Chapter Six
ROWAN
She thinks she has me figured out. That a warning and a clean exit means I'm some gentleman.
Wrong. On both counts.
She needs to be glad I walked away when I did. Because what I wanted to do was pin her against that equipment shed, shove my hand down those tight shorts, and find out if she'd moan or fight. If she'd beg me to stop or beg me to keep going.
I'm not decent. Never have been.
Claire Calloway has no fucking idea what man she’s dealing with.
I move ahead of the group, setting a pace that has the wheezers falling behind within twenty minutes. Good. Let them suffer. They paid for the experience. So they can choke on it.
My peripheral vision's locked on Claire, whether I want it to be or not. She's following along with Dave, laughing at something he said. Her head is thrown back, throat exposed, not a care in the world. Like she erased everything I admitted. Like, it cost me nothing.
I want you. I don't want to want you.
Replaying it sits heavy in my gut.
I meant them. And now I have to live with the look on her face when she heard them. Not fear. Not even surprised. But something worse.
Recognition.
The trail steepens. Two thousand feet of loose scree and switchbacks.
Cardio and patience, both bleeding out. I hear her breathing before I see her struggling.
That ragged catch in her throat, the way her steps go uneven on the rocky sections.
She's pushing too hard. I told her she would.
Stubborn as hell, refusing to show weakness even when her body is screaming for mercy.
Dave offers her a hand, and she takes it. The innocent act alone makes something possessive coil in my chest.
I pick up the pace.
By the time we hit the first rest stop, a flat shelf of granite with views that stretch to the next county, half the group is bent over sucking wind. I don't slow down for them. I find a boulder at the edge, lean against it, and scan the horizon while they recover.
The sky's turned mean. I noticed it an hour ago, but now it's undeniable. Thick darkness to the west, clouds building fast and heavy, that particular gray-green that means business. The wind shifted too, carrying the electric smell of ozone and incoming weather.
Asher's voice in my head from this morning. Could turn fast. Might need to cut the course short.
I check my watch. Eleven-fifteen. We should be at the summit by now, turning around, heading back down the safer eastern ridge. Instead, we're barely halfway, and the storm's moving faster than the forecast predicted.
"Alright." My voice cuts through the group's chatter. They look up, red-faced and grateful for the break. "Listen carefully. We're going to have to pick up the pace. Anyone who can't keep up gets left to fend for themselves."
Dave raises his hand. "What's the rush?"
I don't answer him. I look at Claire, who's watching me with those dark eyes, chest still heaving from the climb. She knows something's wrong.
Smart girl.
"There’s a storm coming, faster than expected," I say to the group. "We need to be off this ridge before it hits."
Grumbling. Complaints. Someone yells about lunch. I ignore all of it, already moving, calculating routes, timelines, and the hundred ways this could go sideways.
The group rushes to fall in behind me. I set a brutal pace because I have to, because the math doesn't work otherwise. We need to cover three miles of steep downhill in under an hour, and that's if the storm holds off. If it doesn't, we're in trouble.
I listen for Claire behind me. Her footsteps are uneven and her breathing ragged, but she doesn't complain, doesn't tell me to slow down.
She keeps moving, one foot after the other, and I hate how I notice all these details.
Hate that I want to turn around and carry her the rest of the way just to spare her the pain.
The first raindrop hits my shoulder twenty minutes later. Fat and cold. Then another. The wind picks up, carrying the smell of wet stone and danger.
“Fuck!” I yell. "We need to move!" I shout over the wind. "Double time!"
The group scrambles, their panic obvious as the sky opens up, and rain starts coming down hard enough to sting. I hear someone slip, curse, then recover. I don't look back. Can't afford to. I need to get them to the cutoff, where the trail leads down to the eastern drainage and relative safety.
Lightning cracks overhead, close enough to taste the electricity in the air. Thunder follows immediately, shaking the ground beneath our feet.
Not good. So not fucking good.
I round a bend and stop. The group slams into my back, someone's elbow catching my ribs.
I don't move. Below us, the dry creek bed that cuts across our path is no longer dry.
Brown water, fast and mean, churning with broken timber and rocks the size of engine blocks.
As I watch, it swallows a boulder I could have sworn was three feet above the waterline.
"Back!" I spin, grabbing the nearest person, shoving them up the trail. "Everyone, back up! Now!"
Chaos. Confusion. People slipping on wet rock, grabbing for handholds, for each other. I move through them like a machine, pulling, pushing, herding them toward higher ground. My training kicks in, that cold place where emotion doesn't exist, survival, and the mission. Nothing else matters.
Get them safe. Get them out. Nothing else matters.
I'm counting heads as we head up a side trail, a steep scramble to a ridge line that should be above the flood zone. Eight. Nine. Ten. Where's…
"Claire!"
I don't think, scanning the trail below, noticing only the chaos of water and rock. She's not with the group. Not anywhere she should be. Fuck! Where is she?
I spin around frantically looking.
There. Fifty yards back, caught on the wrong side of the floodwaters, pressed against a rock with the water rising fast around her feet. Dave is with her, clutching her arm, both of them frozen by the sudden violence of the flood.
"Stay there!" I shout, the wind swallows them. They can't hear me or see me through the rain.
