Page 16 of Surrendering To The Forbidden Mountain Man

"Nothing. Need my kit."

"Reid." She sets the bag on the counter. Takes a step toward me. "You look like you did the morning you showed up to fix my lock. Except worse."

"I'm fine."

"You're lying."

The words are calm. The words are calm, clinical an assessment from a professional who can see the symptoms and isn't going to let the patient talk their way out of the diagnosis.

"I found the box." It comes out flat. No inflection. "In the closet."

Her face changes recognition, immediate and complete. She knows exactly which box, exactly what's in it, exactly what it means.

"The card," she says. "And the photo."

"You were fourteen in that picture."

"I know how old I was."

"You were a child."

"I was a teenager with a crush. Teenagers have crushes, Reid. It's a normal developmental experience."

"A normal crush doesn't last sixteen years."

She goes still. Her keys hit the counter with a clink. "What are you saying?"

My jaw is locked. The words are lined up, tactical, precise, designed to create distance because distance is the only defense I know. "I'm saying you were a kid who fixated on her brother's friend, and nobody stopped it, and I should have been the one to stop it."

"Fixated." Her voice drops. Quiet in a way I've learned to recognize as dangerous.

"You built your whole romantic life around a man you couldn't have. You're thirty years old, and you'd never been with anyone before me, and that's not devotion, Mira. That's⁠—"

"Finish that sentence." Her chin lifts. "Go ahead."

I can't. Because the word in my head is unhealthy, and saying it out loud would mean telling the woman I love that what she feels for me is a disorder instead of a choice.

"You deserved a normal life." The words come out rough. "Dating in college. Relationships in your twenties. A man your own age who didn't know you when you were a kid. You missed all of that because of me."

"Because of you?" Her eyes are bright. Not with tears. With anger. "You think I sat in Denver for six years pining like some Victorian heroine? I had a career, Reid. I had friends. I had a life. I dated. Men took me out, bought me dinner, tried to sleep with me. You know why none of them worked?"

My fists are at my sides. "Mira."

"Because they weren't you. Not because I was broken. Not because I was fixated. Because nobody else made me feel safe the way you did when you stayed on the phone for forty-five minutes at two in the morning without saying a single word." Her voice cracks. First time. "I chose to wait. That was my decision. Mine. And you don't get to stand in my apartment and tell me that my choices are pathological because you're scared."

The word lands. Scared. Accurate, surgical, placed exactly where it hurts the most.

"You want to leave?" She's not crying. Her voice is steady, her chin is up, her shoulders are back. Trauma nurse posture. Ready for the worst outcome. "Fine. Leave. You're good at that. Twenty years of practice."

"That's not fair."

"Neither is calling what I feel for you a fixation."

Silence fills the apartment. The takeout bag on the counter is leaking grease onto a paper napkin. The coffee pot is cold. The clock on the microwave reads 1:14 PM.

"I need to think." The words are thin.

"You've been thinking for fourteen years. That's the problem." She picks up the takeout bag. Moves it to the counter. Wipes the grease with the napkin. Hands steady. Composure back in place, the professional mask she learned in trauma bays. "Go home, Reid. Think. But when you're done thinking, you should know that the box in my closet isn't evidence of a problem. It's evidence that I loved you before I knew what love cost, and I kept loving you after I found out."