The Forbidden Mountain Man

by Bonnie Paulson

  There wouldn’t be another chance to hold her. For the first time, I realized just what she’d come to mean to me and all the ways I’d ruined it between us before we’d even had a chance to start.

  For the rest of my life I’d regret that. There was nothing I could do to fix it.

  Chapter 15

  Stephenie

  Nightmares filled my night until suddenly they didn’t. I slept hard, warm and comfortable, waking when Carter shifted me back to the cot.

  I scrambled to a sitting position as he moved across to his own cot. When had he come over and held me? Why hadn’t I known about that? The vulnerability in sleep wasn’t something to mess with and yet, I couldn’t help feeling like he’d betrayed that trust as well.

  Everything he’d said the night before had made sense. I knew I sat across from a man who was neither innocent as I’d originally assumed or helpless. For whatever reason, he wanted me to know who and what he was.

  My bag hadn’t been moved from where I’d propped it up as a pillow on the cot. At least, he hadn’t gone through that while I’d been asleep. I pulled it onto my lap, unzipping it yet again and pulling out some bags of trail mix I’d been saving. Even a small unopened plastic bottle of water had snugged itself down between a miniature first aid kit and something I wasn’t willing to identify as a Hello, Kitty pad of paper. Not out loud anyway.

  Three bags of trail mix. I tossed two to Carter. I wasn’t going to stay there with him in the boxcar. I unscrewed the lid of the water and took a drink, setting it on the table when I was done.

  Finally, I looked at him, my heart palpably aching as I realized we were too different to have any chances together. Did I want to live my life doubting everything about the man I chose? And he was who I would have chosen. Even then, as I sat there across from him, I wished there was some way I could be with him.

  As if he sensed my withdrawal, Carter leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and studying me. “Stephenie, let’s talk about this. I’m sure there’s a solution we can come to.” He reached out, touching my fingers with his.

  I pulled out of reach. I had to be able to think and if he touched me, I’d be distracted and even lulled into believing what he said. I couldn’t chance it again. Shaking my head, I gazed calmly back at him. “I’m sorry. I can’t… I can’t give up my life for you. You lied to me and now you’re trying to sweet talk me because you want me to hold up my end of the deal. You had my bag this whole time. You even talked me out of looking for it. And for what?”

  He didn’t say anything, maybe he sensed that I wouldn’t listen anyway. I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose and then sighed, opening my eyes again. “No. You acted like you cared, like you wanted to get to know me. And… I fell for it.” I pressed my lips together, and shook my head. “What else did you lie about? Or would you lie about?” Would he be like my father and cheat on me at some point?

  Furrowing his brow, Carter clasped his hands together between his knees. “I’m not the only one who lied. You gathered information on your family and you wondered why they wanted revenge?”

  I straightened, shoving things into my bag. There would be no reasoning with him. “I gathered information on all of the families. Not just the Rossis. And for the record? Giovanni Rossi cheated on my mother. He lied to us and when she died of a broken heart… I swore I’d get my revenge. You would honestly stand in the way of me practicing one of the Rossi family’s oldest traditions? If anything, I should make The Rossi proud. Aren’t I being a good daughter?” I said the last with derision as if there was such a thing in Little Italy unless the daughter did what she was told blindly and without hesitation.

  But none of that could matter. In three days, we’d be in court, if we survived that long. If I wanted to make it to trial, I knew I had to get away from Carter and find safety on my own.

  I stood and pointed at the door. “You’re going to let me out and point me in the direction of the nearest town. If you don’t, I’ll kill you in your sleep. Or you’ll be forced to kill me.” I meant every word I said and I think he sensed I wasn’t bluffing. One thing Rossis were good for was upholding their promises.

  If Carter didn’t let me get away, I’d force the issue – one way or the other.

  “Is that what you want to do?” He swallowed, watching me as if I might change my mind, if he waited long enough.

