Chapter 8 #3
The wind howled down the chimney, threw sparks against the metal fireplace screen. Outside, something cracked—a tree branch giving way under the storm’s weight.
Harley flinched.
“Hey.” He blamed instinct for the way he reached out and caught her fingers. “We’re safe here.”
She looked at him but didn’t move her hand. “You still think you can save me from everything.”
“I never thought I could save—”
“Yes, you do. It’s the curse of the oldest child.”
He frowned, then sighed. “Maybe. Okay, yes.”
Under their hands, Orlando lifted his head and broke their touch. His ears flickered back, as if hearing something.
Jericho leaned back against the sofa, crossed his legs at the ankles.
“When I was about ten years old, we had this big storm. Just like this one. And after three days being cooped up, it finally relented. Sully and I decided to go sledding on that big hill behind our house.” His gaze fixed on the flames.
“Mom and Dad had this rule about staying within sight of the house.”
“I remember that rule. My parents had it too.”
“Yeah, well, there was this ridge—”
“I know the one. That is definitely outside the view of your house.” She angled a curious smile at him. “Wait . . . you went outside the fence?”
“Probably Sully’s idea.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Anyway, it had some cool caves and I’m not sure who decided it would be a good idea to explore one—”
“Sully never could resist a cave.”
“I was the oldest—”
“And there it is.” She bumped his shoulder with hers, looked up at him and smiled.
Oh, she was pretty. A disarming, girl-next-door kind of sweet, pretty, because in her golden-brown eyes, a sort of fierceness dwelled. In the past it lit a fire in him, like a dare.
Or a mission.
So, yes, he’d wanted to protect her. Still did. He swallowed, looked back at Orlando who’d put his head down.
“Anyway,” he said, “we climbed into a bear’s den. Down at the bottom of the ravine.”
“What?”
“A hibernating grizzly. We didn’t wake him, miraculously, and we backed out, real slow, real quiet. Then we ran all the way home, falling over ourselves in the snow. Never breathed a word to our parents.”
“That was close.”
“Scared me a little.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Fine. Okay. A lot. And I determined after that to look where I was going.” He took a breath. “Sometimes I think I look too far out.”
She frowned.
“Last night, Hudson said something about expectations and the fear of not living up to them.” He couldn’t look at her.
Silence. Then, “That’s what happened between us, isn’t it?”
He lifted a shoulder. “A lot happened between us.” He met her eyes. “But I was sitting there in the hospital all those years ago, my nose busted up, keenly aware that Sully had saved my hide and . . .”
And it stirred inside him again, the raw . . . well, fear. The sense that, if Sully hadn’t been there . . .
He might have been killed. Or even, maybe been the one who killed. Either option shook him. But he met her eyes, and the words of the fight nudged against him. “I can’t watch you die.”
He hadn’t been afraid she’d get him into trouble. He’d been afraid he wasn’t enough to save her. That someday she’d do something so far out of his reach . . .
The sense of it caught his breath.
She, however, put her hand on his arm, circling back to their stupid, impulsive, explosive argument. Her voice softened. “I get it. And, like you said, we were both young and stupid and . . .”
Her touch yanked him free of the past and he nodded. “I’m sorry. You can take care of yourself. I know that.” He met her eyes. “Really.”
She looked away then and sighed. “And now we’re both lying. Truth is, you were probably right. It’s possible that I don’t look far enough ahead.” Her mouth lifted on one side. “It’s possible I’m a little too impulsive.”
“Possible?”
She glanced at him, a full smile now. Then, she took a breath, and her smile faded. “I’m sorry I got you into that fight, Jericho.”
Aw. And heaven help him, he wanted to reach out, touch her face, even—
Nope. “It’s in the past.”
“Yeah.” She swallowed. “And I get what you said, about not being able to come home because of . . . memories or regrets. But why did you leave? I mean, I thought you were going to stick around and then suddenly you were joining the military . . . Was it me?”
She met his gaze then, a sort of pain in her eyes. Aw . . .
“No.” The word barely carried over the storm. “I left because . . . well, yeah, I was afraid I’d fail. But not just you . . . I couldn’t take over the resort.”
She stared at him, frowned.
“My dad and I had a big argument right before the fight with Mars. There were a lot of arguments my senior year. I don’t know why, really.
But suddenly, we were butting heads. In one of our battles, he actually said he’d built this legacy for me and I was throwing it away.
I know now that he was really hurt, but I got it in my head that the only way out was enlisting. ”
He made a wry face. “Truth was, it was an impulse, although I had been thinking about it for a while. My grandpa was in the military, and it sort of felt like a Bowie family legacy. I could live up to the Bowie name and get out of Copper Mountain. I guess I thought . . . well, I thought you’d be waiting. ” He shook his head. “Selfish.”
“I might have,” she said it quietly, softly. “But after you left, I just . . . well, so much of Copper Mountain was you, so . . .” She shrugged. “It’s old news. We can’t dial back time.”
Couldn’t they?
Silence hung in the air between them. The fire crackled, popped, scattered cinders into the air.
She sighed, then got up.
The shelf by the woodstove held decades of rainy-day entertainment, boxes worn smooth by hunting-cabin stays. Her fingers drifted over the stack until she found a puzzle. She pulled out the box and flashed it at him.
