Page 58 of Surrender to Me
When I don’t respond, he goes on. “The first flakes hit, and then like the whole mountain exhales.”
Sounds beautiful and scary. The right kind of person might even enjoy it.
“Everything slows down. Even the air feels thicker.”
“Mmm.” I sip my chai to cover the fact I’m barely responding.
Stryker is looking off into the distance, maybe lost in thought, and I follow his gaze toward the tree line. I half expect the deer to still be there, but it’s gone.
My breath mingles with his, white clouds that fade too fast. The quiet is thick enough to touch.
Absently he strokes my arm with his thumb. It’s a small motion that undoes me. He’s not offering anything, not asking, either.
Maybe because of that, I tip my head against his shoulder, telling myself it’s for warmth, nothing more. “It’s beautiful. So beautiful.”
“Yeah. It is.” The sound of his voice seems to vibrate through his me. “I spend as much time here as I can.”
So it may be a Hawkeye safe house, but it’s much more than that to him.
His arm tightens around me, the movement protective, unconscious. “That’s the trick of it. Peace never lasts.”
A chill slides through me that has nothing to do with the weather.
He’s right about peace.
It’s fragile, and it doesn’t belong to people like us.
When the wind shifts, it blows harder, colder, carrying a sharper, more threatening edge. My body stiffens, instinct firing before thought. Stryker notices—it’s impossible for him not to—and his hand slides down my arm, steadying. “You’re jumpy this morning.”
“Hard to turn it off,” I admit. “I keep expecting something to go wrong.”
“Smart.”
I appreciate that he doesn’t offer ridiculous, soothing words.
“We’ll get another update from Hawkeye soon.”
The mention makes my pulse skip. I nod, forcing the words out. “Right.”
He studies me for a second, then kisses the top of my head, his lips warm. “But don’t borrow trouble, Allie. Be prepared, but not so much that you’re blind to every possibility.”
“Your mantra?”
“Yeah.” He’s silent for a moment. “Learned the hard way.”
The fire pops, a log collapsing into glowing embers. He stirs them with a length of wood, his movements calm, practiced, like he’s done this a hundred times before. Watching him always feels like this—like staring at a controlled burn. Contained, but only just.
“I’ll grab more wood before it really gets going,” he says finally, pushing to his feet. “We’ll want the cabin stocked.”
“You don’t have to?—”
He cuts me off with that lazy, resolve-melting grin. “Sweetheart, I don’t mind the work. You do enough worrying for both of us.” He reaches out, brushes his knuckles along my jaw, then turns toward the stack of logs near the tree line. The axe gleams where it rests against the chopping block.
I sit there, mug cupped in my hands, watching him.
He moves effortlessly, broad shoulders flexing as he hefts the axe. Every swing is deliberate, the crack of splitting wood echoing sharp against the still air.
This should be an ordinary thing—someone chopping firewood—but with him it’s something else. Strength turned graceful. Power restrained. I press my legs together as heat curls in my belly despite the cold.