  Grabbing the poncho I’d left on the chair, I bunched it in my hands. “Are you stupid? No. Of course not, but none of this is what I want. None of it.” I blinked back tears and moved toward the doors of the boxcar. I dashed my fingers across my cheeks and realized it had stopped raining. One more thing I could stuff back into the bag. “Let me out, Carter.”

  He moved closer to me, reaching for the large handle and cranking it to the side, releasing the door and letting it swing a couple feet open. As I moved to sit on the edge of the car, he stopped me, crouching beside me and turning my face toward him. “Don’t leave, Stephenie. Please.” His blue eyes beseeched me. “I didn’t want to hurt you, I promise.”

  Hot tears filled my eyes and coursed down the cool skin of my cheeks. I half-shrugged. “Sometimes we do what we have to.” Just like I had to leave. I was already falling in love with him. If I wanted to do what I needed to, I couldn’t let him have any more of my heart.

  I slid from the edge of the car, falling into the damp fern and foliage growing up around the car held aloft by a collection of boulders. I had no idea how that boxcar got there, but it had saved our lives the night before.

  Pre-dawn light announced the day’s arrival and I repositioned my bag across my back to make it easier to hike. I glanced up at him without words.

  He knew what I needed, and pointed in a straight line from the end of the box. I would walk that way to get back to a town. Once there, I could hide out until the trial started. I had enough cash in my bag, I could hide for quite a while.

  One last glance at Carter was all I could take. I needed to shore up my resolve. I’d see him in the courtroom and I wouldn’t be able to stare at him like I would want to. Hopefully, I could get over the longing to be in his arms again.

  I turned my back on Carter in the box and put one foot in front of the other. I could do this. Hadn’t I faked my own death and hid out with a man for almost three weeks? What made me think I couldn’t succeed at this?

  Nothing. I could do whatever I needed to and the rest of the world could watch me succeed while they doubted me.

  The only thing I wanted was left behind, lost in the limbs and brush of the woods. I left my heart in the box beside him.

  Chapter 16

  Carter

  Stephenie’s dark curls bounced as she stepped down from a log, almost completely out of sight.

  Something tugged deep in my gut and I moved forward as if to chase her and then… I stopped myself. She didn’t want me. She’d caught me in a lie, maybe the biggest I’d ever told and she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

  I might not be able to stop her, but I could follow her and make sure she made it wherever she was going safely.

  Glancing through the trees toward the sky, I couldn’t tell one way or the other if we were in for more rain or not, but I couldn’t stay there. I climbed back into the boxcar, scooping up blankets and anything else I might need and shoving them into a backpack I’d stored in the bin by Stephenie’s cot. I wouldn’t need the lantern.

  I hiked the pack higher on my back and secured the strap at my waist with a click. Climbing down from the train car, I had a momentary glimpse of regret that I wouldn’t let myself entertain. For whatever reason, Stephenie and I were on some kind of collision course and I couldn’t let her be destroyed. It would be in so many people’s best interests if something were to happen to her, mine included, except…

  It wouldn’t. There was something about her I couldn’t quit. I wouldn’t quit. She deserved so much better than the Rossi family lifestyle. She deserved better than what her unfaithful
father had done to her mother.

  Maybe if I accepted the blame, I could take some of the pressure off her, let her get away from the Italian consequences. She could move away and be free of all that. If she would. I wasn’t even sure what she would do, if she were cut off from the family.

  I kept to the moss-covered fallen trees as I followed behind Stephenie, pausing when she stopped and leaned against a tree. Was she crying? She wiped at her cheeks and from the twenty yards or so away where I hung back, I could have sworn I saw tears.

  Witnessing the pain I’d caused hit me like a Rossi bodyguard in the gut. I’d done that. Me. The reality of what I wanted to do to her had nothing to do with pain or tears. I wanted to hold her, comfort her, reassure her that she’d never hurt again. If she and I were free from the pressures of the trial and every evidence of betrayal between us, I would fly her away and never look back. We could hide in plain sight and grow old together.

