Page 39 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

They both turn to me.

“Honest how?” Dax demands, a hint of defensiveness in his voice.

“Honest about why we’re doing this,” I reply. Taking a deep breath, I realize that this is the first time I’ve had to second-guess my brothers—but God knows, now more than ever, we need to be able to be honest with each other.

“Do you have feelings for Charli?”

The words hang in the air between the three of us. For a moment, I think I’ve overstepped, sure that it’s just my worry about her that has me feeling this way. But, slowly, after a long pause, Chuck nods.

“Yeah,” he admits. “Yeah, I do. I can’t speak for Dax, but we’ve had a few…moments together these last couple of weeks. I really like her. And I don’t want anything to happen to her—I know I couldn’t live with myself.”

I turn to Dax. He stares at me for a second before he replies, as though not certain how I’m going to react to this, and then he nods too.

“Yeah,” he echoes, finally. “We…we slept together last night, for the first time. I was trying to ignore it for so long, but I—I’m attracted to her. Not just her body, I mean. She’s…she gets it. She gets me.”

That’s as close as I’ll get to an admission of love from Dax, and I know it. He’s falling for her. He might not want to say the words out loud, but it’s written all over his face, just how much he likes her, how much he wants her to be safe.

“And you?” Chuck presses. “I know you guys were involved before?—”

“Yeah, I still love her,” I reply without a second thought. I don’t even have to consider my answer to that question. “I’ve loved her since we—since I left. I just didn’t want to bring her down with me. But now…now, I feel like I can actually help her. I don’t want to pass up that chance, you know?”

The three of us stand in silence for a moment, taking in the enormity of the confessions that we’ve just made. Because there’s no taking it back now. We’ve said it. We all care about her, more deeply that we could have ever expected. We’re all falling for her, at one stage of love or another, for this woman who has come crashing into our lives.

I thought I would feel jealous, but I don’t. I’ve shared everything with my brothers my whole life. This? This is just an extension of that. It makes sense that they’d fall for the same woman I did, that they’d see the same things in her I can.

And I know that, whatever we’re up against, there’s nobody I’d rather have by my side than my brothers. They’re skilled, they’re trained, and they’re dedicated—if we’re going to find some way to take this motherfucker down, then it’s going to be together, I’m sure of that.

“Neither do I,” Chuck agrees.

“So, we’re in this together?” I look between the two of them. This is it, the last chance they have to back out before everything changes—the last chance to say no, to tell me they don’t want a thing to do with everything that’s about to unfold.

But they don’t break eye contact for a second. No, instead, they both nod silently. I glance toward the bedroom door, where Charli is still sleeping—I almost wish she was here to listen to this, to hear that we’re all on her side for whatever comes next.

But the most important thing isn’t telling her how we feel. It’s showing her. And the best way we can do that is by bringing her psycho ex down for good.

No matter what it takes.

18

CHUCK

I lookthis way and that along the road, ears pricked for any sound, but there’s nothing. Dead silence. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck pricking up, waiting for something, anything to happen, but just like the rest of this evening, all I can hear is quiet in every direction.

I pull my walkie-talkie from my pocket and buzz in to Callum and Dax.

“You guys alright?”

“Fine,” Dax fires back, and Callum confirms the same thing a second later.

“Any sign of anyone?” I ask.

“Nothing yet.”

“Yeah, nothing,” Dax agrees.

I grimace. I know patience is the name of the game here—we can’t lose hope just because things haven’t gone exactly as they were meant to within the first couple days of us laying out these traps. But the longer this goes on, the more I start to wonder ifthey’ve found some other way to pull this off, some way to catch us off guard before we can get our bearings.

I hook the walkie-talkie back over the edge of my jeans, and pull back among the trees. I’ve been crouching out here for a few hours now, keeping watch on the trap we’ve set over the roads—a run of spikes, small enough that you can’t see them from inside a car, but lethal to the rubber on their tires. Dax and Callum are positioned at the other lanes that lead into the forest—we’ve got to cover all our bases. Any approach they take, we need to be ready to shut them down.

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