Neuschwanstein Castle rising through Bavarian mist.
She came back and settled beside him, her leg against his, warm. Familiar. Almost easy.
Dial back time.
He reached over and tapped the box. “I’ve been there. Was stationed there for a bit during training, then spent six weeks at Ramstein after . . .”
Oh. Woops, he hadn’t meant to say that.
“After what?”
Outside, the storm battered the cabin, but in here, everything had gone quiet.
Finally, “Combat rescue mission gone wrong.” His shoulder suddenly ached with the memory.
“A couple airmen went missing. We tracked them down into the mountains. I should have seen the sniper, but I was focused on getting to the guys. Atlas”—his voice caught—“my dog saw him, barked a warning right before . . .”
Slowly, deliberately, he unbuttoned his shirt collar, pulled it aside to reveal the twisted scar tissue just below his collarbone. Her sharp intake of breath seemed loud in the fire-warmed air.
“I took the first shot. The second one got my dog. By the time our backup arrived . . .” He let the words trail off, remembering the taste of blood and sand, the way Atlas’s fur had felt under his fingers, already growing cold.
“Oh, Jericho,” she said, her voice gentle. “I’m so sorry.”
He closed his shirt. “Yeah. Well, I can’t escape this idea that no matter what I do, it’s the wrong decision. Or maybe I’m just not enough, I don’t know, but someone always gets hurt.”
“Jericho. Really. You can’t save everyone.” Her eyes reflected firelight, shiny, beautiful.
“I can try.” And that just sounded sappy, but he couldn’t help it.
She shook her head, but there was a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Not pity—understanding. “I was wrong. You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
Oh. But, “Neither have you.” He reached up, brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Still running toward danger instead of away from it.”
“I never . . .” She swallowed then, as if the words surprised her. “Even after . . . everything. You were always there, in my head.”
“Like a bad dream?” He tried for lightness, failed.
“Like someone to hold on to when I felt so alone.” She made a face, then, looked away.
Oh.
So she wasn’t the only one.
She opened the puzzle box and spilled the pieces out on the table, leaned up to spread them out, turn them over.
Orlando’s soft snore mingled with the pop and hiss of burning pine.
Her shoulder brushed his as she reached for a puzzle piece, her blond hair falling free.
“I never forgot you either, Harley,” he said, unable to keep it in any longer. “How could I?”
She turned, and the firelight caught in her eyes, turned the loose strands of hair to copper and gold.
“You were like the other half of me, the other side of the coin. My best friend and then somehow”—he couldn’t stop himself from reaching up, touching her cheek—“I lost you.”
Her eyes glistened.
“And in a way, I lost myself.” And yes, again sappy, but he didn’t care. And he didn’t stop himself either, when he wrapped his hand around her neck and pulled her to himself.
He let the impulse take him, and he kissed her.
The first brush of his lips against hers shook him to his core—soft, questioning, barely a touch at all. But then her hands touched his chest, and her fingers curled into his shirt and held on.
And she kissed him back.
Memory, or maybe just too many years of dodging his regrets, the what-ifs, swelled over him and, yeah, he was all in.
The taste of her—memories of youth, hope, yearning—swept over him.
She was strength and yet softness and belonging and—What was he doing?
But the tiny alarms in his head died as her lips parted under his.
She made a soft sound of longing, or maybe contentment, that reached in and ignited the place inside he’d tamped down for so long.
Desire. Hope.
Why hadn’t he tried to find her? Wow, he was a fool.
Harley.
His fingers slid into her hair, silk and softness, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her onto his lap. Her arms circled his neck, holding on and, of course, she fit perfectly in his embrace, like every hollow space inside him had been shaped for this moment.
The years between them fell away, and he was eighteen again, life sprawled out ahead of him, she his compass, his tomorrows.
Her fingers traced up his neck to tangle in his hair, and she kissed him harder.
And yes, there she was, the girl he knew. The one who drove him wild, who ignited the rescuer in him, the woman he could never forget.
The other half of himself.
And she seemed to kiss him as if she might be drowning and he was air.
Or maybe he was the one drowning.
But oh, how he loved—
Wait, wait—
Behind him, the door slammed open.
He jerked, and she lifted her head.
Wind and snow churned through the opening, extinguishing the oil lamp on the table. Cold air knifed into the cabin’s warmth, and just like that, a figure materialized in the doorway, backlit by the storm’s fury.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and covered in snow—like Bigfoot, or some winter spirit stepped out of legend. Ice crystals had frozen in his beard, and his leather coat, fur hat, and wool scarf were caked with snow. But his eyes . . .
His eyes seemed familiar in a way that turned Jericho’s blood to ice.
He scrambled up, grabbed the poker from the stand by the fire—“Get back!”
“Don’t!” Sunni stood in the bedroom doorway, gripping the frame for support, her injured ankle held clear of the floor. “Don’t hurt him!”
Orlando had hit his feet and now growled. Behind Jericho, Harley made a sound like she’d been struck, a gasp edged with a hint of pain.
Firelight caught the stranger’s face as he took a stumbling step forward, then pulled his scarf down.
Jericho dropped the poker.
Because the intruder in the doorway wore a dead man’s face. And he was staring at Sunni like a drowning man sighting shore.