Page 27 of Trapped with the Forest Ranger (Angel’s Peak #5)

I stand at the gate, backpack biting into my shoulders, camera case clutched like it might anchor me to something solid. Like it might stop me from unraveling.

My body still aches in the most decadent, savage ways. My body is a map of him.

Of Us.

Bruises bloom across my hips like love notes in violet and gold, his beard left my thighs tender and flushed, and every shift of my weight awakens the soreness he carved into me.

My hips are sore from how hard he held me. My thighs tremble with the ghosts of his hands, the rasp of his beard, the way his mouth dragged over my skin like he was memorizing the taste of goodbye.

I still feel the way his hand flattened across my skin, grounding me.

And lower—where he claimed me so fiercely—I ache. Still slick with the memory of him. Still swollen from being taken, again and again, until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

I shift again, thighs pressed together, and it hits—the pulse. The slow, throbbing reminder that I was his. That I am his, even as I board this plane and leave him behind.

God, I didn’t expect it to feel like this. Like grief and glory braided together. Like walking away from fire and into shadow.

Some stupid part of me—hopeful, delusional—thought he might come. Thought maybe I’d turn and see him at the end of the corridor, arms crossed, flannel shirt open at the throat, eyes burning with the kind of need that makes men forget their reasons and chase what they want.

But he’s not here.

Just ticketed passengers with suitcases and cell phones, calling out to bored children or texting people who are waiting for them on the other side.

No one is watching me with reverence. No one is imagining my skin under their hands. No one here will miss me like he will.

His voice echoes inside me—gravel and warmth, pain and purpose—all tangled into the words he whispered against my hair as sunlight slid across the cabin floor.

He lives in my bones now. That final command, murmured into my hair as the sun crept across the floor of his cabin, painting us both in honey and farewell:

“Go. And come back to me whole.”

I choke on the way it echoes inside me.

Fierce. Final. Unshakable.

The boarding call crackles overhead. Final call for Sydney.

I should move. Instead, I breathe.

My feet don’t obey. Not at first. Because leaving doesn’t feel triumphant—it feels like peeling off skin. Like walking away from warmth into an endless wind.

Still, I do what he told me .

I shoulder my bag. Step forward. Take my place in line.

Sometimes love isn’t about staying.

Sometimes love is letting go… and trusting what comes back.

Inside, the plane is freezing. A frigid, sterile cold, different from the mountain wind. It creeps through steel and fiberglass and into my spine, but it doesn’t numb me. Nothing could—not after the way he touched me. Not after the way he made me feel.

I sink into my seat, tugging my hoodie over my head. I close my eyes and pretend I’m breathing him in—pine, smoke, sweat, sex.

Once we’re in the air, I keep my window shades down. I feel the vastness of the sky just beyond them and the distance stretching between me and the only man who’s ever seen me, not just with eyes, but with soul-deep certainty. I don’t have to see it to make it feel real.

The air in the cabin smells like recycled nothing, but I swear I can still catch pine sap and firewood, and the scent of his flannel tangled in my hair.

I press my forehead to the window and breathe.

Australia hits like a punch to the senses.

Jet lag clings to me like a second skin. The air in Sydney is thick and hot, tinged with eucalyptus, dust, and a faint metallic scent in the soil.

The sun is relentless. The heat has teeth, and the humidity crawls along my skin like invisible fingers.

Everything feels louder here—the calls of magpies echoing like laughter, car horns sharper and more urgent, cicadas drone like static turned up too loud, and even the rustle of the leaves sounds like whispers I can’t quite decipher.

The colors here are all wrong and utterly perfect—deep rusts, sun-bleached greens, birds in shades that belong in paintings, not real life. It’s a photographer’s dream, but I can’t enjoy it.

The first days are a blur. Jet lag clings to me. I hike through scrubland with my camera strapped across my chest like armor. The locals are kind but distant.

I don’t blame them—I’m brittle. Quiet.

Distant in ways I don’t yet have a language for.

But I’m shooting. Constantly.

And something is different.

I can’t describe it, except to say the work flows.

My hands are steady. My eye is clear. There’s a sharpness in how I frame each shot—a rawness I couldn’t access before.

