Page 45 of Claimed on the Ridge

"Your name before him," I say. The words come out rougher than I intend.

She looks at me. The anger is still there, but something else has moved in beside it. The recognition of a man who is asking her name, not to take it, but to know who she was before someone tried to erase her.

"Mitchell," she says. "Kendall Mitchell."

"Kendall Mitchell." I say it the way I'd say the name of ground I intend to hold.

The flames settle into a steady burn. The kitchen fills with the sound of burning wood, the heat beginning to push back against the cold that crept in overnight.

"I had the report before last night," I say. "You deserved to know before I touched you, and I chose not to tell you."

"Why didn't you?"

She needed to come to me free. No gratitude, no desperation, no woman calculating whether safety was worth trading her body for. I wanted her to cross that kitchen because she wanted to, and telling her what I knew would have put a thumb on the scale. So I held it.

Bryan would call that controlling. Bryan can call it whatever he wants.

The difference between my father and me is simple. My father never stopped. I'm standing in this kitchen with Kendall Mitchell's real name in the air, and I'm stopping.

"Because I wanted you to walk across that kitchen for me," I say. "Not because you were scared. Not because I had leverage. For me."

"That wasn't your call to make."

"No. It wasn't."

The silence that follows is long and specific. She stays where she is, her real name hanging in the air between us, and she looks at me with the evaluating gaze of someone lied to by experts, deciding whether this lie is the same species.

"Bryan knows," I say. "I showed him the report. My brothers are on the road because I asked them to watch for anyone who doesn't belong. The patrols started before I had a name. The report came after."

"But before we slept together."

"Yes."

The word sits between us. She lets it.

She picks up her coffee and drinks, buying herself time with an ordinary motion.

The silence stretches. I let it.

"The pass opens today," she says.

"It might."

"I'm not leaving." She looks at me over the rim. "Not because of last night. Not because of your protection. Because Gary Simmons doesn't get to make me run twice."

The resolve in her voice is iron, not borrowed, not reactive. She forged it herself, in the space between her mother's hospital bed and this lodge. That strength is the thing that hooked me the first night she walked through my door carrying a bag she wouldn't let me touch.

"He filed the report shortly after you left Anchorage," I say. "Missing persons. Your description, your maiden name on the alias, a photo that looks nothing like you."

"The photo is from a gala." She says it without asking. She knows which photo a man like Gary would use, the polished version, the controlled version. The performance she gave for cameras while her ribs healed under designer fabric.

"You look different now," I say.

"I look like me." The correction is quiet and absolute.

I reach across the counter and close my hand over hers. The grip is firm, and I'm not asking. I'm telling her with my hand what my mouth hasn't figured out how to say yet.

The night she arrived, I offered to carry her bag and she refused. She read the open hand and chose to carry her own weight.