Chapter 5
Lakin knew she should have told Eli about the strange feeling she’d been having that someone was watching her.
But after seeing her place and realizing that all the intruder had taken was some food, she’d gone back to feeling paranoid instead of genuinely worried about being stalked.
She had no proof that anyone was really watching her, just a sensation she sometimes got.
The only proof she had of any crime was of someone being so desperate for food that they’d broken in to steal some.
Eli and Kansas had much more dangerous criminals to find than her hungry intruder.
So once the techs finished processing her cabin for prints on the doorknob and the kitchen cabinets, she hugged them both and sent them back to their more important cases.
She earned a smile of approval from Officer Reynolds, who seemed so serious that he probably rarely smiled.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured her brother and her cousin. “And I’ll make sure that I use the dead bolt now on all the doors even when I’m not home.” Nobody would have gotten inside if she had.
Eli hugged her again and whispered, “Please, be careful, little sis.”
She hugged him back and promised, “I will.”
She wasn’t sure if his concern was only regarding the serial killer or if he’d noticed the tension between her and Troy as well. Eli never missed a thing, though, so he was probably cautioning her about both.
When he and Kansas followed Officer Reynolds out of Lakin’s cabin, she began to close the door, but a hand caught the edge of it.
Troy stepped inside with her. Then he closed and dead bolted the door behind himself.
The tension was there, but it wasn’t just frustration she felt now.
She also felt the usual awareness, the attraction.
Despite all the years they’d been together, she’d never gotten used to the rush of desire she felt for him.
Maybe if their relationship hadn’t been long distance so many of those years, she would have gotten used to it. But he’d never given her the chance.
“Do Eli and Kansas think they’ll be able to find the intruder?” Troy asked.
She shrugged. “I think he’s the least of their concerns right now.”
“But he broke in here—”
“Apparently because he or she was hungry,” she said, gesturing toward the kitchenette. She still had to clean up the food on the floor, the table and in the sink, as well as the residue from the fingerprinting.
“They still broke into your home,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion, “and if you had been home—”
“They probably would have gone on to the next cabin,” she interjected.
“Parker checked the other ones,” Troy said. “He couldn’t find any sign that anyone had tried getting into them. Just yours.”
That knowledge chilled her a bit. Why just hers?
Maybe because hers was the farthest away from the others, so the chance of getting caught was slimmer.
She hoped that was the only reason, but she wasn’t going to obsess over that, not right now.
She was obsessing over something else, over someone else.
She shrugged off his concerns about the break-in.
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.
I want to know how badly you were hurt when you fell off the oil rig.
” Several weeks ago. Several weeks ago he’d been hurt, but he hadn’t let her know.
Why? Because he hadn’t been able to? But why didn’t someone from the oil company contact his family?
Troy sighed and rubbed his hand over the head of black hair he kept super short. “Lakin…”
“Tell me,” she insisted. “How bad did you get hurt when you fell off the rig?”
He touched his back almost unconsciously, like he didn’t realize he was doing it. “I… I was paralyzed.”
“You were paralyzed?” she repeated, her voice cracking. Pain pressed on her chest, making her heart ache for what he must have gone through. “Why didn’t you call me, Troy? I would have rushed to the hospital—”
“That’s why,” he said. “I didn’t want to put you or my family through the fear and uncertainty—”
“That you were feeling,” she interjected.
She couldn’t imagine how scared he’d been.
That he hadn’t reached out to his family didn’t make her feel any better.
She loved his mother and siblings almost as much as she loved him, almost as much as she loved her own family.
“You shouldn’t have had to go through that all by yourself. ”
“I wanted to,” he said. “I had to know what I was facing before I told anyone what happened.”
“Why?” she asked, her heart pounding hard with fear, over what he’d gone through and over what it meant to their relationship that he’d chosen to be alone.
“You have to know that it wouldn’t have mattered to me or to your family.
