Page 58 of Shared By the Mountain Men

I wasn’t a man who trusted people.

I used to be, though.

In a different life.

So much had changed since then.

My experiences had hardened me, like bricks in a kiln. And brick by brick, I became the man I was today. Sometimes I wished I could go back to the old me, but I was long past that. Long past changing.

At least, I thought I was.

Part of me missed being close with people. Letting them in. Showing them my true self. I’d done that a little bit with Jack and Noah. It had taken years, but now I trusted and relied on them. But they were the only ones. They were special cases. I wondered if I could ever trust anyone beyond the two of them. I doubted it.

Until Melissa appeared.

Seeing her on that trail in the mountains, tired and grimy, her ankle swelling like a balloon. She looked sad and pathetic, like a wounded deer. She needed help.

Why would I ever need to put up walls to keep someone likeherout?

The feeling wasn’t fleeting. As I saw her around town, I became more curious about her. Drawn to her in a way I couldn’t explain, in a way that still confused me. From a distance I watched Jack butt heads with her, and saw Noah getting close.

What did I want?

I had no idea. I really didn’t. But I was curious, and that was a start.

It was enough to remove a few of my bricks.

The sun was peeking above the trees when I banged on the door to the Indigo Cabin. Melissa began opening it, already shouting through the crack: “Listen, if you regret what you said last night—”

She gave a start when she saw me standing there on her porch. Who had she been expecting? Noah, or Jack?

“Oh… what are you doing here?” she stammered.

I didn’t want to ogle her, but I couldn’t help but notice Melissa. She was wearing a light blue tank top, the kind that women wore to sleep, which framed her full breasts in a way that made my cock ache. She wasn’t in just panties this time, but she still looked irresistible in a pair of baggy pajama pants.

“Get dressed,” I told her, shaking off the way her form stirred something within me. “You’ve got a via ferrata to finish.”

She let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t need to finish it.”

“Yes, you do.”

She tilted her head back to look up at me. “Why do you think you know what I need?”

Because you’ll regret it if you don’t. Because I know you can do it. Because you’re the kind of woman who stubbornly gets back up and finishes something rather than failing, even if it kills her.

“Because,” I said out loud, “you’ll be glad you did. And the view is worth it.”

She looked like she was going to say no. Like she would laugh and slam the door in my face. Coming here, preparing to open myself up to her, was a mistake.

Then she nodded slowly. “Give me five minutes.”

Melissa was silent as we drove to the climbing site. I could tell I had thrown her off; she expected me to be someone else. But was it Jack, or Noah?

Listen, if you regret what you said last night…

Had she had a fight with Noah? That seemed unlikely. Noah was the most genuine person I’d ever known, and didn’t say things he might regret later. So it was definitely Jack. Now I wondered what he had said to her. The two of them were so similar they might have been two sides of the same coin—that’s why they butted heads so much.

I wasn’t going to pry, though. I knew the value of respecting someone’s privacy, even if nobody else did.

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