Safer Ground

The scariest thing he did was make her feel safe. Name three things you can see. A bluetick coonhound, pulling at her lead, disobedient and eager. The Sierra Nevada, with Jeffrey pines tracing the ridgelines like stitching. A man with the energy of an off-leash golden retriever, a rock climber's build, green eyes, and dimples that should be illegal. Maybe I should stick to naming two things. I rebuilt my life after surviving a marriage that nearly killed me. And I rebuilt it around the only relationship I needed — the one with myself. Autonomy and independence are everything to me now, and I finally have it: a dog training business, a quiet life in a mountain town, and an ex-husband behind bars. So when Felix Whitaker shows up looking for help with a problematic but gifted bluetick coonhound named Topo —all tousled hair, flexing forearms, and a shirt doing absolutely nothing to hide those shoulders — I want to say no. I desperately need the money. But I don't trust myself around him. Because when he looks at me like that, my whole body says yes and my whole history says run. And when my ex-husband finds me and forces us into hiding at a remote cabin in the backcountry, I lose the only defense I had. Distance.