Page 19 of Forgotten Mountain Man

“Faith,” Walker murmured, close enough his breath brushed the back of my nape exposed where I’d piled my hair on my head in a horrendously messy bun because out here, being neat and perfect didn’t matter.

I nodded, soaking in one more breath of the stunning vista like I could imprint some of its untouched, brutal crispness into my skin. Then I turned my back on everything that was perfect in his world, and followed the man I’d already fallen for off his mountain knowing I’d never see any of it ever again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WALKER

I stared down the face of the mountain that looked both the same since I last used this track and had changed in all the ways that was usual for this time of year. The rain had eroded a lot of the gathered pine needle mulch, washed away a few saplings trying to garner a foothold with scant roots at this altitude.

The landslip that we had experienced when Faith first arrived at my place wasn’t the only one that we spotted, the path giving way to unstable ground under the last week of rain and deluge of water cascading down the mountainside in impromptu waterfalls and random trickles. The sight would have been stunning but deadly had we left earlier, and I was glad we waited to head down to Red Hart.

Not that we had a choice. The path would have been impassable until now. Even so, we gave the fallen rocks a large berth. But none of that was what bothered me.

What hurt was Faith’s silence that followed me from my house all the way to the halfway point I aimed for nearly six hours after we left—an hour later than I intended thanks to the argument about the boots. I figured she’d get tired fast and thatwe’d cover more ground in the morning than the afternoon. No matter how many times I helped her, praised her, or fed her, Faith kept herself to herself.

Which was nothing like the woman I thought I knew. Who I was fast falling for in the weeks she’d lived in my home. A short time where we’d been on top of each other—sometimes literally—and I’d learned a hell of a lot about her.

Rule number one: Faith had zero filter. What she thought came straight out of her mouth.

Which meant her silence was fucking unnerving.

Even I could see she was bursting to say something. But whatever Faith Somerset wanted to tell me, she kept tightly under wraps for the first time since I’d met her.

If she’d been this quiet on that first day, things might have gone very differently in my house.

Now that I knew what she tasted like when she kissed me, what she felt like when I held her or how she cried after we fucked when she thought I’d fallen asleep, I understood how rare a gift her silence was.

And what a curse.

Because those were the times that I held onto her and refused to let her go, her lithe tight body pressed to mine, silent tears collecting on my chest in tiny pools.

If she wanted to talk to me and tell me her secrets, whisper them to me as the rain fell, she would have. But she kept those too, her fears turning inward and cried herself to sleep then, too. Just as she walked in silence now.

The problem was that her secrets weren’t just eating at her.

They ate at me, too.

Finally, as I helped her haul her perfect little ass—that I knew the shape of intimately, because the feel of her was still molded into my palms from our playtime during the night before—overa shattered section of granite from a long prior rock slide, my patience died a short and sharp death.

“Spit it out, Precious,” I muttered, wrapping my hand around her hip and gave her a quick slap.

Faith let out the sweetest as fuck growl that boiled my blood. Instead of giving her the desired boost forward over the split boulder where I was supposed to be helping her, I tugged her back against me.

Her back pressed to my chest, and her ass ground against my groin, leaving me aching and hard, a state I'd been trying my damn best to avoid since we started walking hours ago.

She hadn’t whined or bitched at me once. Not when she slipped and grazed her hands when I hadn’t been watching her close enough, or when her socks got soaked crossing a stream that hadn’t been there last time I used the track. Her feet had to be covered in blisters from the boots that were far too big for her feet, but still she kept her silence, and more than that, my girl kept up with me.

I hadn’t been as impressed with another human since I saw my father take on the local bureaucrats as a twenty something. Or the month after when I walked out—or he kicked me out, depending on who you spoke to back then—and headed up the mountain after I negotiated with Red Hart for the land. Trav and Jude put in a summer’s worth of work with me for the hell of it, and to get the hell out of Trav’s dad’s hair for two months solid.

That was a short, tight list, and Faith just topped it.

“Spit what out?” she snarked at me, pushing her weight back into me before she launched forward.

“Easy, Presh.” I was ready for her, wrapping my arm around her waist and holding on tight.

Faith thrashed for a long moment, but her energy was well down, and she stopped fighting me, though her nails dug into my exposed forearm where I’d rolled my sleeves back.

“I thought you were taking me back, not holding me hostage, Mister Roan.”

---