Chapter Ten
He’d lost the tracks.
Sweat built along his hairline and the back of his neck, but it was the pressure to locate the next sign of the black bear that tunneled through his calm.
The sun beat down on his scalp, the prickling of a burn starting, and hiking his body temperature higher.
Coupled with the muffled breathing behind him—Lettie wouldn’t dare let him know she was out of breath—they’d have to stop to recover soon.
She hadn’t said a word in the past two hours since he’d admitted his greatest fear, keeping a steady pace-behind him along the trail.
He’d gotten used to her silence over the years, the way she fell straight into a project and barely came up to eat or sleep or take a break.
This silence felt different. Controlled.
Heavy. Strained. She wasn’t lost in a research study, trying to get a hold of one of her colleagues to confirm data figures or drafting an article for her next submission to a journal.
He’d accused her of single-handedly killing their marriage when he’d been the one to take the shot.
Rome navigated off the path of crusted red dirt mixed with sand of some long dried up, forgotten body of water and headed for the nearest shade.
They’d charged ahead after that damn bear all morning and had yet to catch up with the animal.
Black bears were fast, but this one seemed to be on a mission.
Slinging his pack over one shoulder, he extracted his metal water bottle and took a deep slug of warming water as he leaned up against the frame of the oversize pine.
Heat swayed through the branches on a low phantom wind, but the shade provided enough relief from the direct sun.
The bark crumbled at the slightest brush of his clothing, having gone too long without a good rainstorm.
They hadn’t come across a stream during their trek.
They’d run out of the last of their resources if he didn’t find them someplace to refill their bottles by sunset.
They’d hit the point of no return.
They could turn around right now and make it back to her van with just enough water and food left over to arrive safely.
Or they could push on, relying on nothing but the map in his pack and his instincts to find her bear.
“We’ll rest here for about thirty minutes. Eat, drink and reapply your sunscreen.”
Lettie dragged her feet off the trail to join him under the shade, almost collapsing like a marionette whose strings had been severed.
Splaying across the dirt, she didn’t seem to mind the tinges of red sticking to her clothing and hair as she closed her eyes against the dance of trees overhead.
She was exactly as he remembered, with her habit of chewing the skin off her bottom lip.
Small patches of dried blood along the delicate pillow of her mouth told him she’d been biting pieces off all morning, and Rome found himself smiling at the absurdity.
He’d missed that. The familiarity and ridiculousness of that single habit while hating the fact she hurt herself in the process.
He’d gone as far as to switch her ChapStick out for peppermint infused.
When that hadn’t worked, he coated her lip products with hot sauce.
None of it had made a damn bit of difference.
Lettie Foster—Lettie Larson—wasn’t the kind of woman to let anyone stop her from doing what she wanted.
“I didn’t know you’d be here.” He took another pull of his water but stowed the bottle to preserve what was left.
Crouching against the tree to repack his water, he extracted a pack of jerky.
He scanned their immediate surroundings before opening the bag.
As much as he wanted to catch up to Sam, they didn’t need the bear in a frenzy or to ambush them a second time.
Terror still clung to his nerves as he recalled the seconds between when he’d realized Lettie hadn’t returned from taking care of her personal needs and seeing a three-hundred-pound black bear lunge for her.
Everything in him had gone still and broken at the thought of losing her like that.
Rome cleared his throat, more to clear his head than get the dust out of his system.
“When Randy offered me the job to find your bear, I didn’t know you were assigned to work in Zion. ”
He and his best friend would be having that conversation once he’d located the bear.
Randy—for all the good the superintendent had done for Rome, since he’d decided to leave Lettie, with giving him odd jobs, a roof over his head and a steady paycheck—should’ve warned him what he’d be walking into. Who he might face.
“Would you have taken the job if he’d told you?
” They were the first words she’d spoken in two hours, and a rush of raw relief coursed through him.
Her voice had always triggered some kind of chain reaction in him, since that first moment she’d introduced herself as his tutor all those years ago.
Every cell in his body had hated the thought of needing help to get through his classes, an argument he’d made to both his science and math professors, but his upbringing had gouged large gaps from his education.
He’d needed her to graduate, and despite his assumptions, the pretty blonde with pale skin who told him she hardly stepped foot outside and with a mouth that had most likely brought many men to their knees, had never once made him feel less than during their lessons.
In fact, the woman currently sprawled across the ground as though hoping it might swallow her whole had been one of the very first people to see him as more than the outcasted teen who’d been raised by the wild.
Her question snapped him back from the past. No.
Yes. Hell, he didn’t know what he would’ve done if Randy had been upfront with him.