I look at the group, huddled together safely on the ridge. For now. Then, back at Claire, trapped with the water rising and the only thing between us a raging torrent that grows more deadly by the second.
There’s no other choice. Never was.
"Stay here!" I yell at the nearest person, some guy in a yellow jacket who's crying but functional. "Don't move until help comes, or until I get back!"
I take off running.
Down the trail, toward the rising waters, straight toward her.
The rational part of my brain is screaming that this is stupid, that I'm going to die, that no one survives a flash flood in a narrow canyon.
But the rest of me, the part that admitted I wanted her, that hasn't felt alive in years, doesn't give a shit about being rational.
I reach the edge of the wash, realizing just how fast the water's moving, carrying tree limbs and rocks the size of my head. Claire finally sees me. Her eyes go wide, and I can tell she’s completely terrified, shaking her head. Smart girl. She knows what this is.
“Don't! Don't move, Claire!”
Too bad I'm not smart. Never have been.
I scan upstream, downstream, looking for any type of crossing.
Nothing.
The trail's completely submerged, rocks I would have jumped are underwater. The only way across is through, and through means gambling with my life.
I look at her one more time. Rain plasters her hair to her face, eyes huge and dark, while her hands grip the rock behind her for safety.
It can't. Nothing can save her, except me.
I step into the water.
The cold hits like a punch, taking my breath, my balance. The current grabs my legs, trying to carry me away, and I dig in, fighting for every inch. I've swum in worse. Survived worse. But not with someone waiting, watching, depending on me to make it across.
I make it halfway, where the water's at my waist now, the pressure building, rocks rolling beneath my boots. I can't feel my feet. Only the need to keep moving, to reach her. To…
My foot slips, and the current grabs hold, spinning me. And for a second, I'm airborne, weightless, waiting for the impact that will knock me unconscious and drown me in thirty seconds flat.
I hit something hard, causing a sharp pain to explode in my shoulder, my hip. I grab a hold and haul myself up on a boulder that's barely above the waterline.
Gasping.
Choking.
But I’m alive.
“Rowan!”
Claire is screaming my name. I can hear loud and clear now, cutting through the roar of the flood.
I drag myself up, stumbling forward. The water's only knee-deep here, but it still fights me, still tries to pull my feet out from under me. I reach her, and my hands find her face, cupping her jaw, my thumbs pressing into her cheeks hard enough to sting. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused. She’s in shock.
"Claire." My voice is wrecked. She's staring past me, through me, her eyes fixed on something I can't see. "Claire." I grip her jaw tighter, forcing her to look at me, blocking everything else. "Hey, baby, look at me. Where's Dave?"
"I… I don't know. He said he wasn't waiting. He took off that way." She points up the ridge, but her arm immediately falls, as if the effort costs her.
Dave is gone. Washed away or climbed up, I don't know, don't care. I should feel back. I don’t. Only she matters.
"Rowan…" Her voice breaks. She's soaked, shaking with cold, her lips a blue tint.
"Claire, listen. I need you to hold on to me." I grab her waist, lift her, forcing her arms around my neck. "Don't let go. No matter what happens, don't let go."
She clings to me, all soft and trembling fear, and I turn back toward the flood.
The water's higher now. The crossing that nearly killed me is worse, pretty much impassable, and I know with certainty that we can't go back the way I came. We're officially trapped, cut off from the rest of the group, with the storm still raging and the water rising higher.
I look up. The rock face behind us offers nothing. No handholds, no ledges, no shelter from the elements or the flood. We're in the worst possible position, and I put us here.
My fault. My mistake. My price to pay.
"Rowan." Claire's voice is small against my ear, her breath warm despite everything. "What do we do?"
I look at the canyon walls, the rising water, the impossible situation. Then I look at her and see the trust in her eyes. She really believes I'll save her. That I have a plan, a way out, some military trick that will make this okay.
Truth is, I don't.
I have nothing but the need to keep her alive and the willingness to do whatever it takes.
"We climb. Now," I say, and point to a section of wall twenty yards upstream where the rock might offer purchase. "Or we die."
She doesn't hesitate. "Let’s go."
I carry her through the flood, one arm around her waist, the other finding handholds in the slick stone.
The water fights us every inch, being relentless, but I don't stop.
I can't stop. Not with her depending on me or the admission I made still burning between us, turning this from a rescue into something else.
Feeling like destiny or doom, I can't tell which.
We reach the rock face. I boost her up, guide her hands to the holds I found, following right behind. The water is still rising below us as we climb.
Higher. Faster. Until we're twenty feet up, thirty, perched on a narrow ledge barely wide enough for both of us.
I press her against the rock, shielding her from the wind and rain with my body.
I can feel her heart race against my chest, her breath coming in gasps that have nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the fact that we almost died.
"Rowan." Her voice is barely audible over the storm.
"Don't." I tighten my grip, bury my face in her wet hair. "Don't talk. Don't think. Just breathe."
She does. We both do. Two people clinging to each other and the side of a mountain while the world tries to wash us away.
And at that moment, with death so close I can taste it, I realize the truth I couldn't admit before. That I'm terrified of wanting her. Of what it means, what it could cost me, or what I could become if I let myself have something good.
Too late, asshole. Way too fucking late.