Blood was pooling around my head, staining the pristine snow scarlet. I could feel the thick liquid rolling over my temple and into my hair and no matter how fast I blinked, I couldn’t keep my eyes clear. I wasn’t sure where the blood was coming from, but there sure as fuck was a lot of it.
I lay there long enough that I started to collect snow. The flakes got caught in my eyelashes and melted with each blink. I could see the fluffy piles building up on my chest and on the tips of my boots. I knew I had to move, but the idea made everything hurt and it was so much easier to simply lie there and pretend nothing was happening.
It would be so easy to drift away. That was what my best friend had done, even though she had a little boy she was leaving behind. It was what my sister had done, even though she knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it and that our parents would inevitably blame me for her taking her own life. It seemed so much easier to let go when hanging on required so much more effort.
An owl hooted from somewhere overhead and somewhere in the darkness there was a lonely howl that had to belong to a wolf that broke through the eerie silence. It was a reminder that you were either predator or prey and I wasn’t ever going to be the type of woman that let herself be hunted down. I was a fighter through and through—which meant I had to put the effort into hanging on and getting up. I refused to let go of anything.
When my best friend died because she chose to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with absolutely the wrong man, I did everything I could to find her son the best home possible. I wanted to keep him—I loved him like he was my own—but with my past and the glaring mistakes in it, there was no way the state was going to let me do that. They put him in foster care, ready to call it a day, but I was determined that Hyde would have better. I tracked down his father, a giant, bearded badass my bestie had indulged in an illicit one-night stand with, and sprang the news on him that he was a daddy. Of course, I checked the guy out before telling him he had a son. I was pleased to learn that, despite a few hiccups in the past, he was a standup guy, more than willing to give his son a good home.
I also refused to let go of the fact that my baby sister was no longer with me. Xanthe had always been special, a sweet soul who was too trusting and too soft. She was precious and delicate, always a little too fragile and breakable for the reality of the world around her. My entire family did their best to protect her, to shelter her, but Xanthe was like any other twenty-something and she wanted to live. She wanted to experience love and relationships. She wanted to mess up and try again. She wanted to be normal…but the fact of the matter was, she wasn’t wired the way the rest of us were. I did my best to protect her while helping her live as normal a life as possible, but that was a full-time job and there were times I couldn’t be there. My parents always accused me of encouraging her, of enabling her whims. They swore I was going to be the reason she ended up hurt. I told them she needed professional help, that there was something chemically wrong in her brain. They insisted she was nothing more than a special snowflake that needed to be coddled and loved.
There wasn’t any time left for either of those theories because Xanthe was gone, her life stolen away too soon at her own hand. She fell in love, fixated on a man, couldn’t let it go, and when he left, she decided she couldn’t live without him…even though he’d never encouraged her in any way. She was shattered, fundamentally broken, and forever lost to me.
Now I was bleeding out on the side of a mountain in Surrender, Montana. I’d taken off minutes after the funeral so I could find Xanthe’s mystery man and tell him what happened when men weren’t careful with delicate hearts. He probably didn’t care and it wouldn’t change a thing, but for my own peace of mind, I had to say something…had to take a stand for my sister. Her death needed to be avenged and the only way I could do that was to confront the MacKenzie that broke her heart. I didn’t have his first name…just his last…but in a town the size of Surrender, I figured it couldn’t be that hard to track him down. I’d say what I had to say, make my point, get my own kind of vengeance, and go back to Denver ready to face my parents’ wrath. After all, I was the one who’d encouraged Xanthe to get out and get a job so she wouldn’t be so melancholy and depressed, so dependent on everyone else for what she needed.
I flipped over to my hands and knees, swearing into the darkness as my left shoulder gave out and left me face-planted in the snow. It hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt before and there was no way I was going to be able to use it. The burn made my eyes cross and had me sucking frigid air through my teeth. I lifted myself up onto my knees and squinted into the shadowy forest as I heard a twig snap and the sound of heavy footfalls. My breaths were suddenly annoyingly loud as they wheezed in and out of me.
I had no idea what was going to come out of the surrounding trees, but my instincts told me it wasn’t going to be something friendly and eager to help.
I was right.
Around a tree twice as big as the one that was holding up my SUV stepped a man. A big man. A burly man. A dark man. An angry man.
He had a shotgun grasped firmly in his hands and a scowl on his face that was easy to read, despite the darkness and the distance that separated us.
The lower half of his face was covered by a dark beard, but his equally dark hair was cut in a style that didn’t match his mountain man look. The sides were cut super short with a severe part shaved into a harshly defined and trendy part. The top was longer and slicked up and back in a style that looked like it should be in a watch ad of a high-end fashion magazine. There was also an obnoxiously large gold ring on his middle finger. I could see the glint of diamonds off it as he moved several steps closer to me. The ring was seriously at odds with his heavy canvas jacket and worn jeans. His boots looked expensive but had heavy tread and were the right kind of footwear for trekking up a mountainside in the middle of the night. I wasn’t sure why, but they seemed out of place. He seemed out of place.
“Are you okay?” His voice was deep and sounded extra loud in the silence surrounding us.
I lowered my head and couldn’t keep back a strangled laugh. “Do I look okay?” He was probably my only option for rescue and I wanted to bite my tongue after the waspish remark. Something about him and his mix-and-match appearance had the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
“How not okay are you?” He sounded faintly amused and if I’d had working use of my arm, I would have flipped him off.
“Dislocated shoulder, possible concussion, various nicks and cuts…I’m pretty sure the top of my head is sliced open from when the roof caved in because I’m still bleeding. I don’t think it’s anything fatal but I’m an insurance adjuster, not a doctor.”