Page 43 of Wrecked on the Mountain (Stone River Mountain #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Brooke

I'm staring at the departure doors of the airport like they might disappear if I blink.

The hot chocolate Piper insisted on grabbing from Betty's café before she leaves sits untouched between us, steam curling up from our mugs like loitering question marks.

My purple travel mug. The one Jamie gave me in that brown paper bag in my first week here. The one that was so thoughtful, so out of character for anything I had ever received from anyone before, but now looking back… changed everything.

"You know," Piper says quietly, studying my profile from the front seat of my car that sits idle in the parking bay. "Watching you this weekend... you're not the same person who left Chicago."

I laugh and shake my head. "I know. I was a wreck when I lost Tyler. Poor kid."

"I know you were. That's why I helped nudge you toward this position." She shifts in her seat, designer coat rustling against the leather like a symbol of the life she's going back to. "And look what you found."

Jamie's words from yesterday at the waterfall ring in my ears. I'm coming with you.

The way he looked at me when he said he'd follow me to Chicago, like nothing else in the world mattered except keeping us together. Not his family. Not the mountain that shaped him. Not the community that depends on him for their safety.

Just me.

My throat tightens thinking about how quickly he offered to sacrifice everything.

The man who bleeds Stone River Mountain, who built his entire identity around protecting this place and these people, ready to trade it all for a cramped Chicago apartment and a life that would slowly suffocate his wild, mountain soul.

He means it though. The thought should make me happy. Instead, it terrifies me.

Because I know what happens when someone gives up their entire world for love. I watched my father do it. Choosing treatments that kept him alive longer but stole his strength, his peace, his dignity. All for me.

"I don't know what to do, Piper. Jamie said he'll come with me, but I can't be the person who rips the soul out of this community. He belongs here. His family, his team, everything that makes him who he is… it's all here."

"Listen to yourself, Brooke."

"What do you mean?"

"You just said 'this community.' When did their problems become yours?"

"I know, babe. But even when I got home yesterday, Jamie was already making calls to Chicago departments, researching apartments—"

I stop mid-sentence, my words hanging in the cold air because of the look on my best friend's face.

"What?"

Piper raises an eyebrow, smirking. "When you got home ? Brooke, you've said that word six times in the last ten minutes."

My heart stops.

"What word?"

"Home. You keep saying 'home' when you talk about Stone River." She does enthusiastic air quotes to emphasize her point. "Your cabin, your team, your community. When did that happen, Brooke? When did Chicago stop being home?"

I stare at her, my mind reeling. She's right. When did I stop saying "the rental cabin" and start saying "my cabin"? When did Mountain Rescue become "my team" instead of "the temporary job to take a load off"?

When did Jamie stop being my boss and become the man I can't imagine living without?

"Piper—"

"You're glowing," she continues, her voice gentle but insistent.

"In Chicago, you were brilliant, dedicated, exhausted.

Here? You're alive . You laugh at everything.

You talk about your neighbors like family.

You get excited about snowmobile maintenance and weird eating contests that I don't completely understand yet. "

"That's just—"

"Just what? Just temporary? Brooke, you've built a life here. A real life. Not just a career, not just survival mode. A life. With people who care about you, work that fulfills you, and a man who looks at you like long lost treasure."

I think about last night after we got home from the waterfall. Making love to Jamie before I fell asleep in his arms felt different somehow. Desperate. Like we were both trying to memorize each other before everything changed.

Like goodbye.

But what if it doesn't have to be goodbye to anything?

"The Head of Trauma position is everything I've worked for," I whisper.

"Is it? Or is it everything you thought you were supposed to work for?"

It's like my heart shatters in my chest. Like that promise I made is about to be broken forever.

"I promised my father—"

"Your father wanted you to be happy, Brooke. He would be so proud that you save lives every day, yes, but he also wanted you to have a life worth living. You told me that yourself, remember? The night before you left Chicago?"

I did say that. Dad always said real strength comes from helping others, not sacrificing yourself for them.

"You're saving lives here too," Piper continues. "Maybe not as many as you would in a Level One trauma center, but you're saving them in a way that doesn't destroy you in the process. And maybe that's what your dad really wanted… for you to find a way to honor his memory without losing yourself."

