Page 23 of Wrecked on the Mountain (Stone River Mountain #2)

Chapter Thirteen

Brooke

I’m trying to read about advanced medical protocols while my brain feels like it’s been pureed in a NutriBullet.

The words on the page are blurry hieroglyphics, and I’ve reread the same paragraph on hemorrhage control so many times I might actually qualify as an honorary blood clot.

My head pounds behind my eyes in a slow, merciless rhythm, and the soft jazz Piper recommended is only making it worse. Each saxophone trill feels like a personal attack on my brainstem my head is killing me so bad.

This is ridiculous.

I slam the textbook shut and collapse back against a mountain of throw pillows I’ve constructed on the couch like some kind of emotional fortress.

The oversized sweatshirt I pulled on after my ice-cold shower is slipping off one shoulder, and my fluffy pink robe is cinched around me like it’s trying to hold me together.

The peppermint diffuser in the corner puffs out another cloud of minty-sweet steam, and it should be helping, but all I can think about is how Jamie smells exactly like this. Like peppermint and trees and pure sin wrapped in thermal cotton.

Don’t think about Jamie.

Too late. He’s carved into my brain like initials in a tree trunk.

The last three days have been an absolute dream.

Not just the sex, but everything in between.

The way he brought me coffee this morning with that gorgeously sleepy smile.

The way he kissed my forehead before leaving for the station like we’d been doing this for years.

The fact that he changed his name in my phone to Mountain Daddy and pretended like it wasn’t even a thing.

I’m falling for him.

Hard. Fast. Like a mountain avalanche of feelings I was not prepared to handle.

And it scares the ever-loving hell out of me.

I press the heels of my palms against my eyes and groan.

This wasn't supposed to happen . This was supposed to be my quiet season. My reset. Three months of solitude, reflection, and maybe finding my joy in being a doctor again.

Not… whatever this is .

Falling for the emotionally constipated mountain man who can make me come with nothing more than a well-timed look and a command to bend over his desk was not part of the plan.

I groan at myself, but the sound of a soft knock on my door makes me jump, spilling lukewarm tea all over my lap.

"Shit," I mutter, scrambling for the dish towel I left on the coffee table.

Another knock, this one more insistent.

I glance at the clock: 10:47 PM. Who the hell is knocking on my door at almost eleven at night in Stone River Mountain?

I peek through the window and my heart does something acrobatic and completely inappropriate when I see Jamie's truck in my driveway, headlights still on, engine running.

Shit. What is he doing here? Am I in trouble because I didn't tell him I left work? Chase promised he would cover for me!

I rush to the mirror. Messy bun, no makeup, sweatshirt now stained with tea, and eyes that say “please take me to urgent care.”

Perfect.

I crack open the door, heart thudding for reasons that have nothing to do with my headache.

“Jamie,” I say, my voice hoarse.

His eyes scan my face like he’s cataloging symptoms.

"You look like shit," he says gently. “You okay?”

“Gee, thanks.”

Jamie pushes past me without invitation, and my traitorous body does this little flush of heat that starts in my chest and spreads all through my body.

Cut that out, I command my hormones.

They ignore me completely, because apparently even with a migraine, Jamie Striker in my living space is enough to make me wet.

To be fair, he makes it hard not to. He looks good . His usual dark jeans, a fitted thermal shirt that clings to every delicious muscle, and his hair slightly mussed like he's been running his hands through it all day.

But it's what he's holding that makes my chest tight.

A brown paper bag from Bear Paw Café, a pharmacy bag, and what appears to be a small heating pad still in its packaging.

"Jamie," I start, suddenly self-conscious about my appearance. "What are you—"

"Chase said you weren't feeling well," he interrupts, his blue eyes scanning my face with the kind of intensity usually reserved for mountain rescue evaluations. "Are you okay?"

"I said I had a headache, not meningitis."

"You say that," he says, immediately taking over my kitchen as he pulls out the contents from the brown bag. "But I've got reinforcements. Two kinds of soup."

“Soup?” I eye the brown bag as he opens it, pulling out not one but two steaming containers. The smell wafts up instantly. It's a super rich and salty chicken broth, the other a sweet tomato basil with a hint of garlic.

My stomach growls.

“Chicken noodle and tomato basil,” he says. “Betty told me one of them is magical healing. But then Etta and Mabel started arguing about which one it was, and I panicked.”

I blink at him. “So… you brought both.”

