Page 53 of Saved By the Mountain Man

“You can’t go,” I said, taking a step toward her, but she glared at me when she headed for the door, and her look was hard enough that I stopped dead in my tracks.

She pushed past me and started getting dressed, finding her clothes in the room where we’d scattered them last night.

Last night, when everything had seemed perfect.

“I didn’t plan it this way,” she said, pulling on her jeans. “You’re making it impossible to talk to you.”

“You don’t think this is a big deal?” I picked up her shirt and handed it to her. “This changes everything.”

“Yeah, it does,” she said. “But don’t worry. I won’t make this your problem.”

“Don’t do this.”

Rae looked up at me after she pulled on her socks, and straightened.

“Then what do you want me to do?” she asked. “Stay? Play happy families? You, me, and the baby in this little cabin, hiding from the world?”

I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“This wasn’t the plan,” I said, my voice raw. “This shouldn’t have happened. I never wanted to bring a child into this mess. I don’t deserve to be a father. Not after…” I couldn’t say it.

“Not after you left me?” Her voice softened, but that wasn’t what scared me half to death. What terrified me was being a father, raising a child, when I’d been responsible for the death of a family. And possibly many others without even knowing it. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t deserve this kind of life.

I didn’t deserve this kind of happiness.

“No,” I said, my voice hard. My heart turned to stone. I didn’t want Rae to think I was a monster, but that didn’t change the fact that I was.

“Right,” Rae said, thinking she knew all the answers. It felt like a stab to the gut when she pulled on her shoes and then her coat. “I think we’ve said everything we need to say. I’ll be on my way.”

She walked out of the bedroom, and a short while later, I heard the cabin door shut.

I stood in the bedroom where she’d left me, trying to process what had just happened. Rae was pregnant. We were going tohave a child. The thought filled me with terror. But her words echoed in my mind, cutting deeper than any knife.

She thought I didn’t care, that I never cared.

I couldn’t let her believe that. I couldn’t let her think that I didn’t love her, that I didn’t dream of a life with her every day I wasn’t with her. That I’d never stopped thinking about her since the moment I’d left.

Fuck the past and what happened. I needed her in my life. I couldn’t live with this void, not again.

This time, I wasn’t going to survive if I let her walk into the world without me at her side to look after her.

Not again.

I had to make things right.

I grabbed my coat and ran outside, the cold air hitting me like a slap.

The lightly falling snow had covered the ground, making it difficult to see her tracks. I followed the path to town, looking for her tracks, walking as fast as I dared so that I didn’t miss them. The tracks led to town, but then they disappeared. The path to town was clear ahead of me. She hadn’t gone that way.

What the hell?

I turned and started looking for her tracks in the snow, veering off the path and between the trees.

Her tracks wound between the trees, picking the easiest route, and I followed them. They were slowly disappearing, but if I moved as fast as she did, or faster, I could catch up to her.

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