Page 6 of Ensnared By the Mountain Man

His hand is still on my hip, and his voice is rough and low. He’s looking at me the way he looked at me on the trail—like I’m the only thing on this mountain that matters.

Then he steps back. He waits until I’m in my car with the engine on before he gets in his truck. He follows me all the way back to town, his headlights steady in my mirror, and he doesn’t turn off until I pull into my apartment parking lot.

I sit in the car for a long time after his taillights disappear. My ankle throbs. My hands are still warm from the mug. His flannel is still around my shoulders.

I don’t take it off.

4

ELIAS

Isit in the truck outside Sugar Moon for a full two minutes before I go in.

This is new. Usually I park, walk in, get my coffee and my muffin, nod at Morgan, and leave. The whole thing takes three minutes, maybe four. I think about those three minutes for the rest of the day. Every day. Like an idiot.

But today my flannel is at Morgan’s place because I wrapped it around her shoulders on a mountain trail last night, and I didn’t sleep because every time I closed my eyes I saw her on that trail, shivering, limping, telling me she was fine when she clearly wasn’t. And I keep hearing the way her voice sounded in my cabin when she said I should get home, like she wanted to mean it but her body hadn’t gotten the message yet.

I go inside.

She’s behind the counter. Of course she is. I told her to stay off the ankle, to call in, to rest. I said it clearly, and she nodded and I thought maybe she’d actually listen, but here she is at 6:45 in the morning, plating scones and pouring coffee and smiling at people like her ankle isn’t twice the size it should be.

I watch her move. She’s hiding the limp well. Someone who didn’t know what to look for would miss it. But I know what a sprained ankle looks like when someone’s trying to work through it—the way she shifts her weight to the right side, the way she pauses for a half-second longer than normal between the counter and the coffee machine. She’s in pain and she’s not going to tell a single person in this bakery about it.

My chest tightens. I’ve seen guys work through injuries at the station, pushing through because the job demands it. That’s different. Nobody’s demanding this of her. She’s demanding it of herself, and something about watching her do it makes me want to walk behind that counter and physically put her in a chair.

“Morning,” she says when I reach the counter, and her voice is warm and easy and exactly the same as it is every other morning, like last night didn’t happen. Like I didn’t carry her down a mountain and kneel on my cabin floor and hold ice against her skin while she tried not to cry.

“Morning,” I say.

She reaches for the coffee pot. Her usual rhythm, the one I’ve memorized without meaning to. Pour, lid, bag the muffin, slide it across. But I don’t pick it up. I just stand there, and she looks at me, and the easy smile falters just enough for me to see what’s underneath it.

“How’s the ankle?”

“It’s fine,” she says. “Barely notice it.”

“You’re favoring your right side.”

Her eyes widen for just a second before she catches herself. “Occupational hazard. I’m on my feet all day.”

“Morgan.”

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t say her name at the counter. I don’t have conversations that last more than ten seconds. I nod, I leave, I take my coffee and my muffin and I go to the station where I can eat in peace and replay every detail of the interaction in my head without her watching me do it. That’s the system. That’s how this works.

But that system died on a mountain trail last night, and I don’t think it’s coming back.

“You should be sitting down,” I say. “Elevated. Ice on it.”

“I have a shift.”

“Someone else can cover your shift.”

She tilts her head, and there it is. That look she gets when someone says something she wasn’t expecting. The one where her whole face goes soft and curious and a little bit guarded, like she’s not sure whether to trust what she’s hearing.

I’ve seen it a hundred times from the other side of this counter, always directed at someone else. Having it aimed at me feels different than I imagined. More direct. Harder to walk away from.

“Since when do you say more than two words to me before seven a.m.?” she asks, and there’s something in her voice that isn’t quite teasing. It’s careful. Testing.

“Since I pulled you off a mountain last night.”