I look at Piper, sitting there in her perfectly tailored coat and designer luggage, everything about her screaming sophisticated city life. Everything I thought I wanted to be.

But I don't want to be her anymore.

I want to be me. The me I've become here, in this place that healed my heart and gave me a future I never knew I wanted.

"I need to go," I say suddenly, my decision crystallizing like ice forming on the windshield.

"To Chicago?"

"No." I lean over and kiss her cheek quickly. "Get out."

Piper fumbles with the hot chocolate I shove in her hands. I reach across and pop the door handle so the door swings open onto the sidewalk.

"Brooke, what are—"

"I said get out! I'll text you… just GO!"

I slam the car into drive before her door's even fully closed, my travel mug abandoned on the passenger seat as Piper stumbles backward.

Her designer suitcase topples sideways onto the curb, and her jaw drops in that perfect O-shape that would normally make me laugh if my heart wasn't thundering against my ribs right now.

Every cell in my body vibrates with certainty.

The tires screech like banshees as I peel out of the parking bay, leaving rubber marks that would make Jamie driver proud.

In my rearview mirror, Piper stands there with her arms thrown up in the air, her mouth still hanging open in shock. Her hair whips around her face as my exhaust fumes probably just ruined her designer coat.

I can't stop laughing.

Because I'm doing it. I'm actually doing it.

Eventually the laughter dies in my throat as I pull into the Mountain Rescue station parking lot.

I know what I want. I know where I belong.

The adrenaline that carried me through my dramatic exit from the airport now propels me forward. I slam the truck door and march toward the entrance, my boots echoing against the timber steps like gunshots.

Martha's cheerful voice greets me the moment I burst through the front doors. "Dr. Shields! Good morning, dear. I didn't know you were working today."

"Where's Jamie?" I interrupt, barely slowing down as I storm past her ultra-pristine desk with its fresh mountain flower arrangement and that ridiculously expensive coffee setup.

She shoots out of her chair, suddenly realizing that I'm not slowing down for our usual morning catch up.

"Wait! He's on an important call!" Martha calls after me, her voice rising in alarm. "Dr. Shields, you really shouldn't—"

I'm already past the reception area, past the operations room where Knox and Chase look up from their computers with matching expressions of fascination. Their not-so-subtle gossiping about whatever's had Jamie on mysterious phone calls all morning will have to wait.

I don't knock.

Jamie's office door flies open under my palm, and there he is—broad shoulders hunched over his phone, one hand running through his dark hair in obvious frustration. His voice carries that crisp military authority that makes my knees weak under normal circumstances.

But not now.

"—understand this is effective immediately. I'll submit the formal paperwork by—"

My palms slam on Jamie's desk with a crack that reverberates through the room like thunder.

This desk. This desk.

The memory of being bent over this very surface floods back. Jamie's hands claiming every inch of me that day, his voice rough with possession and filthy demands as he made me his for the very first time.

I'd never felt so alive before.

The way he'd commanded my surrender with nothing but his presence, that intoxicating blend of military authority and mountain man strength that no Chicago surgeon or businessman had ever possessed.

The desk where I'd discovered what it meant to be completely, utterly wrecked by someone like him.

Jamie's phone clatters to the floor as his eyes snap to mine, wide with shock.

"What the hell are you—"

"I'm staying." The words explode out of me. "I don't want the job. I don't want Chicago. I want—"

Jamie doesn't move for a long moment, his broad chest rising and falling as quickly as mine. God, just looking at him now… how could I ever leave? The man is built like he was carved from the mountain itself.

Slowly, he covers the phone's mouthpiece. "Brooke... what are you talking about?! I just resigned."

"You what?!"

"This morning." His face cycles through relief, panic, and something that looks suspiciously like terror. "First thing after I got here, I told the board I'm moving to Chicago. I was just on the phone to—"

"YOU RESIGNED?!" My voice probably carries all the way to Bear Paw Café. "You absolute MORON! I just turned down my dream job!"

Jamie stares at me for exactly three seconds before frantically pressing buttons on his phone. "Hold on—no, wait—don't process anything yet. I need to—"

"Striker?" The voice on the other end sounds confused. "You're breaking up."