My phone buzzes against my hip, and the vibration saves me from explaining myself.
"Just discussing dinner," Oscar says smoothly, stirring something that smells incredible. "Kelly was offering to help, but I told her the kitchen can only handle one artist at a time."
"Artist," Konnor repeats flatly. "You're sautéing onions."
"With intention and passion, which you wouldn't understand because your idea of cooking is reheating surgical cafeteria leftovers."
I use their bickering as cover to check my phone, expecting nothing important—maybe a notification from an app I forgot to delete.
The message is from Lena. My assistant, my only remaining ally at Goodwin Industries, the woman who booked this cabin under her own name.
Lena: Mason went through your files at the office. Personnel records, travel documents, everything. He probably knows where you are. Be careful.
My pulse hammers against my temples, drowning out Oscar and Konnor's continued argument about proper knife technique versus "adequate butchery."
Mason knows.
The thought loops through my brain like a warning siren I can't silence.
Mason knows where I am. Mason is coming. The sanctuary I found in this cabin has an expiration date now, and the countdown has started.
"I need air," I announce, and my voice sounds distant, disconnected from my body. "I'm taking a walk."
Jake appears in the kitchen doorway, grease-streaked and frowning, wiping his hands on a rag that's seen better decades.
His steel-gray eyes sweep over my face with an intensity that makes me want to crawl under the table and hide.
"Everything okay?" The question is simple, but his tone suggests he already knows the answer.
"Fine." The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. "Just need to stretch my legs. I won't be long."
I don't wait for their responses. I grab a jacket from the hook by the door—Jake's jacket, I realize too late—and slip outside before anyone can stop me.
The forest swallows me within minutes.
Trees close around me like curtains falling on a stage, and I walk without direction, my feet carrying me deeper into green shadows while my mind races through the worst-case scenario.
The one where Mason shows up at the cabin with cameras and reporters, capturing my pregnant belly for the tabloids while he plays the wounded victim reunited with the woman who tried to destroy him.
The first drops of rain catch me off guard—light at first, almost gentle, then heavier, angrier, sheets of water that turn the forest path into a treacherous maze of mud and shadow.
I keep walking. The rain soaks through Jake's jacket, through my shirt, through whatever remaining composure I was pretending to possess.
My shoes squelch with each step, and the trees all look the same—endless brown trunks stretching toward a gray sky that offers no landmarks, no guidance, no mercy.
Hours pass. Time becomes meaningless when you're lost and soaked and spiraling through every mistake you've ever made.
My legs burn. My lungs ache. I stumble over a root I didn't see, catch myself against a tree trunk that scrapes my palms raw, and keep moving.
Then headlights cut through the downpour, twin beams of gold piercing the gray curtain of rain.
Relief nearly drops me to my knees.
I know that truck. I know the shape of it, the sound of the engine, the way the driver's side door creaks when it opens.
Jake's face appears through the rain-streaked window, and he's… furious.
His eyes are blazing with an anger that makes me take an instinctive step backward.
He's out of the truck before I can move, crossing the distance between us in three long strides, and his voice cuts through the rain like a whip.
"Four hours." The words are barely controlled, his chest heaving beneath his soaked flannel. "Four goddamn hours, Kelly. Do you have any idea what we thought?"
"I got turned around." My teeth are chattering, but I force the words out anyway. "The rain started and everything looked the same—"
"You just walked into a storm without telling anyone where you were going." He's closer now, rainwater streaming down his face, and I can see the fear beneath the anger. "You could have fallen, hit your head, gotten hypothermia. You could have—"
"I'm fine," I snap back, because his anger is igniting my own. "I'm standing right here, completely intact, and I don't need you lecturing me like I'm a child who wandered off at the grocery store."
"You're acting like one." His voice rises to match mine. "Disappearing into the woods during a thunderstorm—what the hell were you thinking?"
"I was thinking I needed space." The words come out hot and sharp. "I was thinking that maybe I've spent my entire life being controlled by men who thought they knew better, and I'm done with it."
"This isn't about control, this is about basic safety—"
"It's always about control." I step toward him, rain plastering my hair to my face, fury burning through the cold that's settled into my bones. "And now you're yelling at me instead of listening, which is what men do when they don't get their way."
Jake's expression shifts—something dangerous flickering behind his eyes, his jaw working like he's physically restraining words he wants to unleash.
"I'm yelling because I was terrified." His voice cracks on the last word, and the vulnerability beneath the anger stops me cold. "I was terrified, Kelly. I kept seeing—" He stops, breathes, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "You don't get to disappear on me and then act like my reaction is unreasonable."
"I didn't ask you to care." The words are cruel and I know it, but I can't seem to stop myself. "I didn't ask any of you to care. This was supposed to be temporary—I was supposed to be here alone, figuring out my life, not getting tangled up in…"
He moves so fast I don't have time to react.
One second he's standing three feet away, rain cascading down his face, anger and fear and desperation warring in his expression.
The next his hands are in my hair, tilting my head back, and his mouth crashes into mine with a force that steals every thought from my head.
The kiss is furious and desperate. All the things we've been dancing around, all the tension that's been building since he pulled me from a wrecked car in a storm just like this one—it explodes between us in a collision of lips and teeth and tongue.
I grab his shoulders to steady myself, or push him away, or pull him closer—I don't know anymore.
His body crowds me against the truck, solid and warm despite the rain, and I feel every inch of him pressed against me through layers of soaked fabric.
"Tell me this doesn't feel real, Kelly." He pulls back just enough to speak, his breath ragged against my lips. "Tell me you haven't been thinking about this every night since you crashed into my life."
I can't answer. Can't form words when his mouth is so close, when his hands are still tangled in my hair, when every nerve ending in my body is screaming for more.
"That's what I thought." His voice drops to a growl. "Get in the truck."
The command sends heat pooling low in my stomach.
"I'm not done being angry with you," I manage, but my voice has lost its edge.
"Neither am I." His thumb traces my bottom lip, swollen from his kiss. "We can be angry together inside where it's warm."
He opens the passenger door without breaking eye contact, and the interior of the cab glows with dashboard light, intimate and enclosed, promising privacy the rain-soaked forest can't provide.
"Get in the truck, Kelly."
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