Chapter Eight
He had only a split second to act.
Rome collided with all five feet, three inches of his ex-wife and whipped her behind him. Black fur, yellow teeth and over three hundred pounds of mass bore down on him as he raised the rifle. And took aim through the scope.
His heart shot into his throat. His entire body centered on that one shot. Adrenaline dumped into his veins. One shot. That was all it would take to put the animal down as he’d done with so many others. Every second counted. Every slight adjustment.
“No!” Lettie slammed into the long barrel of his rifle, throwing off his balance.
His finger clamped down on the trigger, and the rifle bucked against his shoulder. An earsplitting shot arced to the right of the black bear. A tree a dozen feet away exploded in an array of bark and shattered wood.
Lettie pulled her hands back with a hiss, cradling them against her chest as the black bear let out a gut-twisting, defying roar before lunging for the opposite trees.
The shot had scared the animal off from attacking, but Rome’s pulse refused to come down.
It took too many seconds to get his head on straight as he studied the brush where the bear had disappeared.
Turning on Lettie, he lowered the barrel of his weapon to the forest floor.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His damn shoulder ached from the gun impacting at the wrong angle.
He’d had it. Right there in his sights. He could’ve ended this and gotten the hell out of this place.
Away from her. But once again, Lettie had interrupted his life plan.
“Are you out of your mind? I could’ve shot you! ”
Her mouth parted. Eyes wide. From the incident in which they’d both nearly been mauled by a black bear or from him raising his voice, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t actually give a damn. Lettie shook her head. “I told you. You can’t shoot him. He’s part of my study—”
“Screw your study. He was ready to kill you, and don’t think I didn’t notice you were trying to talk him down.
” A decade-long rage slipped through the seams of his control.
Rome scrubbed a hand down his face as the past minute played across his memory.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do his damn job if she was going to intervene every step of the way.
“Then again, I’m not sure why I’m surprised.
You’ve always chosen your work over anything else, including your own health.
Difference is I just got to see it in person. ”
Clutching her hands to her chest, she took a step back as though to rewind time. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t have the energy to get into this with her.
He’d spent the past ten years holding his tongue.
He could do it until he managed to get the hell out of this park.
And once he filed the divorce papers, he wouldn’t have to see her ever again.
She’d already sold the house, they didn’t have any kids.
Nothing stopped him from moving on with his life.
This was just a nice reminder. “Nothing.”
Rome headed back for the campsite. He’d managed to pack his belongings, but Lettie would need to get her gear together before he set off to follow that damn bear.
He was close. All he had to do was finish this.
The bear was a danger to every hiker it came upon, more so now that it’d broken from its hibernation patterns and hunting grounds.
Sam the Black Bear had become unpredictable and feral in the weeks rangers had lost track of him, and now without his GPS tracking device attached, Rome would have to do this the old-fashioned way. Lettie’s feelings be damned.
“That doesn’t sound like nothing.” Her uneven steps thudded behind him, but he wasn’t going to slow down to help her manage keeping up.
She’d volunteered to accompany him on this trek.
She needed to figure out a way to stay alive.
“It sounds like you’ve practiced exactly what to say to me in the past six months and have been waiting for the right moment to unleash how you really feel. ”
He pulled up short, turning on her. “So what if I have? Doesn’t change anything between us.”
“That’s not all of it though, is it?” The fire in her eyes guttered.
Lettie clutched one hand, smoothing her thumb over her palm, and the memory of her grabbing on the barrel of his weapon right before the bullet had ripped down the barrel etched deeper.
Hell. The explosion of gun powder and force would’ve heated the metal in an instant and burned her hand.
The fight rushed out of him as realization struck. He took a step to counter the distance between them. “Give me your hand.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Shouldering his weapon by the strap, Rome pried her hand from her chest with a hiss of surprise.
Angry welts and bright red skin peeled and bubbled diagonally across her hand.
He didn’t give her a choice to pull away as he dragged her the rest of the way to the campsite and tipped his pack upside down with his free hand.
The first aid kit hit the ground and broke open.
“Injuries out here in the middle of nowhere can get infected faster than you expect. When you’re hurt, you tell me, understand? Your life might depend on it.”
She didn’t fight as he tipped his water bottle—still ice cold, thankfully—over her hand and cleaned any debris she might’ve picked up in the past couple of minutes.
“I hardly think a burn is going to be the death of me, but maybe next time you won’t try to shoot an innocent bear so I don’t have to grab your gun. ”
That rage he’d shoved deep into his core over and over throughout the years burned through the cracks in his composure, but he kept his mouth firmly shut.
After drying the wound, he applied a thick layer of burn ointment and secured gauze around her palm before tying it off.