“Obviously,” he says, like I’m the one being unreasonable. “Couldn’t risk bringing the wrong cure.”

He opens a drawer, grabs one of my bowls, and starts ladling soup with the care of a battlefield medic.

“Jamie, I said I had a headache. Not that I was dying.”

“I know,” he replies, setting down a spoon. “But there’s also this.”

He arranges a collection of headache remedies on my counter. Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, some fancy migraine medication that's surely prescription-only.

"Um. Okay. I work in a hospital, Jamie Striker, but right now I'm a little concerned you robbed a pharmacy."

"Doc Greene owed me a favor," he says with a shrug that suggests this kind of favor-calling is perfectly normal around here. "Said she'd rather overprescribe than have you suffering."

He's also unpacked the small lavender heating pad, the kind you warm in the microwave, and found a tin of some kind of balm in amongst all the stuff laid out before my eyes.

"This is peppermint temple rub," he explains, holding up the tiny metal tin. "Mom swears by it. And I'll heat up the pad for your neck, in case it's workplace induced tension."

I bite my lip, thinking about a very different kind of workplace tension.

Maybe Jamie bending me over his desk had something to do with this… headache. His strong hands gripping my hips, the delicious sting of his palm against my ass…

Nah. That's the kind of workplace induced tension I could definitely learn to live with.

I stare at him, at this collection of thoughtful remedies he's gathered, and something cracks open in my chest.

"So you immediately rushed over with soup and medicine because...?"

"Because that's what you do," he says simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "When someone you..." He pauses, jaw working like he's chewing on words he's not ready to say. "When someone on your team isn't feeling well, you check on them."

My heart does that acrobatic thing again, but I force myself to focus on the pharmacy bag he's unpacking.

"You didn't have to do this," I whisper.

"Yeah, I did." His voice is gruff as he brushes a lock of hair away from my face, his fingers lingering a second too long. “How is it? Still pounding?”

"It's..." I start to give him the polite lie, the "it's fine" that I've been giving everyone for months. But something about the way he's looking at me, like my pain actually matters to him, makes the truth spill out instead. "Actually pretty awful. But I don't think it's entirely physical."

He frowns and grabs my hand, leading me over to the living room. "What do you mean?"

I sink onto my couch, suddenly exhausted by the effort of pretending I'm fine when I'm not. Jamie follows, settling beside me with careful distance, like he's afraid I might break if he sits too close.

"I mean," I say, curling my legs under me, "I think my brain is tired."

"From what?"

I gesture vaguely around the cabin, toward the now-cold tea, the discarded textbook, the chaos inside me. “This. You. The entire town. All of it.”

Jamie's eyes narrow, and I can see him shifting into protective mode. "Did someone say something to you? Do something?"

"No, God, no." I shake my head quickly. "The opposite, actually. Everyone's been amazing. Too amazing."

"Okay then. I'm not following."

I take a breath, trying to find words for feelings I've never had to articulate before.

"I dunno. Maybe I've never had time to just... sit. To enjoy things. To let myself want something that isn't about work. Or healing. Or fixing someone."

I point to the medical textbook abandoned on my coffee table when the words wouldn't stop spinning.

"I was trying to study tonight, and I couldn't focus because all I could think about was this morning. How you brought me coffee. How you kissed my forehead like we've known each other for years instead of days."

Jamie’s face softens. The tension in his shoulders eases, and something warmer moves in to take its place.

"I'm scared," I admit quietly. "Because the last three days have been the best I can remember since I was nine years old. And Jamie… I don't know what to do with that."

He doesn’t rush in with solutions or platitudes. He just looks at me and listens.

"What are you scared of exactly?" he asks, voice gentle.

"That I'm going to want to stay," I whisper. "That I'm going to want this life more than the life I spent fifteen years building. That I'm going to fall for you so hard it changes everything."

I pick at the fraying edge of my sleeve, avoiding his gaze. Jamie's quiet for a long moment, and I can see him processing what I've said.

"Would that be so terrible?" he asks finally. "Wanting to stay?"

I look at him, this man who just barged into my cabin with soup, painkillers, and a lavender heating pad like it was his job to fix me, and the answer is too obvious to ignore.

“No,” I whisper. “That’s the part that scares me.”

He reaches out, his big hand cupping my cheek, thumb brushing across my skin with devastating gentleness.

"Your head still hurt?" he asks.

"A little."

"Come here."