It didn’t matter now though, did it? They were stuck together in the middle of nowhere hunting for a bear she’d do anything to save from him.
Problem was, no bear, no paycheck, and with less than a hundred dollars in his wallet, Rome couldn’t afford to not to finish this job.
“You should eat something now. We’ll have to get moving soon enough, and I don’t want to draw anything else that might want to eat us. ”
Lettie didn’t call him out for his noncommittal change of subject. Nor did she ignore his advice, sitting up and pulling her own rations from her pack without a look in his direction.
It felt as though they were on the edge of a cliff, his feet cast over the lip with her standing at his back.
One push. That was all it would take to break what was left of them.
Or…she could pull him back. Help him fill the hole he’d carved into his own chest by walking out.
Part of him wanted that. To fix…this void between them.
He wanted things to go back the way they were when they were first married.
Those frenzied nights of not being able to keep their hands off each other, the consideration to make sure the other had eaten throughout the day or gotten enough sleep, the glances and inside jokes when out with friends that only they understood in that secret language of couples.
There’d been women in the past few months, mostly rangers intrigued by the fact his literal job was to survive night after night of wilderness and wildlife in some of the most dangerous places on the planet, but he hadn’t felt a connection to any of them.
No matter how many times he’d tried to force himself to move on, to take that step to forget his wife, he’d pulled back.
Every time. It didn’t make sense. Their marriage was over in every sense of the word, but something…
That small part of him couldn’t let go. Not yet.
Not when he seemed to be able to breathe after six months of holding his breath. Just from being around her again.
“Why a van?” Rome regretted the question almost as much as he regretted that time he’d let her convince him to try pickled mushrooms.
Her laugh pierced through some invisible wall constructed between them over the past couple of hours and brought it down in a violent shredding of wills. “I needed a change.”
“You hate change.” How many times had he tried to get her to try a different chicken place than the one closest to their house or to move the potato peeler into the drawer closest to the kitchen sink for easier and faster access?
“Yeah. Well, my husband left me, and suddenly, living in the house we bought together and made memories in for ten years gave me hives.” She tore through a piece of dried mango, one of her favorite snacks he’d made sure to keep stocked in their pantry.
Especially when they’d been trying to start their family.
Another pulse in that void in his chest rocked through him.
If there was one point in their marriage he could identify as the beginning of the end, it’d been sitting in that damn doctor’s office, holding Lettie’s steady hand as the fertility doctor had informed them biological children wouldn’t be possible.
No tears. No reaction from her at all. She’d taken the news as any scientist would.
Knew crying wouldn’t change the results and suggested ways to change the outcome.
None of it had made a difference. And she’d…
just accepted it. There hadn’t been talks of adoption or surrogacy.
The subject had been explored then closed.
Permanently and without regard to what he’d wanted.
“I have to be honest. I almost didn’t recognize you back at the scene.
I never thought I’d see you living in the middle of national park.
” He stored the pouch of jerky, his throat coated in preservatives that would surely attack tonight with a surge of acid reflux.
“I had to initiate a reward system for you to go hiking with me. Sometimes just to go outside.”
A half-hearted smile broke through the set of her lips.
Lettie packed up her food but didn’t move to stand.
The slight shake in her hand as she rubbed at her calves told him she’d pushed herself too hard.
“It’s challenging. Some days more than others, especially when it comes to rationing water for showers, but you know how much I like a challenge. ”
Yeah. He did. And sometimes he wondered if that was what he had been for her, if that was why she’d retreated into her work with no intention of coming up for air.
If he’d been nothing but a project for her to fix before focusing that beautiful brain on the next big thing.
And he’d liked it. Having her all to himself.
Someone who gave a damn, who he could worry about.
He caught the slight glaze in her eyes as she continued massaging the muscles in her legs, lost in thought.
“I remember. Is that what Sam is for you? A challenge?”
“I think it started that way. The tracking device, getting him to trust me enough to let me close, studying his movements and the ecosystems here in the park.” She folded her heels beneath her thighs. “It gave me purpose. For a while.”
His heart beat hard against his rib cage as Rome tried to read between the exhaustion in her voice and the words coming from her mouth. Tried to shove down the hope splintering through the cracks in that void he couldn’t fill with jobs and women and lying under the stars. “But not anymore?”
Dragging herself to her feet, Lettie hauled her bag over her shoulder with what looked like the last of her energy reserves. “No. Not anymore.”
“What changed?” His mouth dried.
Her gaze locked on him. Just for a moment before she turned away. “Turns out, the only purpose that made me happy walked out the door six months ago.”