“Fuck.” The word erupted from my lips like the harsh crack of a spitting fire, and I clicked the screen off, whipping my phone across the room, not caring if it shattered. I didn’t need anything on it anyway.
My nostrils flared, my body burning up with anger.
I wasn’t even angry because I still wanted her. I was angry because I’d done every goddamn thing for my company—for them—and this was how little they respected me.
I needed to get out of here. I needed air.
My awareness flickered in and out over the next several minutes as I yanked on clothes, boots, and my jacket, not even bothering to zip it up before I stalked outside into the welcoming cold that rivaled me in bitterness.
Each breath seared into my lungs with a vicious chill, numbing the fresh sweep of pain the photo had caused.
I didn’t even pay attention to where I was going until several minutes later when I looked around to see my feet had carried me in the same direction I saw Winna walk every morning with Chewie.
“Goddammit,” I muttered, branches and snow crunching under my feet as I trudged deeper into the woods.
Even when I was pissed, my nosy neighbor still managed to make her way into my thoughts through no fault of her own.
This whole time… Hailey and Andy had been together this whole time. But had they betrayed me before—
“What the—” I reared back as an arrow sliced directly through my path, sinking its deadly tip into a tree on my right with a loud thunk.
My head whipped to the left, searching for where it had come from.
“Who’s there?” I yelled.
Had someone really mistaken me for a damn deer?
I scanned through the dead but dense foliage, white and brown blurring with the gray sky into a cold, barren camouflage.
“Hello?” I called again and that was when I caught movement up in the trees.
What the hell…
My eyes squinted, making out a light-brown box suspended on a triangular platform bolted between three trees.
“Where are—You.”
Of course, it was her. Of course, it was Winna. Who the hell else out here was a proven hazard to my health?
Her head peeked out from what was a well-concealed hunter’s nest constructed up in the trees. “You’re a long way from your cabin, Neighbor.” She grinned.
Right after just missing me with a damn arrow, she fucking grinned.
“Are you insane?” I demanded, my breath coming out in hard pants.
“What?” she called.
“You. Almost. Shot. Me,” I yelled louder, but she’d already abandoned her post in the hut’s small window to climb down the ladder used to access the vantage point.
Her bundled form waded through the trees and brush toward me. “Almost being the important word,” she replied once she was in front of me, folding her arms over her chest. “If I’d wanted to hit you, I would have.”
I bit into the side of my cheek, my prior anger eager to take advantage of this easy outlet. “You can’t just shoot at people.”
“I didn’t shoot at you. I shot in front of you,” she said, crossing my path to make her point and pull her arrow from the frozen ground. “You were walking for a while and looked like you needed an intervention.”
“An intervention is not the same as a goddamn arrow.” My teeth clenched so tightly I thought they might crack.
Her pale cheeks turned rosy, but she responded, unfazed, “What happened?”
“I came here for solitude—to get away.”
I was yelling. I knew by the look in her eyes rather than the volume of my voice that was quickly drowned by the vast expanse of wilderness surrounding us.
The thing was, I wasn’t yelling at her. Not really. I was yelling at the people who deserved it, and she wasn’t one of them. But, unfortunately for her, she was here and her arrow, for its success in cutting through my thoughts, had also sliced a hole in the sack of anger I’d been filling, and it came spilling out with unfiltered vengeance, uncaring who was a casualty or collateral damage.
“You can’t get away from life. You just have to live it,” she charged back, notching her chin up as though it made her any more imposing against a man with months of anger festering inside him.
I stepped closer to her, my height combined with the bulk of my jacket making her appear even smaller, no matter how large of a space her personality took up.
“I can’t live it when—” I broke off, catching myself.
Bitterness and regret charged through me like a snap of a hot rubber band on my heart over and over again.
I’d worked so hard—given so much for so long, for this day—the day I could walk away. Only it had come with nothing to walk away to. Goals… plans… a future with a woman I cared about… all of it evaporated overnight, and even though I had money—more than any sane human could ever need—it felt like I had nothing.
Gritting my teeth, I said instead, “I can’t live it if I’m lying dead on the forest floor with an arrow through my heart or, knowing your aim, my dick.”
She flinched but didn’t back down. “I was just trying to help.”
God, there wasn’t anything fake or fearful about this woman. She just did what she wanted, said what she wanted, without pretense or thought of propriety or ulterior motive. It was dangerous and awkward and ridiculous most of the time, but it was also transparent. And that was like cool water on a sweltering day—addictive and refreshing.
It was also maddening.
Literally.
It was Winna Madden-ing.
“Like you were trying to help when you head-butted me?” I accused with a low bite to my voice, the slight part of her lips fueling my desire, and since I couldn’t act on that, it came out as even more anger. “Or when you spied on me? Or when you offered me jerked meat?”
Her jaw bobbed, for once working with a loss of words. But that didn’t last long.
“Yes, I was just trying to help. Like when I led you to the cabin, when I gave you beer and some of my famous jerky, and when I made sure you had firewood instead of having to buy more,” she charged, taking her turn to step closer to me, leaving inches between our actual bodies but none between the outermost layer of our jackets. “This is my property. My cabin. And you are my guest. I already apologized for the head-butting incident, but I saw you walking and you’re clearly upset—”
“Most people would be after being shot at.”
Her nostrils flared and the instant, unwelcome thought crossed my mind that she was damn hot when she was feisty—and scolding me.
“I’m sorry, but you looked like you needed help to get out of a bad headspace.” She shrugged.
My head dipped. “You have no idea what I came here for.”
Without a scarf or anything over my face, the scathing tone of my voice was matched by the frosty white smoke that accompanied it.
She shrugged, cool as a cucumber when I felt like I steamed like a raging bull, ready to charge. “So, then tell me,” she said. “I’m better at advice than I am at apologies, I promise.”
Was there nothing that fazed her?
My mouth opened and, for a split-shocking-second, the words rushed to the tip of my tongue, about to leap off the cliff and confess what had driven me to Michigan—and what had spurred me into the woods.