Page 40 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

He crosses his arms over his chest and stares straight ahead.

“What did you want before all this?” I ask after half a minute of silence.

Instead of answering, he just looks at me.

“Before Wilder Outfitters,” I say. “Before being responsible for everything.”

A line around his mouth tightens. “Rangers don’t spend much time planning soft futures.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He arches a brow, but suddenly looks weary. “It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Rhett.” Saying his name in the dark makesit feel intimate.

“I wanted my brothers alive. After that, I wanted them here.”

“In Moon Ridge?”

“Anywhere they’d stay.”

“You hold them together,” I say. Rhett’s face closes, but feeling bolder out here in the dark, I press on. “That has to feel like a heavy weight to bear.”

“They hold me together, too.”

After that, he’s silent for a long time. I’m wondering what to say next when he says, “People think danger is the hard part, but it isn’t. It’s simple. You assess and plan, then you move, or you don’t. If your plan doesn’t work, you adapt.”

He nudges the floorboard with the toe of his boot. “The part that keeps me awake is knowing I can make the wrong call with people who trust me to always make the right one. My brothers follow me even when they shouldn’t. If I misread something or take us down the wrong road, I fail all of us.”

“And that’s what scares you.”

The breeze has kicked up into full-blown wind, making a shimmery sound as it moves through the trees. The owl calls out again.

“Not the armed men in the woods,” I say. “Not drug runners or faceless enemies. What scares you is making the wrong call and breaking what’s left of your family.”

He looks at me again, and it’s a different face. The hard control is gone, and instead, I see a man who’s spent the last several years shouldering the responsibility of being a leader for the two people who share the depth of his grief.

“Yes,” he says simply, and without thinking, I reach for his hand.

He goes still when my fingers slide over his, but he doesn’t pull back. His hand is warm and quite a bit larger than mine.

Finally, after a couple of long seconds, his fingers close around mine, and everything changes.

Rhett looks down at our joined hands. “You have no idea what you’re doing to us.” His voice is so low and rough it raises the hair on my arms.

This morning, I may have stepped back and told myself I shouldn’t be doing this, that it’s too messy or complicated or just plain wrong.

But after meeting Elena and Kira and realizing wanting something isn’t a crime, I stay where I am and hold Rhett’s gaze. “Maybe I do.”

His fingers tighten around mine, and then he steps closer. So close that my breath catches and the heat of his body warms mine in the cool night air. I can see his pulse at the base of his throat and a faint scar along his jaw.

He reaches for me with his other hand but stops just before he touches my face. His hesitation frustrates me, but it also makes something turn molten inside me, because it’s obvious he wants me.

“You’re allowed to touch me,” I whisper.

“Wren.” His eyes are dark with need, but he says my namelike a warning.

When he cups the side of my face in his hand, I stop breathing. His palm is rough against my cheek as his thumb brushes once near the corner of my mouth. His touch is controlled, almost reverent.