“Shoes. Off. And don’t tell me you’re fine. ”
She didn’t argue. A miracle in and of itself. Sitting on her rear end—a little harder than he imagined she meant to—Lettie toed off her boots without undoing the laces.
“There’s your problem. Your laces are too loose.
If you can slip in and out of your boots, they’re not tight enough.
Your boots are sliding back and forth, rubbing against your socks and the bottoms of your feet.
” He tossed her boots in the dirt beside him and stripped off her socks when it became clear how long it would take for her to do it with one good hand.
Angry skin and liquid-filled bubbles peppered the undersides of both feet.
“Damn it, woman. You’re going to be the death of me. ”
They were losing precious seconds to catch up with her black bear. Hell, maybe that was her intention.
“Didn’t I teach you how to tie your hiking boots? You’ve been on plenty of hikes with me since we got married.” He went back to the spilled first aid kit, careful to avoid the items covered in dirt.
“It’s possible I blocked it all out after I came home one night to find divorce papers on my kitchen table and my husband’s things missing.” She shrugged those delicate shoulders that had no business carrying thirty pounds of gear. “But I’m not a psychologist. That’s just a guess.”
His exhale failed to clear that flare of guilt that came with her accusation.
Repeating the same steps as with her hand, he gently washed the wounds with the water from his water bottle, applied an antibiotic ointment to fight off infection and wrapped both of her feet.
“Stay put, and keep your feet up on my pack.”
Without giving her an opportunity to answer, Rome hauled her feet to his pack and shoved to stand.
He crossed the clearing to her pack and took out a pair of rolled-up socks, presumably clean.
Tossing them into her lap, he cleaned up the minefield of first aid supplies.
“Put those on, then your boots. It’ll be uncomfortable for a day or two, but the blisters should heal fairly quick. ”
“Thank you.” The weight of her attention tensed the muscles along his neck, but he wouldn’t look at her.
Not until he could talk to her without the bite in his voice.
Because no matter how many times his anger over the way she’d simply given up on their marriage spiked, she didn’t deserve to be the brunt of it.
Collecting the last pieces of the first aid kit, Rome stashed the travel-sized box into his pack and hauled his gear up.
Offering her his hand, he helped her to her feet with a little too much force.
Her softness met the hard planes of his chest, her breath rushing out of her in a gasp that had he’d had the privilege of playing on repeat in his head last night pressed against her in that damn sleeping bag.
Mere centimeters separated her mouth from his, and Rome found himself remembering all the ways he’d tasted her over the years.
That explosive first kiss in the university library when he’d passed his algebra test with an 80 percent and hadn’t caught himself in time, and her responding smile right after.
The second, more intentional kiss as he’d backed her into the nearest bookshelf.
And the very distinct sound of a clearing throat from one of the librarians.
The kiss that’d started sweet on his dorm room couch while they’d been watching a movie then turned into something far more heated and had led them into his bedroom.
The one that had sealed their marriage ceremony and started the rest of their lives. He could have that again. Just a taste.
He bit through the rush of heat sparking between them and released her hand before it became a full inferno. “Grab your gear. We need to get moving. Your bear has a few minutes head start on us.”
Stepping out of her gravitational pull that’d hooked him from Day One, Rome breathed a bit easier, but couldn’t dislodge the feeling of wrongness that came with increasing the distance between them. He turned on his heel, more than a little agitated to catch up with the bear.
“That’s it?” Her voice held strong from behind him. Steadier than his. “After six months, that’s all I get?”
“What is there to say that hasn’t already been said, Arlette?
” His stomach soured at the use of a name she absolutely hated, but it was the only way for him to emotionally keep himself in check.
To see her as a stranger and not the woman he’d given everything for the past ten years.
“The divorce papers spelled it out pretty well.”
“I don’t care what the papers said.” She broke on the last word. “I want to know why.”
Rome pulled up short. This wasn’t going to work.
This push and pull between them. He had a job to do, and Lettie was doing everything in her power to keep him from achieving it.
That much was clear by the way she’d put herself in danger to save that damn bear.
Truth was, he needed this job. He couldn’t make a mistake.
She’d been the main provider over the course of their marriage, and without a steady income, he’d lose everything he’d fought for since leaving.
His own independence. The chance to learn who he was without her.
If he was worth anything. Rome faced her, squinting into the morning sun. “You want to know why?”
“Yes.” She kept her head high, but he caught the wobble in her chin, the amount of energy it took for her to keep her composure. As if the answer threatened to tear her into a thousand pieces. If only she’d shown this much emotion during their marriage, things might’ve ended differently.
But she was right. Lettie deserved a clear answer. Maybe then they could both move on. He tightened his hand around the strap of his rifle. “You forgot our anniversary.”