“Fuck.” It was the only response that sounded right in her mind. She had known Karl and the other men were bad news, but now that Knox had told her what they were and what they had done, it all felt so real. What the hell had she been thinking getting caught up in this? She should have listened to her gut. But at the time she had agreed to help Karl, her gut had been saying do it and she knew why. She sighed and muttered, “The shit I do for money.”
“Money?” Knox leaned over the counter, resting his elbows on the black granite, closing the distance between them. His eyes searched hers as she lifted them to lock with his, that hint of worry they seemed to constantly hold when he was around her shining in them. “Why do you need money?”
She swallowed the rest of the whiskey, needing the numbing effect of it if she was going to talk about this, was going to open this wound and expose it to him.
She wasn’t expecting him to kiss it better, but she needed to talk to someone about it. There were countless times she had come close to telling her staff, but every time she had lost her nerve, fearing that if she told them the bar was in trouble, they would leave to find another job rather than trying to help her save it. Deep in her heart she knew they wouldn’t, knew they were her best friends and they always had her back, would help her through her troubles, but it didn’t stop her from being scared.
Knox had that look in his eyes, one that made her feel he wanted to help her and needed to know what was wrong. He had looked at her like that so many times in the past, and every time she had opened up to him, and things had been better.
She wanted things to be better this time too.
Her gaze darted between his, a need welling inside her, pushing her to tell him.
To let him in.
“You can talk to me, Skye,” he husked as his fair eyebrows furrowed, the tenderness in his deep voice and the look that crossed his handsome face warming her and giving her the strength she badly needed.
She knew she could talk to him. She always had been able to. He was a good listener, for her at least, and she had always found it so easy to tell him all her troubles. That hadn’t changed. Something about him made her want to share the burden weighing heavily upon her heart. The same something that made her feel he was on her side as he waited, his gaze soft and steady, not rushing her but biding his time.
Because he knew she would tell him.
Just as she knew she could tell him anything and there wouldn’t be any judgement. He wouldn’t belittle her for coming dangerously close to failing at her dream. He would lift her up and help her, would support her and be the voice of comfort, one that would restore her strength and her faith that she could fix her problems.
“My bar.” She sighed. “It’s not doing so great right now. I can’t lose it, Knox. That bar… it means everything to me.”
“I know.”
She shook her head, relief from finally talking to someone about this colliding with a desperate need to make him understand that her words hadn’t been shallow, something anyone might say about something they loved.
He poured her another glass and topped his one up as she gathered her thoughts.
She smiled as he slid the glass back to her and she toyed with it.
“A few years after Billy died… He was my brother…” She wasn’t sure she had ever talked about him to Knox. The surprise that shone in his eyes when she looked at him said she had neglected to mention Billy and she felt a little bad about it because he had told her about his family. “I don’t really like to talk about him to others.”
She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to tell him that. Maybe it was the edge his gaze had, one that said he was a little irritated that he hadn’t known she’d had a brother.
“I guess I should go further back.” She swigged her whiskey and smiled tightly, trying to keep things light because she could already feel the hurt welling inside her, didn’t want to let it drag her down to a point where she might do something terrible—like cry in front of Knox. “Might need another shot of this.”
She waggled the glass at him, but his expression remained serious, his gaze searing her as he stared at her, as if he was willing her to talk and confess everything, to cleave a hole in her armour and let him see the other side.
The part of her she always kept hidden.
She sighed as he uncorked the bottle and poured more whiskey into her glass, watched the amber liquid flowing into it and swirling around. “We were both pretty reckless. Wild ones. We used to do everything together. Hiking. Kayaking. Rock-climbing. I wanted so badly to be like him. I pushed myself… hard sometimes. I did things that were way outside my comfort zone.”
“Because you wanted your brother to see you in a positive light. You wanted him to love you as much as you loved him.” He glanced down at his glass. “I get that.”
She bet that he did. The urge to reach over and touch his hand was strong, the need to feel a physical connection to him flooding her with a desire to surrender to it this time. She needed the strength that would come from that connection, from feeling she wasn’t alone.
She sipped her whiskey, hoping to find the courage she needed in it instead. “The day it happened… It was my birthday. I had just turned nineteen and Billy wanted to do something wild to celebrate. It was me, my now-ex and my brother. Billy suggested climbing and the weather was good for it, so I agreed. Shaw convinced him to swap an easier climb for one that was challenging even for a professional. Billy didn’t look sure about it, and I knew in my gut he was trying to buy all of us an out by asking me to decide… If I wanted to climb it, then we would. God… I should have said no… but I didn’t want to look like a scaredy cat in front of Shaw and I wanted Billy to see… It doesn’t matter.”
She stared at her drink as the events of that day played out in her mind as if they had just happened.
