Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HUDSON
Kenna tugged me behind her, down the steps and to the east, her stride focused and purposeful as she led us toward the brush.
I couldn’t count how many times she and I had explored these woods when we’d been younger. At one time, we’d had a dozen paths running through that part of the Havens’ property. How we always found our way out, I had no idea.
“You ever think what a miracle it is that we never got lost out here as kids?”
She squatted next to what appeared to be a Canada goldenrod, carefully studying it, before pulling out a blue flag and affixing it to one of the stems. “All the time, actually. That’s why I do this.” She stood, swiped her hands on her pants, then continued deeper into the woods.
“Why you do what? These flags?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about them,” I said, tugging on the variety of colors poking out of the top of her backpack. “Y’all do scavenger hunts out here or something?”
She glanced back at me with a small smile, the sun shining through the trees setting her dark hair aflame. “Hardly. Ella and I are pretty much the only two who come back here. In this part, anyway.”
“She’s a lot like you, isn’t she?”
Her smile grew. “Yeah.”
“So, you put these out for her? Why?”
“Your momma ever tell you about the scare we had with her a few years ago?”
I thought back to all the information my mom had been feeding me—at my request—for years, but I couldn’t remember anything about Kenna’s nieces coming up at all. “Not that I can recall. What happened?”
She blew out a long breath and stopped to pick up a fallen flag, reaffixing it to the correct bush. “The little shit took off on us. She was maybe five? Definitely not old enough to be in here by herself. She and I had been going into the woods for a couple months, explorin’, and Ms. Independent that she is thought it’d be okay if she dipped inside without lettin’ anyone know.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. She was missin’ for a couple hours.” Kenna’s head dipped and she swallowed, her voice shaky when she said, “Scariest hours of my life.”
“Did y’all call in the search and rescue team?”
“If by search and rescue team you mean me , then yeah.”
“Wait…Havenbrook is surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, and y’all don’t have an SAR team in place yet?”
“Nope. Even after that. Even though Daddy’s the one who’d approve the budget for that and it was his freakin’ granddaughter who went missin’.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s just me.”
“That’s…” I shook my head, lifting my hat off my head and scrubbing a hand over my scalp. “Fucking ridiculous.”
She huffed out a laugh and nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. But what’re you gonna do?” She gestured to the red flag she’d tied around a deep root in the ground, protruding enough to pose a hazard if someone wasn’t paying attention. “That’s why I do this. After Ella got lost in here, I taught her everything I could. She knows these woods as well as we did— better . Plus, she thinks she’s playin’ while I’m crammin’ her little brain full of even more knowledge with some of these flags.”
“And how’d your brain get stuffed full of all this knowledge?”
Kenna had always been smart as hell and resourceful, especially outdoors, but watching her comb the forest, eyes assessing as she categorized vegetation for her niece, was something else entirely.
She shrugged and shifted her gaze from mine, suddenly finding the leaves on a red buckeye shrub incredibly intriguing. “Here and there.”
I narrowed my eyes, studying her, sorting through the memories I had of every detail my momma had told me about Kenna since I’d been gone. Then something clicked. “Your knowledge in this have anything to do with those weeks you disappear from Havenbrook a couple times a year?”
She jerked up her head to meet my gaze, staring silently at me for long moments before shaking her head. “Dunno why I thought you wouldn’t know about that…”
“You gonna tell me what you do during that time?”
“What, your checkin’ up on me didn’t provide you with that information?”
I smiled, completely unrepentant. Yeah, I’d checked up on her—what the hell else was I supposed to do while I was a world away, still loving her with everything I had but not having any place to put it?
She’d gone radio silent. She’d been the one who pulled away. Yes, the catalyst lay directly at my feet—when my first failed mission had resulted in us taking on enemy fire. Thankfully, I’d gotten my team out of there with nothing more than a bullet wound scar that still graced my shoulder.
When I’d told Kenna, she’d freaked out, reiterating how that was exactly what she’d been worried about. In that moment, when I’d been in a hospital bed, recovering before I could return to the mission, I could admit her fear had some plausibility.
I couldn’t afford to be distracted, not when it wasn’t just my life on the line, but also the lives of my entire platoon. So, reluctantly, I’d agreed to back off like she wanted.
