Chapter 29 Nate
NATE
Maya leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, her hair whipping around her face from the open window. One arm rested on the door, her fingers trailing in the rushing air, and the smile on her lips had my heart squeezing painfully.
I turned back to the road.
For three days, every time I closed my eyes, the same images waited for me. Maya, on the quad. The lightning. The oak. Maya, flying through the air. Maya, landing with a thud that I felt in my bones. Maya, lying completely still.
I had seen combat. I had been shot at, pinned down, watched friends get carried out on stretchers. But none of that compared to the cold, paralyzing drop in my gut when she’d hit the dirt. It was like someone had pulled the pin on everything I thought I knew about fear.
But she was alive and radiant and tipping her face into the wind. It was like she’d been let out of a cage, and every second I looked at her, that image in the rain lost a little more of its grip.
She opened one eye. “You’re staring.”
“I’m driving.”
“You’re doing both. It’s very unsafe.” She closed the eye again, her smile widening. “I won’t tell Brody if you won’t.”
The laugh came out of me before I could stop it, low and quiet. Something that had been wound tight in my chest for three days finally, mercifully, loosened.
I took the turnoff by muscle memory. A clearing off the road, tucked behind a stand of river oaks where the bank sloped down to the water. Private. Quiet. A place you’d never find on a map, kept that way because the locals had the good sense to keep their mouths shut.
Pulling in under the trees, I reached for the ignition.
Maya’s seatbelt clicked before the engine died. She was already moving, swinging her good leg over the console and climbing into my lap with the determination of a woman who knew exactly where she wanted to be and was not interested in discussing it.
“Maya, your ankle...”
“Is over there.” She nodded her head toward the passenger seat. “And I’m right here. Different jurisdictions.”
Her face was inches from mine, her green eyes bright with equal parts mischief and want. Whatever sensible thing I’d been about to say evaporated the second she looked at me.
She kissed me. Soft at first, almost tentative, as if making sure I was real. Her fingers curled into my hair and her mouth opened under mine. Ankles and jurisdictions vanished, leaving nothing but the taste of her.
My hands found her waist and settled there, holding her steady, holding her close.
We traded heat back and forth. Her fingers played through the hair at my nape while my thumb traced lazy circles against her hip. She smiled against my mouth and I caught it, kissing the corner of it. She made a soft, humming sound that vibrated through me.
“Hi,” she murmured between kisses.
“Hi.”
“I missed you.”
“It’s been three days.”
“Three very long days on a very boring couch with a very attentive mother.” She pulled back so she could look at me, her gaze smoky. “So yes. I missed you.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, my fingers trailing down her cheek. “I missed you too.”
Her smile bloomed, slow and gorgeous, and she leaned back in. The kiss deepened by degrees, her body pressing closer, her hand sliding down my chest. My palm drifted up her side, skimming over her ribs without thinking, and she sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth.
I pulled back instantly. “Oh shit, sorry!”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Maya.” I was already easing the hem of her shirt up, needing to see the damage for myself. The bruising had spread across her left side in a wash of purple and yellow, mottled and angry against her skin. My hand stilled.
Three days, and it still looked like this. My jaw tightened as the image tried to claw its way back. The tree. The bike flipping. Her body hitting the ground.
“Nate.” Her hand covered mine, pressing it flat against her stomach. “I’m okay. It looks worse than it feels.”
“It looks like you got hit by a tree.”
“Well, technically the tree hit the quad, and the ground hit me, so if we’re assigning blame...”
My thumb traced the edge of the bruise, feather-light, and a brutal protectiveness flared up inside me. She was here. She was real and whole and sitting in my lap making jokes. But the evidence of how close it had been was right there under my fingers, painted across her skin in shades of purple.
“Hey.” She tilted my chin up with one finger until my eyes met hers. “I’m just a little banged up, that’s all. I’m honestly okay.”
I pressed my lips to her forehead and held them there, breathing her in.
“Yeah.” I swallowed around the tight knot in my throat. “You are.”
Her shirt settled back into place under my hand. She pressed a soft kiss to the corner of my jaw, then another to my cheek, and by the time she reached my mouth, I was smiling.
I pulled back and brushed my thumb across her lower lip. “Sit tight. I’ve got something for you.”
I helped her back into the passenger seat, pressing a quick kiss to her lips before climbing out of the truck to grab the blanket from the back seat, along with a bag of chips and two cans of soda.
I walked down to a flat stretch of bank where the grass met the tree line, spreading the blanket close enough to the water that the sound of it filled the air.
Then I went back for Maya.
She had already opened the door by the time I got there. Her legs were swung out, ready to negotiate her own way down. I scooped her up before she had the chance.
“I could have managed.”
“And yet.”
She laughed as I carried her to the blanket and set her down. I dropped onto the ground behind her, my legs on either side of hers, and pulled her back against my chest. She came easily, settling into me like she belonged there. She let out a long, slow breath that I felt all the way through me.
I reached over and dropped the chips and soda into her lap.
Maya’s eyebrows climbed. “You planned this.”
“I grabbed a few things.”
“You definitely planned this.” A grin spread across her face, wide and delighted. “Nate O’Hare packed a picnic.”
“It is a blanket and some chips. That barely qualifies.”
“It absolutely qualifies. You are taking me on a date right now. This is a date.”
I let her have the win. Mostly because she was right, and partly because the look on her face was worth every second of whatever shit I was going to get for this later.
The river moved past in no particular hurry, sunlight scattering across the surface in bright, shifting fragments. A breeze stirred the oaks overhead, and somewhere in the canopy, a bird was working through an endless, looping song.
Maya opened the chips and held the bag up to me. I took a handful. She took a bigger one.
“Nate?”
“Mmm?”
“Thank you.” Her voice was quiet, barely rising above the sound of the river.
My arm tightened around her waist. Her fingers found mine and threaded through them, resting against her stomach. The afternoon stretched out in front of us, unhurried and golden, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I was exactly where I wanted to be.
“You’re welcome.”