Chapter 4 #2
“You don’t need to be so formal with me,” I murmured, sliding my hands beneath her arms to help her up as the last of the wire fell away with the deer’s escape.
A loud squelch filled the hollow as Eve rose. Giggles burst from her. She clutched my arms, extracting herself from the mud and taking a whole lot of goop along with her.
“How long did you say you were down there again?” I asked into her hair, attempting not to seem stalkerish as I inhaled her scent.
“A few hours,” she murmured, sliding her hands around my forearms and let them rest there.
“And you really didn’t think to take your phone with you?” I asked, savoring her warmth.
Fuck knew why I chose that hill to die on in that moment, but I’d planted my flag with her name on it, and die for her, I would.
Her skin stood out as pale against the dark red of my shirt, and despite the cold muck seeping between us, I pulled her into me in a backward hug, wrapping my arms tight around her chest.
She sighed, leaning her head back, staring into the entwined branches above us. “Who would I call for help, Archer?”
Still Archer.
We’d have to work on that.
“Me,” I said into her hair, kissing the top of her head.
“But you weren’t here.”
“I said I would be, today. Don’t you remember?” I turned her in my arms, inspecting her, but I saw the same Eve I remembered.
It was her eyes that held the most difference. Instead of locking in on me, they were vacant, rather like her mother’s had been in the days after her father's death.
I crushed her against my chest, winding my arms around her and promising never to let her go.
Until she began to wriggle.
“Breathing.” She tapped my arms.
I loosened them, fairly certain that it was her attempt at a distraction, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt, regardless.
“You can breathe,” I said, pressing my lips to her forehead. “And you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m not,” she said, completely reasonably in the circle of my arms, and completely at odds with her words of a moment ago.
I sighed, the pressure I had expected to ease when I finally found her building exponentially. “Let’s get you back to the house. A shower and some clean clothes, alright?”
Eve nodded, letting me curl my fingers around hers and lead her back to my truck, coiling the wire the doe had been trapped in around my other hand.
I didn’t need to ask where her truck was; I knew it was parked in the yard by the big house.
“You came up here alone, did you?” I scanned the tree line as we walked; old habits and all.
Eve shot me a look over when I glanced back over my shoulder that told me she knew exactly what I was doing. “When I couldn’t get workers, Pierce offered me some of his. An offer I couldn't refuse.” She huffed at the irony, but her jaw was clenched tight.
“And how did that go?” Her silence said everything. “Eve?” I tugged her to a stop. For a long moment, she refused to look at me.
After an eternity, Eve raised her stunning face to me. Unshed tears danced in her eyes, a vulnerability I both hated and loved stared back at me, all strong and fierce and proud.
Hell, I loved her.
“You haven’t been here, Archer,” she whispered, searching my face. “You have no idea what this year has been like.” Dark lashes surrounded burnt cinnamon eyes that drew me in. A bead of a tear clung to one.
Very slowly, terrified of widening the abyss between us, I lifted my hand to brush the tear away.
Eve blinked at me with an innocence shadowed by something I couldn’t quite identify.
A breath passed between us, a fragile peace offering.
My hand dropped to squeeze her shoulder, rubbing my thumb over the curve of it, and she jerked back like she’d been whipped.
She had.
I cursed myself for my stupidity as she whirled away, and was in the passenger seat of my truck before I could take five steps to follow her.
Pressing my lips together a myriad of images flooded my mind, but I pushed them all aside to focus on the breathing woman before me. I threw the wire into the bed of my truck and swung up into the cab, starting the engine as I cursed myself and the man who hurt her both.
The ride back to the ranch house was silent.
Four black pickups, all similar to the ones I’d seen trailing through Black Hill land earlier in the day were parked in the yard outside the ranch house.
Jude stood on the veranda steps, his arms folded across his barrel chest. New lines I didn’t remember feathered the tanned skin around his eyes, his face shuttered as he watched us pull in.
I glanced across at Eve, my hand raised to take hers.
The trip back across Red Hart was nothing like what I planned.
She’d shut down on me completely, and the months we’d been apart and everything that happened between us in the last year spread thin on the ground that my tires ate until neither of us ended up saying anything at all.
I ached to hold her, kiss her, promise her everything would be alright. But I did none of those things, believing that a shower, a meal and time before the fire would give us what we needed to start again.
And again, as we pulled into the yard before the big house, I realized that I’d given her far too little far too late.
“Evie,” I murmured, reaching for her, but she shot out of my truck, slamming the door behind her.
I winced, climbing out slower. Watched as she approached Jude and spoke to him quietly. And moved on.
A man dressed in a black shirt and blue jeans took off his hat as Eve approached him on the veranda, a broad grin that didn't suit him splitting his face.
A face I recognized from Beanies.
Eve trotted up to him, giving the man a hug, greeting him warmly.
“Hi, Joe.”
Joe Brunel bent to return her embrace, his words warm as he stared at me over her head with a challenge lighting his gaze.
“Hi, Eve.”