Everything inside me is cracked open and pouring out into the lens. Shaping each shot into magic.

I send in my first batch of photos to my editor.

The email pings two hours later: “These are phenomenal. Are you possessed?”

I smile.

No. Not possessed.

Caleb and I speak when we can. Time zones and terrain conspire against us, but when his name lights up my screen, it’s like there’s breath in my lungs again.

The first time he calls, I’m crouched in the shadow of a bluff, camera balanced on my knee, waiting for a flock of galahs to burst into flight. My phone buzzes, the screen lights up with his name, and I forget how to breathe.

"Hey," I whisper, throat raw with longing.

"Hi, sweetheart." His voice is low and warm, a velvet rasp that slides over every frayed edge inside me. "You all right?"

The question is simple. The answer is not.

I swallow. "I don’t know. Everything smells like salt and sunshine, and I hate how much I wish it smelled like smoke and pine. "

He’s quiet for a beat. Then, "What do you see?"

I glance through the lens. "A hundred pink birds about to take flight. The sky’s gold. And I’m aching for you."

His inhale is sharp. "I knew you'd make something beautiful out there. But fuck, I miss you."

"Say it again."

He doesn't ask what I mean. "I miss you. I think about you every damn night. About that look in your eyes when you kneel for me and how you gasp when I make you come."

My thighs clench. I press my lips together to keep quiet. There are people nearby.

He chuckles. Low. Dirty. "You wet for me already?"

"Always."

"Good. Stay wet. Remember exactly how it felt when I told you what to do. When I bent you over and?—"

The call drops. Static. Then silence.

I stare at the blank screen. My heart clenches.

But I’m smiling. Because even that— especially that—is more than I ever thought I’d have.

Sometimes the calls are brief. Just a few seconds of his voice and a shitty connection before it drops. Sometimes they’re long, filled with stories, longing, and heat.

Once, he says, “Tell me what you’re wearing.”

And I do.

Another time, I ask what he sees out the cabin window.

He says, “That boulder.”

I press my thighs together and close my eyes.

?

Weeks pass, then months. The land imprints itself on me slowly, like a lover with rough hands. Dust settles into my boots. The sun peels my shoulders raw. The wind carries stories I don’t understand, but I hear its rhythm.

I wake before dawn, hike until my calves scream, crouch behind boulders, or cling to tree limbs, all to get the perfect shot. The camera becomes my voice, and in the still moments between clicks, I think about Caleb. About the weight of his hand. The gravity of his voice.

And the love I didn’t know I could have.

The ache in my chest doesn’t fade, but it becomes something I carry like my camera—ever-present, always ready.

I send in a portfolio. My editor calls the next day.

“Harper, these are... Jesus. These are national feature-level. What the hell happened to you out there?”

I lean against the tent pole and look at the sky.

“I remembered who I am.”

"Well, National Geographic agrees." My editor practically screams. “They confirmed the feature. You’ve outdone yourself.”

I should be ecstatic. And I am—part of me. But there’s this empty place inside me, and it pulses with one name.

“I’ve got another offer," my editor says. "Intimate series. Local angles. Interviews, photojournalism. They want you.”

“I’m not staying in Australia,” I say flatly.

“It’s not in Australia.”

I still. The silence between us stretches.

“It’s in Colorado,” he continues. “Angel’s Peak. It’s about conservation. Rangers. Poaching prevention. Threatened species. Real heart stuff. Your kind of story.”

"Angel’s Peak?" My pulse trips. My breath leaves me. He keeps talking, but I barely hear him. My heartbeat is in my throat. “Did you say Angel’s Peak?”

“Yeah. Real earthy, intimate stuff. I thought of you immediately. You’re already familiar with the area.”

I close my eyes and remember the heat of Caleb’s body, the grip of his hands, the sound of his voice whispering, Come back to me.

Angel’s Peak. The mountains. The forest.

Caleb

I look down at my hands—callused, sun-darkened, strong .

He was right all along. If I stayed… I never would have accomplished this: a feature article in National Geographic. I never would’ve known what I was capable of. I would’ve regretted not taking the challenge.

And it’s time.

I’m ready to go home.