Page 142 of Roughing It

Even if she’s cussing like a sailor.

There’s dirt on her cheeks and her hair is an untamed mass of waves around her head. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Then I spot the purple spreading across her chest from the neckline of her tank top under her open layers. My eyes trace what my hands can’t. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Blakely smooths my furrowed brow. “Don’t worry about me, Bear. I’m fine.”

Her lips brush against mine, and while my instincts are to sink into the kiss, the pain rises, and I have to break away.

With a worried look, she gets up and goes to the fire, poking and tending it until it flickers to life. The temperature is dropping. You can smell the cold coming. Another night out here won’t be pleasant.

My leg throbs at the thought. Forcing myself into a leaning position, I look down for the first time. Blakely did a damn fine job splinting my leg, bracing it between two branches, and fastening it with strips of soft cloth.

“It’s one of my shirts.”

“Huh?”

“The binding. I didn’t want to waste the rope.” She nibbles on her bottom lip, her nerves evident.

I nod. “Smart. Good choice.”

“Really?”

A smirk worms its way onto my lips despite the fire spreading through my body. “Hell yeah. You did so fucking good.”

Pink colors her cheeks. I love that this has her blushing. The same woman who let me lick her perfect asshole is turning red because I told her she did a good job on a splint made from aspen branches.

The praise I long to heap on her is on the tip of my tongue. To tell her how much I believe in her. How fucking strong she is. How she’s it for me. All I manage is, “Blakely, I love you.”

“I love you, too. So much. The idea of leaving?—”

“Hudson! Blakely!”

A familiar voice sounds in the distance. Blakely and I lock eyes, whatever she’s about to say gone as we hear our names shouted again.

“Blakely Bradshaw! Hudson Brooks!”

I crook a finger until she’s face to face with me. “We’ll finish this conversation once we’re safe and checked over. Agree?”

She nods and kisses me.

Shutting my eyes, I fight the needles in my throat and holler, “Bo!”

Blakely claws her way up the incline toward the road as she shouts, “Bo! Gray! We’re here!”

They volley back and forth until their words drop, replaced by two heavy sets of stamping feet I’d know anywhere—my brothers.

Bo gets to me first, concern and worry etched on his face. “Shit, man, we’ve been searching for you and Blakely for hours. Started around four this morning. The Austin guy lost his ever-loving mind when you didn’t turn up at the office, and he couldn’t get ahold of her.”

Gray joins my youngest brother, his eyes surveying the situation. “Yeah, and then you didn’t answer either, and we figured shit had gone off the rails.”

I can hear more people moving toward us. The crunching leaves and slap of hiking boots against the wet ground grow louder as a group of close to twenty people pour into the area around the Jeep.

“You were all looking for us?” Disbelief laces Blakely’s words.

No sooner than she speaks does Lynn Davis engulf her in a motherly hug, pulling a dry sweater over her head and fussing over her. The rest of the Davis family—Scott, Charli, Waverly, and Clairy, Bond and his wife Tuesday—hover around Blakely, too. Clairy follows after her mother, wrapping my girl in a tight hug, whispering something to her. Blakely’s eyes are like saucers in her face as person afterperson comes by to check on her. Griff Anderson, Dane Mendoza, Saul, Ava and her kids, and so many others from town. All out here for us.

Because this is who Trail Creek is—good people who do good things.

---