Page 25 of Recurve Ridge

At the exposed cliffside amid freezing battering winds, I turned a hard right. Appearing in clear view during the full light of day was stupid and out of character. Direct line of sight opened between us and our nearest neighbor at this range, situated a decent distance for sanity’s sake.

We avoided the boundary, but Mari’s abrupt arrival changed everything. Robe’s priorities were rewired by instinct.Mypriorities. I no longer cared about invisible fence lines dividing us from the evil in plain view, intent on pushing myself harder as the memories began to flood in.

Ragged, fire-filled breaths tore at my insides, anchoring me in a beautiful dance of heartrending memory that swept over the trees, obliterating the landscape.

Crisp lake air, so distant from the mountains I now called home, froze in the still fog that hovered over the mirage of a familiar lake in the brisk morning. Near the shoreline sat a pretty blue-and-white cottage I’d built for my new wife.

The image overlaid the weak sun pushing its final rays past the ridgeline, trying to announce its presence through my phantom memories.

The air around me drifted to silence as the heavy shroud extinguished reality. My pounding steps became the single slice of Recurve Ridge I allowed to break through my trance. A quarter mile into my self-imposed torture and my breath already wheezed out of constricted lungs.

My pain offered distraction enough to leave the hellish haven I’d created, assuming life would be grand, well away from city lights. I pushed my past away and concentrated on throwing each screaming thigh muscle before the other, setting a frantic pace along the scarred stone that understood my need.

Big men were never designed to sprint. I pushed through, determined on my self-flagellation. Watching Robe carry Mari into the house unconscious was one thing. Seeing her dressed in spare clothes, speaking her mind, and healing was another. In my head, Mari settled next to another woman I’d known who spoke out like that, both girls thoughtless and so damn sharp at the same time.

I preferred my women well-rounded, their figures robust with all the lush curves as the perfect foil for my work-hardened hands. Everything about Mari was wrong. Too skinny. Too pale.

Yet she called to me.

I shared that burden with every man in the cabin. I’d seen it in Robe’s face, and Alan’s. The younger men would follow suit, and what did that make us but a group of fools panting after a woman we couldn’t touch?

Couldn’t tarnish.

Mari’s fine frame reminded me of how breakable a woman could be despite her determination to survive. Live. The traditional fairer-sex stereotype never suited me, even as a younger man. Robe had staked his claim on the woman he rescued, and despite the fact that we’d shared girls in the past, I wouldn’t cross that line.

More than a fool’s errand, the fucker would offer to share. And having her—just her touch—would break me. Hell, I’d breakherin all the ways he wouldn’t. The rest of us needed to back off until he got his head—and hers too—into the right space.

Mari’s emotional qualities shone through the plethora of bruises she collected in her flight, the sort of hook that lanced through a man’s heart and reeled him in, both as unaware of the invisible process as the other.

Her fine bone structure gave her an ethereal beauty. Not quite pixie-like or otherworldly, she displayed a rare inner tenacity all of us respected on sight. Despite the state she’d arrived in—filthy, frantic, and giving Robe hell—I had to admit she made a sexy addition to cabin life.

I knew what Robe was doing, and even hiswhy, but having her in the house with a band of not-so-honest brothers made for a terrible fucking idea. We all knew it. Alan put on his little flirty-as-fuck face that drove me up the wall, and I half expected to find Robe with a dopey-ass grin decorating his scarred mug.

My fist curled at the thought of throwing down a beating, though I never needed to use violence to coerce the men into line. The threat, it seemed, was enough. That, and Robe’s weird brand of leadership that brought damaged men into his path, me included.

And cold little killers like Alan. Cute as the stripper could be, I’d seen the lithe man dance. If he considered this good behavior while wearing his best manners, I would hate to see him at his worst. Scratch that—Ihadseen him at his worst. I watched him garotte a man, cold and emotionless, then rifle through his belongings to make it look like a robbery and walk away whistling a soft, upbeat tune that stung my blood with ice.

Not that I could blame him for his vengeance.

The man he unalived had raped two underage male strippers who wouldn’t be considered legal in any state the world round. The boys were close to Alan at the time. Despite my repulsion over the matter, our exotic dancer’s bare-faced efficiency did things to my cock that only Robe had managed before him.

I’d seen that face on one man prior, and I’d never questioned him on his methods when he was in that mood either. Each of us was collected by Robe because we filled a role, outcast from our family, society, and the law.

Mari changed that status quo the moment Robe brought her into the house.

Unable to deal with the resurgence in memories, I speared deeper into the forest. Robe wouldn’t fuss. He knew a man would take his grievance out on the well-trodden paths by his own choice of tool and return clearheaded.

For a moment I’d been grateful for the woman who’d immediately consumed me. Until she spoke and that same thoughtful tone brought me back to a past I’d long assumed I would escape.

Mari’s head of dark hair with its gentle waves and deep navy eyes reminded me of another face—one taken from me too many years prior to count. A face I last saw when ropes tethered me to my own fence posts, the sort drilled nine feet into the ground and set in cement to prevent the damn things from moving.

When I first started working on the lake house, I never thought that the home I’d built for Jenny would turn my love of the place into something beyond loathing.

I slammed my soles into the ground, counting each step while in my mind’s eye, I watched my wife spread out on the ground beneath hooded figures, no farther than twelve feet from my boots. I screamed myself hoarse, then and now, the sound echoing off sheer rock face that speared my pain high across the valley, but it made no difference.

The remote location became a blessing that then transformed into a nightmare I relived alone in my too-large bed.

Jenny had no chance to get away from them, all soft curves and stunning eyes. A woman I wouldn’t break by accident. A simple laborer, my nature made me too rough for a woman with no substance.

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