Page 25 of Claimed on the Ridge

My thumb found something under her ribs that made her flinch so hard her shoulders came up.

The sound she made will be in my head until I'm dead.

I stop at the northeast corner where the tree line runs close to the lodge. I lean against a spruce trunk. The cold comes through my jacket and I let it.

My mother flinched. She didn't flinch at pans or doorways. My mother flinched at the sound of my father's truck on the gravel, a full-body contraction that she'd smooth into a smile by the time he walked in.

I was young enough that the smoothing worked for years. By the time I understood what the flinch meant, she was gone and understanding didn't matter.

Kendall's flinch is different from my mother's. Hers was anticipation. Kendall's is reflex, trained into the muscle by repetition.

Whatever is under her ribs, the hand that put it there did it more than once, in more than one place, over more than a few months. The body doesn't learn to protect itself that fast.

My hand closes again. I hold the fist this time. The knuckles ache against the cold.

I should have asked last night, in the kitchen, with her pressed against the counter and the taste of her still on my mouth. I should have asked who. I should have asked when. I should have asked where he is now so I could find him.

I didn't ask because asking would have made it about me. My need to know, to fix it, to put myself between her and whatever left that mark.

She said'I'm fine'and the lie was so practiced it came out smooth.

Contesting it would have been one more man deciding he knew her body better than she did.

So I let her go. I sat by the fire and did nothing. I didn't follow her upstairs. The restraint tasted like ash.

The sun clears the ridge, pale gold on fresh snow. I push off the tree and head back.

The kitchen smells like coffee when I come through the back door. Cameron is at the stove, scrambling eggs. Dash is at the table with a mug, scrolling his phone.

Bryan is absent, which means he's either in the workshop or running his own version of a perimeter check, the one that involves fewer feelings and more ammunition inventory.

"You look like hell," Dash says without looking up.

"Thanks."

"Rough night?"

Cameron glances over his shoulder. The glance is brief and measured and it tells me Cameron heard something at two in the morning and drew his own conclusions. Cameron draws conclusions the way other people breathe. He keeps most of them to himself.

"Storm kept me up," I say.

"Storm ended at midnight," Dash says.

"Dash." Cameron's voice is mild. Dash shuts up. The hierarchy holds even over eggs.

I pour coffee and drink it standing at the counter where, a few hours ago, I had Kendall pinned against this surface with my mouth on her throat and my hand in her hair and every good intention I've ever had burning down around me. The shape of her body is still imprinted against mine, how she arched into me, the sound she made when my teeth found her pulse.

It's the same scarred pine, the same knife grooves, the same ring stain from a mug someone set down wet. My body doesn't care what the counter looks like. My body remembers what it felt like.

I hear her on the stairs before I see her. The third step creaks under her weight.

She doesn't sidestep it. She's not sneaking this time. She's walking into a room she intends to occupy.

She appears in the kitchen doorway and the room goes briefly still. Dash looks up. Cameron's spatula pauses mid-scrape. I set my mug down with a precision that betrays exactly how much effort it takes to appear unaffected.

She's wearing the same flannel; sleeves rolled to her forearms. Her hair is pulled back.

The skin below her ear is pink, raw, and the sight of it does two things to me at once. The first is guilt, because I put that there, my stubble scraping her skin while my mouth worked her throat. The second is darker and more honest: satisfaction.