We would have wanted to be there for you no matter the outcome from your fall. ”
He groaned and rubbed his hand over his head again. “That was why, Lakin. I didn’t want you or my family to make sacrifices for me—”
“Like you make?” she interjected. “You sacrificed your college education to go right to work on the oil rigs so you could help your mom and siblings.” She’d understood that then.
But what she had assumed would be just a few years had become seven, nearly eight years of long distance.
“And you choose to keep working there instead of starting a business with me.”
“Because I don’t have enough money saved yet for us to give up our day jobs and start up a business,” he said. “We have to be sure we have enough reserves to give us time to get the business up and running.”
While Troy hadn’t physically gone away for college like she had, Lakin knew that he took online courses in business. He probably knew more than she did even though she had the degree. And he wasn’t going to agree with what she’d done any more than she agreed with what he’d done.
But right now, even though it made her feel like a hypocrite, she couldn’t confess to what she’d done. She was too upset over his injury. That concerned her more than anything else. She hated that he’d been hurt even more than she hated that he’d chosen to go through his medical ordeal alone.
“So what are you facing?” she asked him. “You’re obviously still in pain, still limping…”
He nodded. “I’m still healing. The swelling went down, and the paralysis went away, so I can start physical therapy now. But I still have some numbness and tingling, and I have to be careful until I’m completely healed or…”
“It could come back,” she said, alarm shooting through her. “The paralysis could return?” She couldn’t imagine Troy, who’d always been so strong and fit, feeling that helpless. He must have been terrified; he probably still was. She didn’t dare show him how scared she was for him.
He shrugged, then grimaced slightly, as if the movement had tweaked those healing muscles again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not even sure if the doctors know for sure, but they warned me that I have to be careful.”
“Chasing after intruders wasn’t being careful,” she pointed out. Anger joined her fear. “You shouldn’t have done that.” And not just because of his back. He could have wound up in the hospital again or worse if the intruder had been dangerous.
She wasn’t only angry that he’d put his life in danger again. She was angry that he’d shut her out. “And you shouldn’t have kept what happened to you from me and your family,” she said.
She was so damn hurt that he had. While she hadn’t had the chance to tell him what she’d done, the two things were not the same. He’d been hurt and hadn’t reached out to her for comfort or emotional support.
He reached out for her now, but she stepped back and shook her head.
If he touched her, the same thing would happen that always happened.
She would forget all about how she felt when he was gone and focus only on how wonderful it was that he was home, that he was with her again.
While they always made the most of their time together, it was never long enough. He always went back to the oil rigs.
The thought of him going back again to where he’d been hurt…and knowing that he could be hurt again or, worse, wind up dead like his dad, filled her with more terror than finding out someone had broken into her cabin.
“Lakin…” His voice was gruff with emotion, and his beautiful green eyes glistened with it. But was it regret? Did he feel bad for not contacting her?
“Why, Troy?” she asked. “Why did you shut me out?”
“Because I love you,” he said.
She shook her head again. “No. You would have wanted me there with you then.” He had kept her in the dark and at a distance for far too long. She’d wondered before how long they could continue that way, but now she realized it might already be too late to salvage their relationship.
* * *
Troy’s arms ached to hold Lakin, but she kept stepping back from him, as if he was one of the bullies who used to pick on her on the playground. But he’d been the one who’d protected her from them, just like he’d wanted to protect her from what had happened to him.
He knew that she would have been upset and scared for him; he could see that she was now, just from hearing about his fall. He’d wanted to save her and his family from the uncertainty and fear of his paralysis. But apparently he’d only put it off; he hadn’t saved her from it.
And he really hadn’t saved her from the intruder he’d chased through the woods.
The person probably would have run off anyway if they had just been desperate for food, like Eli and Kansas seemed to think.
Although if they had really wanted only food from her, they would have just had to ask.
Lakin was so sweet and selfless that she would give someone her last morsel of food even if she was hungry, too.
“I do love you,” he said, his heart aching. He reached out again to touch her cheek, to slide his fingertips across her soft skin. “I love you so much.”