POSSESSIVE MOUNTAIN MAN: IRON PEAK
Bella Holtby
IRON PEAK
TAYLOR I came to Iron Peak to disappear. I didn''t plan on her.
My career is in ruins. A lawsuit I didn't deserve has stripped away everything I worked for. All I want is the silence of the mountains, a rundown cabin, and enough time to figure out how to put my life back together.
What I get is a chaotic, beautiful server who spills drinks, brings wrong orders, and somehow makes me smile for the first time in months.
I tell myself it's nothing. I'm not staying. I have nothing to offer anyone — least of all a woman like Polly.
But somewhere between fixing the cabin, caring for the horses, and watching her face light up around them, something shifts. She believes in me when I've stopped believing in myself. And I start believing in her — in her dreams, her talent, her heart — in a way that terrifies me.
For the first time in years, I don't want my old life back.
I want her.
Then my past shows up at the door. My ex. A deal that could clear my name, give me everything I've been fighting for — but at a cost I can't admit out loud.
So I disappear. No explanation. No goodbye.
And now I have to live with what I've done — and figure out if it's too late to choose what actually matters.
Before I lose the only woman who ever made me want to stay.
POLLY I'm barely keeping it together. Then he walks in and changes everything.
I'm new to Iron Peak, new to this job, and failing spectacularly at both. The last thing I need is a handsome stranger choosing my table and looking at me like I'm not a complete disaster.
But he stays. He keeps coming back. And slowly, without me even realising it, he becomes the best part of my days — fixing up the cabin together, evenings with the horses, moments that feel too good to be real.
He sees something in me I'd stopped seeing in myself. He believes in my dreams, fights for them, like they matter. Like Imatter.
Then one day he's just — gone.
No explanation. No goodbye. Just silence.
And I'm left wondering if I ever really knew him at all — or if I was just a distraction from the life he was always going back to.
Some escapes change everything. Some people are worth fighting your way back for.
