I’ve watched everyone else fall in love, but I was always invisible. Nobody wanted me.”

“That can’t be true,” I said, trying to wrap my head around that.

“You don’t believe me?” Mika challenged with a sideways glance.

I could hear the mistrust in her voice, like she was prepared to shut down and retreat into her shell if I rejected this glimpse into her world. She needed someone to be on her side right now. And the only person she was opening up to was me.

“I meant that the right person will love you without even trying,” I countered.

She huffed and shook her head.

“Is that why you hide in a secluded cabin all alone in the woods? Because the right person loved you?”

Ouch. Brutally honest, but she had a point.

“Look at us, Cormac,” Mika went on. “We’re broken, damaged, because of the people who were supposed to love us. I don’t know about you, but I’m not really ready to put myself through that again.”

I’d been saying the same thing for the past ten years, ever since I signed the divorce papers. My life had been so thoroughly intertwined with Jaida, and it felt like half of my soul had been ripped away, leaving me walking wounded, as if I was missing a limb.

Meanwhile, she remarried to a husband who provided for her better than I ever could. She had a family, too—something she never wanted when she was with me.

Hearing Mika put into words what I’d been feeling for the past decade should have been cathartic.

Instead, I found myself fighting against it. Protests sat on the tip of my tongue, prepared to argue that no, love was still possible, despite the hell we’d been through.

Maybe I had lost hope in love for myself.

But for Mika, I still believed in it. For her sake, I wanted her to feel a love so deep, so genuine and true that she forgot the bruise she wore.

“What if you did find someone?” I prompted. “What if he loved you with every bone in his body, until his last breath?”

Mika’s gaze turned skeptical as she considered.

“I’m not an easy person to love, Cormac.”

“Bullshit.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

I shook my head, fighting to keep my thoughts clear. I could feel the hot blood seeping down my leg.

“Did he plant that idea into your head?” I continued. “The asshole who hit you.”

“Well…he just said that I made it difficult...”

“People do hard things in life all the time,” I said. “They climb mountains for the view. They run marathons for a shiny medal.”

I growled and scrubbed my hands over my face, blinking rapidly to stay awake. I was fading fast, slipping into the mire of unconsciousness.

“What makes you think someone wouldn’t be willing to fight for you?” I said, my head lolling to the side to look at her. “To wake up next to you every morning. To earn the privilege of calling you wife .”

Mika ducked her head, plucking at the cuffs of her sleeves.

“I…hadn’t thought about it like that.”

My fingers itched to touch her again, to cup her chin and tilt her head until she met my gaze.

“Someone will go the distance for you one day, Mika,” I said, my words slurring together.

And I wish to God that man could be me, I thought.