Page 125 of Ten Mountain Men

I can’t love them. I can’t love them this fast. I won’t be my Mother. I can’t…

But Mother runs away at the first sign of trouble, pushes the men who love her away, and that’s the opposite of what I’m doing. I’m not running away from the trouble. I’m runningtowardit. I’m going to fix this. Dammit, I have to.

“Ranger, please!” I beg, my voice breaking as I get close enough to see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fists are clenched at his sides. “I love him, but I love you too!”

The words spill out of me before I can even stop them. I’m not sure how he’ll take it, but it’s the truth.

Ranger stops. His whole body goes still, and I nearly collide with him, the momentum of my run barely coming to a halt before I’m right there in front of him, my lungs feeling like they’re about to explode in my chest, with my heart soon to follow.

He turns, slowly, the pain on his face morphing into disbelief and then downright shock. “You love us?”

I’m downright shocked myself.

I stand before him, physically naked and emotionally bare.

I swallow hard, my chest heaving as I gasp for breath. “I think do,” I whisper.

He reaches out, pushing the hair off my face, so gentle, so tender, so…loving. “Love isn’t something you think you do, Goldie. It’s something you know. Right here.”

He presses that big hand right above my wildly banging heart.

And I do know it.

It’s impossible, it’s crazy, it’s unbelievable, and it’s fucking bizarre, but…

“I do love all of you. You, Buck, Rusty, Nash…everyone.” I feel like I’m living inside some kind of bizarre fever dream as I say the words, but I’m telling my truth. I love them all, each of them in different ways, but it’s real, and deep, and overwhelming.

Ranger shakes his head, taking a step back. His gaze is locked on mine, and for a moment, I see the spinning tornado of emotions flickering behind his eyes—hurt, anger, confusion. But beneath it all, there’s something else. Something that looks a lot like hope. “But you gotta leave in two weeks. How can you love us and leave us?”

How indeed?

“I guess…I guess, I mean, Buck said the whole love thing isn’t in the cards for you. Relationships, dating, that it’s not for men like you. So…no matter how I feel…why wouldn’t I leave?”

“Buck’s still smartin’ something fierce over Susie May, firecracker,” Ash says from behind us. “That’s probably why he said that. But things change.”

I nod, looking from Ash to Ranger and back again. Things change. That might just be the truest statement ever made. After all, it hasn’t been a week since I told Lynx I don’t have a boyfriend because relationships are messy. Because love is messy. I believed there was one perfect man out there for me and we’d have perfect sex and then a perfect relationship. All along I was believing that, and how could there have been one perfect man out there for me, when the Björnsson brothers exist?

I hits me like a strike of lighting that I could live with some mess—hell, I might welcome some mess, both literal mess and emotional mess—if it’s because I’m living with them.

“What Ash is trying to say, darlin’,” Ranger says. “And I’m pretty sure I can speak for all of the others, well, except Luke, but…nine out of ten ain’t bad, right? We all love you too, Rose-Golde Locke.”

“You love me?” I ask Ranger. “You…love me?”

“Ranger wouldn’t ever lie, firecracker, about anything, but especially not something like this,” Ash says as Ranger nods. And when it comes to something like this, I wouldn’t either. I love you too. I love you so much, Goldie.”

I glance back at Ash but before I can respond, Ranger’s arms are around my waist, hoisting me off my feet. I gasp, but it’s quickly lost in the way he holds me—so sure, so strong. His hands slip to my hips, steadying me as he pulls me close, and suddenly all I can focus on is the heat between us. He’s so much taller than me, but up here, with his arms wrapped around me and my legs wrapped around him, we’re on the same level, eye to eye, face to face.

He looks into my eyes for a moment, his gaze soft and full of something I wouldn’t have been able to describe earlier in the day but now I can definitely put a name to. This man is looking at me with love.

“You mean everything to us already, Goldie,” he whispers, his voice low and rough. And then his lips are on mine.

The kiss is soft at first, tentative, as if he doesn’t want to unleash all the emotions he’s feeling on me at once. But oh, sweet Lord, I feel it. My hands instinctively go to his chest, grabbing onto his shirt as if it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to the mountain, keeping me from floating, light and happy up into the sky, to glow amongst the stars and even brighter. His lips take mine with a kind of urgency that speaks volumes—like he’s been holding this in for so damn long, entire lifetimes, and can’t wait another second to show me how much he cares.

He tastes like the wilderness itself—like pine and smoke and something that’s all Ranger. Like something that’s all mine.

When he finally pulls away, the wind is knocked out of me, my head spinning. He doesn’t let me go right away, though. Instead, he presses his forehead against mine, his eyes still closed, like he’s savoring the moment.

Before I can even begin to recover, he passes me to Ash like I’m something sacred, but also like sharing me with Ash is something that feels completely natural to do.

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