“We weren’t that high off the ground when I slipped. Billy was above me with Shaw higher still, and I hadn’t secured myself properly. The wire came loose and the whole of my weight pulled on Billy. It was a blur after that. I swung and hit a rock that jutted out, broke my damned leg. Billy tried to get to me and… I should have gone with my gut. It was the last thing I thought as Billy—” She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, not wanting to see him hitting the ground again, not wanting to watch him falling past her. “I was stupid. Reckless. I got my brother killed.”
“You were a kid.” Those words weren’t a comfort to her.
She shook her head as her throat closed and tears burned the backs of her eyes. Her voice was tight as she said, “It felt as if my entire world had just fallen apart. Everything just took a backseat for me. My life got put on pause for a long time. I just sort of drifted. A few years after his death, my parents decided to move to the coast. They wanted me to go with them.”
She swigged her whiskey, lost herself in watching it as she swirled it around and the amber liquid caught the solitary light above her.
“Dad tried to make me see that my dream of restoring the only local bar, one that had been closed for almost a decade, was only that—a dream. It was something I had wanted to do since me and Billy and our friends used to hang out in the old parking lot in the summer. One night I looked at it and then at everyone and thought how great it would be to have it as our place to hang out when we were all old enough… when we had grown up.” Skye leaned back and looked at Knox, soaked up the sympathetic look he was giving her and how soft his gaze was—and how much he looked as if he wanted to come to her and hold her. She wanted that too. She wanted that with all her heart. “Dad did his best to convince me I would be better off going to the city and continuing my education.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t want to leave this place where we had grown up, where all my memories were. I thought…” She lowered her gaze again, couldn’t look at him as she admitted this, in case he gave her a look that made her feel as crazy as she was goin
g to sound. “I felt as if I would be abandoning Billy if I did. I felt that his spirit lived on here, in these mountains he loved so much. Life is tough here, but it’s beautiful. It’s home.”
“What did you do?” He refilled his glass, proving her right about him. No judgement. No look that questioned her sanity. Just quiet, wonderful support that she needed so much right now. It was as if he could read her, was so attuned to her that he knew exactly what she needed from him. He glanced at her, a sombre edge to his sapphire gaze. “I had parents once. My dad was pushy. Always wanted me and Lowe to toe the line… something I wasn’t good at. I was too much like Dad at that age. A little like you were. Reckless.”
She was going to ask him about that later, was going to get his back story and learn all about him, but she needed to finish what she had started, needed to let him in and let him know her, all of her. Now that she had started, she couldn’t stop. She wanted him to know things about her that she had never told anyone.
She wanted that connection to him.
“I went down to the creek that runs through the woods close to town and did a little soul-searching. Part of me knew my dad was right and that the bar was going to be a lot of work and might never be a success. I might be wasting my life on something that I could never pull off. Getting an education and a good job was the easier route. It was more secure. Less reckless.” She tilted her glass back and forth. “I sat there for hours, going in circles. Do the sensible thing or run with my heart? I had almost settled on doing as my dad wanted.”
“What made you change your mind?” Knox sipped his whiskey and leaned a little closer, had her gaze shifting to him and locking with his. The look in his eyes told her he really wanted to know and it told her something else too. He was glad she was opening up to him like this.
She was glad too. He had hurt her, but she didn’t want there to be any bad blood between them. She wanted to move on and put the past behind her, and maybe see if she could have a second chance with him.
“This is going to sound crazy.” She smiled, sure that he would think her insane when she told him what had helped her make her decision. She had never been into the spiritual, had never been one to see signs in anything, but that day had changed something fundamental inside her. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
The corners of his lips curled.
He reached for her hand and placed his over it. “I swear I won’t.”
She glanced down at their hands, at his big one that covered hers, absorbing his warmth and the softness of his touch, and how damned good it felt to have this physical connection to him. It calmed something inside her, soothed her in a way that moved her, had her aching to twist her hand beneath his and curl her fingers around to clutch it so he wouldn’t let her go.
“A white moose strolled out of the woods on the other side of the creek and looked right at me. Just looked at me… calm as anything… and then it lowered its head to drink.” She lifted her eyes to lock with his and struggled to hold his gaze, even though not a hint of a smile touched his lips. “I felt honoured by it. It honestly felt as if the land was showing me where I was meant to be. I felt as if it was my brother reaching out to me and it moved me to tears.”
It was moving her to tears again, had them forming in her eyes despite how hard she tried to deny them.
Knox lifted his hand from hers and touched her cheek, his head canting to his left as he gazed softly at her. “It was a sign. Nature sent a spirit to guide you on your path and told you to remain here.”
He looked oddly grateful for that. Because it meant they had met?
Part of her was grateful for that too. She had never felt a connection to anyone like the one she felt to Knox.
“Is that why your bar is called The Spirit Moose?” His eyes leaped between hers as his fingers lingered against her cheek, warming her skin and soothing her with that physical connection she craved with him, one that made the emotional one that came from telling him about her past feel even stronger.
Deeper.
