Page 126 of Swept for Forever
“Now,” he said with a cocked brow and a smirk, “what would you like for breakfast?”
I pretended to think before I answered, “I justhadbreakfast.”
“Come on, be serious, Otter.”
“Whatever you’re having.”
He leaned down, his lips brushing my ear. “I’m having Cheerios. But knowing you, you’ll come up with some filthy metaphor for that too.”
I laughed, breathless. “Me?Dirty?”
I was about to tease him back, but something flicked in my brain. The wordCheerios.The shape. The ring.
My whole memory tilted. There was a detail I’d missed in the mess of faces, pressure, Boone, and Whitaker.
I sat up so fast that he had to catch my arm. “Dom, the stiff-necked man…he shot me.”
“Yeah?” His face went hard in an instant. He could tell I wasn’t just restating the obvious.
“I mean, he tried. But he didn’t hit me, right? He hit my water bottle.”
Dom’s jaw flexed. “Okay…”
My breath caught. “That means…” The thought slammed into me. “The bullet didn’t pass through. It must’ve lodged somewhere.”
His eyes snapped to mine, alert. “In your pack.”
“Exactly.” My heart thudded faster. “It’d be a hell of a lot easier to find a fifty-five-liter maroon backpack than a stray bullet buried in the woods.”
“Where’s it?”
“Down the ridge,” I said. “Where you found me. It was stuck on a tree trunk, and it rolled down with it.”
We locked eyes.
Everything changed in that one breath.
“Otter,” he said carefully. “I know you’re a badass in water, and you could outswim me any day. But this? This terrain? These cliffs? It’s not for you.”
I was already shaking my head. “Dom, don’t do that. Don’t put me on the sidelines.”
“This isn’t about underestimating you.”
“Itsoundslike it.”
“It’s not,” he said, his voice firm but kind. “The last thing I’ll ever do is underestimate you. But I can’t protect youandlook for the pack if someone’s still out there. I need to move fast. And you being there, it changes everything.”
“I won’t slow you down.”
“You won’t,” he agreed. “Because you’re staying at The Lazy Moose. With Claire.”
I stared at him. “You want to stash me with a vet while you hike into who-knows-what?”
“I want you safe,” he said. “With someone I trust. I’m not leaving you alone, Otter. Not now.”
I growled but followed him anyway.
The farmhouse satat the edge of The Lazy Moose, the Rockies rising behind it. The grass was dry and gold in patches, but greener near the fence lines. A white farmhouse stood with its paint faded and its roof solid. I’d seen my share of open country growing up in Idaho, but this? Montana land had a different kind of backbone. It was wider and wilder.
