Page 44 of Saved By the Mountain Man

I sipped my whiskey. “Come on, we both know that’s not how it works up here. Being passive is what will kill ya in this weather. Snow’s late, and that worries me. It might be piling up for a banger later.”

Bear watched me without commenting on the statement I’d made about the weather.

“What?” I finally asked.

“How’s Rae doing?”

I hesitated. “Fine, as far as I can tell.”

“You see her often enough to be able to tell.”

I sighed. “Yeah, well. I can’t stay away. She does something to me.”

Bear nodded. “And you’re still scared of yourself.”

“How can I not be? I can’t do to her again what I did before. I don’t think either of us will survive that. Besides, now that the past is so far in the past… I’m starting to think that maybe, just maybe, we could start over. Build a life without all that bullshit, you know?”

Bear studied me. “Do you think you can do that?”

“Start a new life?”

“Leave the past in the past.”

I shook my head. “It’s been years.”

“And yet, you’re still having nightmares about it like it happened yesterday.”

I sat back with a groan. “That doesn’t mean that it will happen again.”

“If you can’t forgive yourself for the past, you’re never going to be able to build a future.”

“Whiskey makes you deep, Bear,” I said. “Like a fucking fortune cookie.”

Bear chuckled. “I’m just sharing my thoughts with you.”

I grinned, and we sat together, drinking whiskey and staring into the fire. My past came back at me, hitting me like a bus. Maybe it was the alcohol loosening the memories. Maybe it was the fact that Bear was right. If I didn’t let go, how could I start over?

I’d worked for a man named Vito, a crime boss with a reputation for ruthlessness. No mercy, killing was his game, and even though I didn’t always agree with his methods, I understood my place in that world. I was good at what I did, and I’d worked my way up in the ranks until I was Vito’s right-hand man.

My job was simple: set up meetings, make connections, keep things running smoothly. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t need to know the details.

“How am I supposed to forget?” I asked Bear.

“You can’t forget,” he said. “But you can forgive.”

I shook my head. “Those are mutually exclusive.”

One night, everything had changed. I’d found out, too late, that one of the meetings I’d arranged was a setup for a hit. A family, innocent people, had been caught in the crossfire.

A child had died.

The guilt was overwhelming, suffocating. I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I had played a part in their deaths.

I was as good as a killer with their blood on my hands. It didn’t matter that Vito was the one who’d asked me to arrange the meeting, or that one of his other henchmen had actually done the killing.

It didn’t matter that I hadn’t known what it would come to.

If it hadn’t been for me, they would still be alive, and that made me a killer, a person who deserved to be punished forever for what I’d done.

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