Page 13 of My Three Mountain Men

I shifted my weight and sat back.

“I’m right, aren’t I!”

“No,” I insisted. “You aren’t right. It’s extremely treacherous. Going anywhere could result in injury or worse. The storm is only picking up, and when it gets like this, it will seal us in for days, if not weeks. These winter months are long, so we don’t leave after we get the first big snow of the year that sticks. Trust me; we’ve been doing this for ten years, so I know what I’m talking about.”

She recoiled. “You’ve been up here for ten years?!” she demanded. “You would have been a kid, a teenager…”

I’d said too much. Ryder was already pissed off with me, and I didn’t need to add fuel to the fire by telling her more. Abruptly, I rose.

“Please eat,” I said, pivoting toward the door. “I’ll see if I can find you some clothes.”

“Who the hell are you? And why are you hiding away in some secluded mountain house?”

I closed the door and ducked out into the corridor, exhaling deeply before making my way toward my bedroom at the far end of the hall. But before I could get there, Ryder came up the stairs.

“Is she giving you trouble?” he asked, reading the strained expression on my face.

“No,” I lied.

“Bullshit.”

“She’s overwhelmed. Understandably.”

“We’re all overwhelmed,” he shot back. “This isn’t going to work if she’s going to be a pain in the ass.”

“She won’t be, Ryder,” I promised, worried about what he might do to her. It wasn’t that I thought he would hurt her physically, but Ryder could be terrifying when pushed, and the stakes here were far too high.

“Brooks—”

“She just needs some time, Ryder. Think of what she’s just been through. Someone just tried to kill her. Cut her some slack.”

He didn’t like my tone. “I have cut her some slack—and you, too,” he reminded me coldly. “Like I always do.”

I pursed my lips. “If there had been any other option, I would have taken it,” I muttered, turning toward my bedroom. “I’m going to see if I can find her some fresh clothes.”

I took two steps, but Ryder’s voice stopped me. “Did she eat?”

I paused and looked back at him, shaking my head. “Not yet.”

His scowl deepened. “She needs to eat. She can’t go on a goddamn hunger strike to prove a point.”

“I left the food with her. She won’t be able to resist forever.”

“You’re sure she doesn’t have a phone on her, right?”

I was getting a little irked with this third-degree questioning. “I didn’t do a strip search on her.”

“Maybe you should have, Brooks.”

“Be my guest,” I shot back. “I’m going to find her something to wear while you get on that.”

“Fine. I’ll take care of it. Like always.”

He stomped off in the opposite direction, and I choked back the bile mounting in my throat. He wasn’t wrong about any of it. All the crap always fell on Ryder’s shoulders. It always had. He was the oldest and had been the only adult for many years. He had raised Knox and me to become men, too.

Sighing deeply, I entered my bedroom and closed the door, relishing the privacy for a long moment. Suddenly, I had the urge to crawl into bed myself and pull the covers over my head and go to sleep until spring. Bears were so lucky.

But I wasn’t a sixteen-year-old kid, and my responsibilities didn’t fall on Ryder anymore, no matter how much he made me feel like they did. I had brought Simone there, and with my cousins so dead set against her being there, I was apt to be her only friend over the long, harsh winter. As much as I didn’t think Knox or Ryder would go out of their way to harm her, they probably wouldn’t do much to make her life easier, either.

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