  But we couldn’t. The truth was out and she wouldn’t forgive me anytime soon. I could handle the repercussions. I could. I just had to make sure she was free of danger. That would be impossible to guarantee until after the trial and I’d been taken into custody.

  She pushed off from the tree, headed down the hill in the general direction I’d pointed. I wasn’t sure what she hoped to find in the small town at the bottom of the mountain, but it would be filled with my absence. That was probably more than enough for her.

  I clung to the shadows of the trees as the sun rose higher in the sky. Stephenie never looked back, and in the two hours it took for her to get to the bottom of the mountainside, she only stopped twice.

  Again, increasing my admiration and respect for her abilities. How many times did I want to stop? She had only stopped twice and both had to do with grief.

  I drew up short when she broke through the trees and foliage on the edge of a clearing behind a gas station and motel. Peeking through the pine needles and wide leaves of the trees, I held my breath as she stopped in the back of the gas station and pushed her hair behind her shoulders in an attempt to clean up.

  What if I followed her, walked up beside her and told her she looked perfect and not to worry? I couldn’t, but, oh, how I longed to let her know I was there.

  Across the street from the motel was a small grocery store flanked by a shoe store and a dollar store. I only had twenty dollars in cash on me. Not smart for a man who needed so much more but was also a wanted witness.

  As Stephenie rallied herself to take action, I glanced behind me, up through the brown barked tree trunks and green-covered rocks and logs. I could go back to the boxcar and wait for more Bianchis or other family members to find me, question me, and then do what? Or I could stay there, watch out for Stephenie before the trial and make sure nothing harmed her.

  In a reserve credit card that had neither my name nor Dave’s attached to it, I could get a motel room and watch from afar as Stephenie tried to rid her life of memories of me.

  I wasn’t sure what else my heart could handle. Being away from her didn’t seem like a good idea. Nothing about any of it felt like a good thing.

  How did I tell her I’d grown attached to her and that I wanted to be with her forever, when she wanted nothing to do with me? As Stephenie walked around the front of the gas station, I took a deep breath.

  The fact that my chance at happy-ever-after had just disappeared knocked me back and I sank to my haunches in mourning. There was nothing worse than how I felt in that instant. Even prison would be preferable to this.

  My plan decided for me, I stuck to the trees as I rounded the perimeter of the clearing and waited for Stephenie to come back out. When she emerged from the double-doors, she held a hot dog in her hands and headed toward the front of the motel. As soon as she got a room, I’d follow suit.

  I might be turning myself in at the trial, but until that time, I’d keep my eye on Stephenie. It was the least I could do for my broken heart.

  Chapter 17

  Stephenie

  Tucked into the lining of my bag was a few thousand dollars. I’d squirreled it in through a hole I’d made a while back. The bag really had been intended as a sort of bugout bag when I’d first purchased it.

  I paid for the next few nights at the motel and secured a room with a queen-sized bed and cable TV. Everything a girl needed.

  The grocery store across the way turned out to be more of a department store with its rows of food beside toiletries, clothing, and even a fishing section that proudly displayed a sale on worms. I purchased new clothes that fit me better than the clothes I’d borrowed from Carter as well as ready-made dishes I could store in the small fridge in the motel room and reheat in the mini microwave.

  As night fell and I got myself comfortably set up in the small room with attached bathroom, I glanced out at the well-lit reader board looking over the sleepy street. Advertising long-term rooms, the vacancies part of the sign flickered. If I could see clearly out the window, then others could see clearly in.

  I moved around the bed with its cheap polyester blanket and drew the curtains closed. A man stood under the sign and seemed to be watching me, but I wasn’t close enough to make out his features. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was Carter.

  It couldn’t be him. I’d left him on the mountain along with my heart.

  If it wasn’t Carter, then someone else was out there watching me and I hadn’t even been in the motel a full day. How would they have found me?