She nodded. “I can’t let it fail. When Karl slapped a thick wedge of money down on my bar top, I should have known there would be a catch… but all I saw was a way to save my bar.”
He dropped his hand from her face and leaned back. “It seems really special to you.”
“It is.” She held his gaze as she thought about it, as she thought about her brother, and how she would feel if she lost the bar.
Hollow. Dead inside. Defeated. Her soul was in that bar. It was part of her. Vital to her.
“The place where I live, south of here, is like that for me.” He swallowed his whiskey in one go and his eyes met hers again, their blue depths serious once more. “Special. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without it. Without that place. It’s my sanctuary.”
That made her feel he really did understand her and knew how she felt about her bar. It made that connection she felt to him stronger still, making her feel closer to him, drawn to him.
“I’ll help any way I can. I have some money.” He looked down at his empty glass. Toyed with it. “I don’t need it where I live. Maybe I can invest it in your bar?”
The soft warmth that had been filling her vanished in an instant, a prickly heat replacing it as the part of her that refused to let what he had done go rose back to the fore. Hurt welled again as she ran over his words and thought about his offer, part of her aware it was an olive branch he was offering while the rest felt it was a declaration of war.
The darker, hurt part of her won the battle.
“I’m worth your money, but not your time?” she bit out and huffed as she tightened her grip on her glass, looked down at it and considered drinking the two fingers of whiskey in one go. Because she wanted to let loose a little more or because she wanted to drown the hurt rolling through her?
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He reached for her and she stepped back, glared at him to keep him in place when he looked as if he might round the island to reach her.
The anger that had flared hot and hard in her veins rapidly gave way to the hurt, darkening her thoughts and weighing her down.
She slowly shook her head as she looked into his eyes. “Why didn’t you call?”
He grabbed the bottle and she didn’t miss that his hand was shaking as he poured whiskey into his glass, filling it almost to the brim. Great. She wasn’t the only one who wanted to get drunk in order to make this whole thing easier to deal with. Now she was driving Knox to drink too.
He scrubbed a hand over his dark blond hair, mussing it, his muscles bunching beneath his tight T-shirt as he stopped with that hand against the back of his neck and heaved a sigh.
“I thought about calling you. I thought about it a lot. I had some things to work out… What happened between us… it… it…”
He was struggling, so Skye finished for him.
“It was nice, but it was just one night. I get it, Knox.” She looked anywhere but at him, cursing the fact she was stuck in this lodge with him as he stared at her, as she couldn’t hide how much that had hurt her.
Still hurt her.
“No,” he barked. She tensed and her gaze leaped back to collide with his. He clenched his jaw. Swigged his whiskey. Ran his hand over his hair and looked ready to tear it out as his expression hardened and then softened again in an instant. His brow furrowed. “You don’t get it. You can’t possibly get it. What we shared… it… I got spooked.”
“Spooked?” She frowned at him.
He downed his whiskey, poured another and drank that too. How the hell wasn’t he drunk and passed out on the floor? He wasn’t even slurring his words.
He sagged against the cupboard behind him on a long sigh, his gaze growing bleak, an edge of despair and hurt to it as he nursed his whiskey, holding it close to his chest. “I wasn’t expecting you. I walked into your bar that day and saw you… and… I kept coming back because of you. I shouldn’t have. We don’t belong together, even if the universe says we do.�
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That was the whiskey talking.
Maybe he was more tipsy than she thought.
“Don’t I get a say in things?” She stepped up to the counter and set her glass down, narrowing the distance between them as she searched his eyes.
He said nothing.
Skye took the bottle and topped her glass up. She stared at it as she thought about him and about what had happened, her mood levelling out again, the anger falling away and taking the hurt with it this time, leaving her calm.
“I wasn’t expecting you either.” She lifted her head and met his gaze again. “That night… everything just felt so right, Knox. As if we were meant to be together… As if… we had been made for each other.”
He stared at her, looking as spooked as he had claimed to be that night as his blue eyes slowly widened.
She smiled down at her drink and let the past wash over her, recalled everything that had been good about it rather than focusing on the negatives. “I still can’t hear that song without thinking of you. Every time it comes on the jukebox, I end up thinking about that night… About how we danced.”
He blinked and then he was moving, setting his glass down and rounding the island to her side. He pulled something from his pocket. She frowned at it. A phone.
“I doubt you’ll get service this high up in the valley.” She tensed when he took her glass from her, his fingers brushing hers, and set that down on the black counter too.
He placed his phone down beside it.
She had wanted to ask him what he was doing, but as the first gentle strings of the song washed over her, she stilled and tingles swept down her arms and spine. The song they had danced to.
She stared at the screen of the phone and then at Knox. “You have this song on your cell?”
He glanced at it, a boyish edge to his expression that almost drew a smile from her. She had never seen Knox look awkward before, not like this.
Saved by her Bear (Black Ridge Bears Shifter Romance Series Book 3) Page 12