Chapter 7 #2
She blew out a breath. “The ridge was loose shale over a fifteen-foot drop.” Her voice had gone flat—the controlled, careful tone she used when something was too big to let herself feel.
“Blake went first. He was showing off, moving fast, not checking his footing. I was behind him, trying to keep up, and the whole shelf gave way.”
The rest poured out, unfiltered. “We both fell. I tumbled fifteen feet down the slope, hit a rock outcropping, and broke my left arm in two places.” She touched her brow.
“I split my head open on a jagged edge of granite. Blake fell a shorter distance and only had a few minor cuts and bruises. He carried me down the mountain,” she said.
“I’ll give him that. He was scared—that was real. My arm was—”
She paused, remembering the angle of it. The white-hot pain. Blake’s face above her, pale and panicked. “It was bad,” she said softly. “And he carried me all the way back to the trailhead where someone had cell service and called an ambulance.”
“And?” Mack said, knowing in his voice.
She glanced down at the sketchbook. The draw to escape inside it was strong.
Anything to avoid this hollow feeling of betrayal.
“When our parents got to the hospital, Blake told them I was the one who’d wanted to go off-trail.
” Her voice was so flat now it sounded mechanical, even to her own ears.
Like she was reading from a script she’d memorized years ago.
“He said I’d insisted. That he’d tried to talk me out of it, and I wouldn’t listen.
That he’d only gone with me to keep me safe. ”
She could still see her father’s face. Colonel James Bennett, standing at the foot of her hospital bed with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at her with that combination of disappointment and authority that had governed her entire childhood.
Well, Alyssa. I hope you’ve learned something from this.
She hadn’t argued. She’d been sixteen, in pain, doped up on whatever the ER had given her, and her brother was standing behind their father with an expression she couldn’t read. Guilt? Relief? She still didn’t know. She’d said yes, sir, and closed her eyes, and that was the end of it.
“Dad believed him,” she said. “Mom was more skeptical, but she didn’t contradict Dad—she never did.
My grandparents believed me, but Grandpa Edward wasn’t going to overrule his son.
Not about something like this.” She paused.
“So Blake’s version became the family truth. And mine just…didn’t matter.”
The only noise was the hum of the engine and the hiss of tires on the mostly cleared road. She waited for Mack to say something, but he didn’t.
She sat for a long moment, remembering that she wasn’t that girl anymore.
“That was the first time,” she admitted.
“But it set the pattern. Blake lies. The family believes him. My version of events gets filed under Alyssa being dramatic.” She made air quotes.
“Alyssa being difficult, or Alyssa not supporting her brother. Take your pick.” Her throat tightened.
She swallowed past it. “I learned that challenging Blake’s version of reality would cost me more than going along with it. ”
“That wasn’t right,” Mack said.
No, it wasn’t. “Then you came along. You gave me strength and courage that I never had. For the first time in my life, someone actually asked what I thought and listened to the answer. When that mission happened, and Blake told us you were the one who gave the order, and that you were trying to destroy him to cover your own failure—I had thirteen years of training telling me to believe him. Dad believed him. Mom stayed quiet. The whole family closed ranks, and I—”
She stopped. Pressed her lips together hard enough to feel her teeth.
“You chose the pattern,” Mack said. His voice was low, quiet, and completely without accusation.
“I chose the pattern.” The words burned coming out. “I had everything I needed to see the truth, and I looked at Blake instead. I saw my brother, and I—” She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t be the one to break the family. So I broke us instead.”
The pencil snapped in her fingers. She stared down at the two halves, charcoal dust on her skin.
Mack pulled the SUV to the shoulder of the road and stopped. Put it in park.
She looked at him, startled. “What?”
His dark eyes were steady on hers, and she saw something in them she hadn’t expected. Not anger, though she’d earned it. Not pity, though the story warranted it.
“I need you to hear something,” he said. “And I need you to hear it from me, not from a therapist or a self-help book or your own head at three in the morning.”
She nodded.
“You were sixteen when Blake taught you that your truth didn’t count.
You were twenty-seven when he used that same playbook to take me away from you.
” His voice was even, measured, but angry.
“That’s not weakness, Lyssa. That’s conditioning.
And the fact that you’re sitting in this truck right now, holding a sketchbook full of evidence against him, driving toward a federal building to put him on the record—that’s you breaking that programming in less than twenty-four hours. ”
Her vision blurred. She blinked hard. She was done crying—she’d decided that in the cabin—but her eyes apparently hadn’t gotten the message. “That doesn’t make it okay,” she said.
“No. It doesn’t make it okay.” He didn’t soften it, and she was glad. A lie would have been worse. “But it makes it something I can understand. And that’s—” He paused. Looked out the windshield at the mountain road ahead of them, then back at her. “That’s more than I had yesterday.”
She reached across the console and touched his hand. The scarred one, resting on the gearshift. Her fingertips found the raised ridge of damaged skin—Blake’s mark on him, the mirror of Blake’s mark on her.
He turned his hand over and closed his fingers around hers. Held on long enough for her to feel the warmth of his palm and the roughness of his skin and the steadiness that had always been the core of who he was. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “For telling me all of that.”
She studied his eyes, his solid jawline. Relief bubbled up inside her, escaping on an exhale. She smiled. “Can you forgive me?”
He ran the pad of his thumb over her cheek. “This is the first step.”
Her gaze fell to his lips. “Are you sure?”
His lips quirked. “Positive.”
Without thinking, she closed the distance between them and kissed the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything other than gratitude.
But then she didn’t pull back—not all the way.
She stared at him, heart jumping around in her chest, and smiled at his startled expression.
She took his scarred hand fully in hers and leaned in so her cheek was against his.
“I might not be here today if it weren’t for you,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m the one who should say thank you.”
His breath was warm against the shell of her ear. “You already thanked me.”
“Life-saving 101—you can never express your gratitude enough.”
When she pulled back for real this time, she saw the smile he tried and failed to hide. “I’ll remember that,” he said, and then put the truck in drive and pulled back onto the road.
She picked up a section of the pencil and started drawing again. Not Blake this time. Not the landscape.
She drew Mack’s hand on the steering wheel—the scars, the tension in his tendons, the way his fingers wrapped the leather with a grip that was damaged but unwavering.
It was the best thing she’d drawn in months.