  Had the Bianchi who had tracked me to the cabin followed me to the town on the outskirts of Seattle beneath the mountain?

  Fear flooded me as I backed away from the window and sank onto the bed. I clasped my hands in my lap and fought the tears in my eyes. I didn’t want to be there. The last few weeks with Carter had been like a vacation from reality. I suddenly longed to return to the cabin, pretend like nothing had happened. We could go back to reading books and sitting with each other as we laughed and joked about the things that made us… us.

  I scooted to sit on the bed with my back against the headboard. Turning on the television to a random channel just to fill the silence with some kind of noise so I didn’t feel so alone, I pulled my bag closer to my lap.

  While I longed for Carter, I couldn’t forget what he’d done. The lies he’d told. Sure, he’d brought me in and hidden me, protected me after the traumatic experience of making my car nosedive off the side of the mountain. I couldn’t deny that. I wouldn’t deny that. But… he’d lied to me. I wanted to protect him because I’d assumed he was innocent and yet, there was nothing innocent about him.

  How much of my evidence had he taken out of the bag? I hadn’t fully looked through everything yet. In fact, I’d avoided it most of the day.

  Unzipping the main pocket, I pulled my legs into a crisscross style of sitting and dumped the bag’s contents onto the bed cover in front of me. Rifling through the random receipts and ticket stubs I kept as a kind of camouflage for what was really in there, I shoved the excess garbage to the side.

  A travel-sized hand sanitizer bottle had tumbled out to rest on a manila folder I’d folded in half and secured with a binder clip. The clip hadn’t been moved from the minute pencil markings I’d made on the folder to let me know if the information was compromised.

  Carter could have still taken things and just replaced the clip. I pulled it off and unfolded the envelope style folder. Opening the cover, I winced at the sight of my father shaking hands with Mason Bianchi. Mason was accepted as one of the worst underbosses on the west coast. He’d been heard bragging that he wanted to cause more fear than some of the worst rippers on the east coast.

  My father had supposedly never done business with the Bianchis. The picture was taken at a gala that celebrated the Italian ties to the community and allowed Bianchis, Capones, and Rossis to do business without untying the lines that held the rivalries in place.

  The fifty or so pages after that didn’t mention the Capones or the Rossis as the majority of the ev
idence I’d collected focused on the Bianchis. It didn’t matter that I had nothing on my own family or the Capones. What mattered was the fact that I was betraying another Italian family inside the community of Little Italy. My traitorous actions wouldn’t be forgiven by my own family because treachery against an Italian was treachery against all Italians.

  Carter hadn’t touched anything in there. Nothing was missing or out of place. He hid my bag, but hadn’t gone through it? Why? What could he possibly have gained by doing that? Was he trying to make sure I didn’t leave?

  The confusing pieces of the last few weeks did nothing to calm me down. I gathered up the pages into the folder, reclipped it, and then rolled to the side, tucking the folder under the mattress. It wasn’t the safest place, but it was all I could come up with in the moment.

  Reshuffling things around in the bag, I tossed the garbage into the trash can beside the nightstand. Pushing all kinds of items I might need one day back into the bag, my hand closed around my dead cell phone.

  I paused as I studied it. Was it being tracked? Would I be an idiot, if I turned it on and checked the voicemail? I could answer that for myself. Yes. But what if I called my cell number and checked the voicemail from the landline connected to the motel room? Would they be able to track me then?

  Willing to give it a shot, I reached out, my hands shaking as I gripped the earpiece in my fingers. I dialed the numbers needed to get an outside line and then called my phone number. The call went directly to voicemail. I punched in my passcode and then other numbers to wade through the information aspects of the voicemail prompts.

  I paused at the sound of Adele’s voice on the second to last message. My younger sister wasn’t the best at keeping secrets, yet she spoke in just-over a whisper. “Steph, don’t come home, if you’re okay. The Rossi… he thinks you’re betraying him and the Rossis. Don’t come home. I miss you.”