Chapter 32
There was something strange about Caleb’s face. Almost unnatural. She didn’t understand it, but her mind was such a tangle of desperation that she was probably projecting onto him.
She knew what he was asking. He was still trying to help her. Trying to get her to face things she just couldn’t face.
“I can’t,” she gasped, hugging her arms to her belly since he wouldn’t let her cling to him anymore. There were tears streaming down her face, but she had no idea where they’d come from.
“Yes, you can. Tell me what you remember.”
“I was…” She closed her eyes and squeezed herself with her arms. “I was with my… my uncle. I’d run ahead. He was telling me to wait.”
“And you wouldn’t wait?”
“No. I didn’t listen to him. He finally had to yell at me.” She was practically sobbing now, bent over from the weight of the emotion, the memory, the debilitating fear.
“Then what?” Caleb’s voice sounded almost merciless, but that would have been a projection too.
“Then I heard… I heard…”
“What?”
“A shot. A loud noise. I didn’t know what it was.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited for a long time. Then I went to find him.” She rubbed her ears and her nose with her sleeve, but there was nothing she could do to stop herself from crying.
“What did you find?”
“He was shot. His head was blown off. He was…” She choked. Literally choked. The force of the air strangled in her windpipe pushed her to the ground, and she kept gagging on her hands and knees in the dirt.
“Take a breath, Kelly. Take a real breath.”
She tried. She really tried. But she couldn’t. She just kept choking. She wanted Caleb to help her, to take her in his arms, to carry her out of the woods. But he didn’t.
He just stood beside her, not making a move to touch her, and he said again, “Do it now, Kelly. Take a full breath.”
Something in the stern authority of his voice triggered an innate instinct to breathe. Her throat relaxed enough for the next breath she attempted to work. Her lungs filled with air again, and the strangling eased in the aftermath.
She stayed on her hands and knees on the dirt trail, as broken as she’d ever been in her life. But she could breathe again, so she did.
“Tell me what happened to him,” Caleb said after giving her a minute to recover.
“He was… he was shot. He was… he was killed.” With one last, desperate effort, she managed to stop herself from blurting out the whole truth, giving away her last hidden secret, the one she could never tell Caleb. She kept herself from saying he was murdered.
“Why was he killed, Kelly?”
She was sobbing helplessly, and she huddled down into the fetal position. If she didn’t get out of here soon, she was genuinely afraid she might die. She managed to remember the story she’d told Caleb before. “Hunting… accident.”
She was too overwhelmed to sense anything from Caleb. He was just an unmoving presence nearby. But he felt strong in a way that contrasted sharply with how she was feeling herself, so she finally lifted her head and looked at him blindly. “Please, Caleb. Help me.”
She heard a strange sound. A guttural sound that must have come from Caleb, although her mind wasn’t working enough to begin to process it.
Then she was being lifted up to her feet.
Her knees buckled immediately, and she fell back down.
“Damn it, Kelly,” he muttered. “Damn it all to hell.”
She had no idea what he meant. What anything meant. She just reached out to him because she needed him, and he was right there beside her.
He lifted her to her feet again, and this time he didn’t let her go. He swung her up into his arms, and he started to carry her back down the trail, out of the woods at last.
She buried her face in his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him as tight as she could get.
And then, finally, they were breaking out of the trees, back in the sunshine again.
She expected him to set her down on the ground, now that they were out of the woods, but he didn’t.
He carried her off the trail and down the hill and into a secluded little hollow out of sight where there was a stream and several large rocks.
Only there did he lower her to the ground. He lowered himself too, sitting on the grass where he could lean against one of the rocks. He pulled her toward him, and she came willingly, taking comfort in him, in the sunshine, in the safety of the fresh air and clear sky.
Eventually she stopped crying, but she couldn’t pull away from him. She was so battered that she couldn’t move. She just lay in the grass with her head in his lap.
He stroked her hair and didn’t say anything.
She had no idea what he was thinking, but she was really glad he was here.
After what felt like a really long time, her trembling had stopped and her tears had all dried. She still couldn’t raise her head, but she said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Caleb.”
“What are you sorry about?” His voice sounded weird and cracked.
She was sorry for everything. Absolutely everything.
“I…” She couldn’t say it, not if she had any hope of making all this worthwhile. “I tried to be strong enough, but I’m not.”
He didn’t say anything. Just kept stroking her hair.
“Maybe eventually I’ll be able to face it. Thank you.”
“For what?” His voice still sounded strange, but everything seemed strange to her at the moment.
She took a deep breath and managed to sit up at last. “For trying to help me. For caring about me that much.” She leaned toward him, reaching out to pull him into a hug.
He returned it, his arms so tight they were almost painful.
When they finally pulled apart, it didn’t feel like enough, so she pulled his head down into a kiss.
“Thank you,” she murmured over his lips. “I love you, Caleb. I love you.”
When she withdrew, his expression was unreadable, although he gave her a little smile.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, wishing the last of the secrets, the barriers, could be destroyed between them so there really would be nothing but the two of them.
He cleared his throat. “Just worried about you.”
It wasn’t what he’d been thinking. She could tell. “I know. But is something else wrong? You look… I don’t know…”
“Nothing is wrong. Are you okay? After before, I mean.”
“Yeah.” She relaxed again and rested her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It was racing in his chest, just like hers was. “It was… hard. But it means so much that you… you want me to get better.” She pressed a kiss against his shirt. “Thank you.”
She felt his body tense up briefly, but all he said was “You’re welcome.”