Page 3 of Montana Silence

In the corner, Evie sat rocking baby Avery. The little girl was passed out entirely, and I smiled. Avery had the entire ranch wrapped around her finger. She was going to have the childhood of a lifetime and struggle like hell when she decided to start dating.

Not far from Evie stood Liam.

My breath went short in my lungs, but this time, it wasn’t from fear.

Liam was…

I wasn’t sure what he was, but I liked him. I was attracted to him, even though the feeling was strange. He was always kind, stopping to talk to me while I worked and encouraging me to talk too. But never in a way that made me feel uncomfortable.

His gaze swung in my direction, and I looked away before he could catch me staring. Liam was one of the Resting Warrior men. He was brave and bold, not to mention funny. No way would he be interested in someone like me. Most days, I couldn’t speak three sentences in a row. And all the stuff in my past? I was broken. Too broken for someone as joyful as Liam.

In spite of all that, I was glad we’d gotten closer lately, grateful to have some kind of connection.

I started gathering dishes again. I knew I didn’t have to, but it was simply who I was. Cleaning was what I had been trained to do when I was young and in the cult. It was my job.

All the women’s jobs, really. But especially mine. And it may have been twisted, but it was still where I felt the safest. My mind had been trained to view it as a path to safety, and while we were dealing with other aspects of it, Dr. Rayne assured me it was okay. We didn’t need to rock the core foundations of who I was.

Yet.

I stacked plates on top of one another until I had a decent pile once more, and I carried them toward the catering area again. These were heavy, but the servers were already overworked. No one had complained when I dropped off the last batch.

CRASH!

My body jerked to the side, the heavy stack of plates nearly pulling me off-balance. Terror ripped through me, darkness pulling at my vision.

No. I couldn’t drop another one. Too many this week. I’d already broken three plates, and I didn’t want to get beaten again. My body was still in pain, and I shook with it. It was the reason I kept dropping things in the first place, and another beating would only make it worse.

“Mara?” A voice came from my left, and I flinched. The table was right in front of me. Holding plates. I heaved the stack in my arms onto the table, barely making sure they were stable before backing away.

I was present at the reception, but I needed to get out of here and breathe. Too many things, too many smells, and the sounds and voices were overwhelming. I needed somethinglessto ground myself.

Beelining for the edge of the tent, I slipped out one of the many entrances into the darkening evening. Immediately, the weight on my chest lifted. Better. Better wasn’t even close togood, but at least out here, if I lost my shit, no one would be able to see me.

“Mara?”

The same voice I’d just heard call to me inside. A voice I knew.

Liam stood behind me, watching carefully.

Normally, a man following me anywhere would send me straight into a panic. But Liam wasn’t just a man. None of the Resting Warrior men would ever hurt me. I knew them well enough to believe that.

The entire point of Resting Warrior was to help people…like me. A safe place for those who suffered from post-traumatic stress, whether that stress came from military service like theirs did or not. They also trained animals to help in therapy, providing therapy dogs, horses, alpacas, and even the occasional cat to practices across the country.

But of all the men on the ranch, Liam was the one I was the most comfortable with. This…attraction I had to him… Was it a crush? More than that? I didn’t know. Everything along those lines had been turned against me. Even the feeling of being drawn toward someone else was alien.

He took a few steps closer when I didn’t run away. Enough sunlight remained to see him, but what was left of the day was disappearing fast. I wished it weren’t—I liked looking at him.

Liam was taller than I was and well-built, though not nearly as bulky as some of the other guys at the ranch. His dark skin caught the last rays of the sun, highlighting cheekbones and a jawline I’d found myself wanting to touch.

“You seemed like you were panicking,” he said calmly. “And I wanted to see if you were okay.”

I listened to my body. All my muscles were still tense, my heart pounding and my head light. Had I eaten anything? I felt dizzy and jumpy, like things could leap out at me from every corner.

Twice in one day I’d been triggered, and I was…

“No.” I shook my head, and my hands fluttered. It was the only word I was able to get out. How did I tell him more than that? There was somuch,and it was all overwhelming.

It felt like my throat was closing up, and he took another step forward, hand outstretched. “Is compression something that helps you?”

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