But it wasn’t as if my love for her had suddenly vanished. As if it came with an on-off switch that I could flip whenever it was convenient. So, yeah, I’d checked up on her. Often and without shame.
I lifted one shoulder. “Apparently sometimes secrets stay secrets, even in Havenbrook.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“This one has, hasn’t it?”
“That’s only ’cause no one but Will knows the details.” She waved a hand through the air as if to bat away my questions. “It’s nothing. Not a big deal.”
Uh-huh. Just like her coming out here and making the woods safe for her niece wasn’t a big deal.
“I don’t buy that. If it takes you out of Havenbrook for weeks at a time, it seems like it’d probably be a pretty big deal.”
I reached out and gripped her wrist, halting her forward movement. And then I stepped into her space and backed her right up to a huge tree trunk the size of a small house. Didn’t stop until I was pressed up against her, her breaths bathing my chest, making me absolutely ache with need. For her.
I tilted my head down toward her, resting my jaw against her temple. “You afraid to tell me?”
“No,” she said, her voice nothing more than a croak. Jesus, I loved that she was just as affected by me as I was by her. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. “I’m not afraid. I just…like my privacy.”
I hummed, pulling back enough to look down at her and remembering a time when she didn’t keep a damn thing from me. “Never used to. At least, not with me.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the note of sadness that had seeped into my tone or something else entirely, but she gave in with a sigh.
“Fine, you big baby.” She poked me in the stomach, but I didn’t care—not one bit. Because then she left her hand on me, tucked into the front waistband of my jeans, and how the fuck was I supposed to concentrate on anything but her fingers so close to my cock? “A few years back, I got certified in an outreach program for at-risk kids. Wilderness preparedness, outdoor survival education, that kind of thing. They have sessions throughout the year, and I usually try to make it to at least two of them.”
Goddamn, I didn’t think I could be any more awed by this woman, but she kept proving me wrong. Showing me new and different ways she’d changed. Grown. Evolved into this beautiful, giving, generous woman that I was falling in love with all over again.
Besides that, I was relieved to know that even though she’d stayed in Havenbrook, she hadn’t abandoned her adventurous soul—the one that had goaded me to rappel or zip-line or cliff dive with her. I loved that she’d found a way to stay close to her family but still feed that part of her that thrived on the rush of adrenaline.
I envied her that. She made it look so easy—doing what she loved without immersing her entire being in it and forgetting about everything else. Without losing herself to a career she might truly enjoy, but which took her from what—or whom—she loved.
I’d lived that. Was currently living that. And some days, I’d give anything to be back in Havenbrook, surrounded by family and lifelong friends, without the weight of the world on my shoulders.
But that wasn’t the path I’d chosen. What would my dad say if I quit now? If I gave up my career in the army, all because I was homesick ?
As I looked down into Kenna’s eyes, hers searching and just as hungry as mine were, I knew I wasn’t just homesick. I was Kenna sick.
Not a day had gone by since I’d left where I didn’t feel that ache in my chest, the desperate need to talk to her, touch her, hold her, nearly overwhelming sometimes. Made all the worse because the only place I could do any of it was in my dreams.
I didn’t have to dream about it now, though. Not when she was pressed right up against me, her fingers still tucked in my waistband and her breasts pushing against my chest with every inhale.
“You’re amazin’, you know that?” I said, my voice thick and rough.
She started shaking her head, but I didn’t let her voice her objection. Instead, I wrapped my hand around her neck, my thumb lifting her chin up and presenting her mouth to me, and I leaned down to press my lips to hers. Softly, at first. Slow enough that I would know the second she didn’t want this. But when no protests came…when, instead, she lifted on her toes to chase my lips as I pulled away, I didn’t wait another breath before sweeping my tongue into her mouth and groaning at the taste of her.
Christ, I’d missed this. Hadn’t had nearly enough of it in the days before I’d left for good. Our weekend together ten years ago had been only a blip on the calendar, a tiny portion of all the time we’d spent together our whole lives, but it’d been what I’d thought of the most while I’d been gone. It’d kept me company in my bunk when I’d been stationed all over the world. Had kept me sane while transporting VIPs safely from Point A to Point B.
And now that I had her like this again, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to walk away.