Chapter Eleven #2
As they put another mile between themselves and what Hawk called the fairy glen, Sinead’s old habits returned.
Even as gratitude bloomed in her chest, some clinical, guarded part of her mind ran its usual checklist. Was this real?
Was he telling her the truth, or was this just another performance, another version of the safari guide angling for a bigger tip, another investor smiling too wide across a boardroom table, another so-called friend who wanted to ride on her father’s name?
She turned the question over as they walked, searching Hawk’s profile for the tell she always found eventually.
But there was nothing. No calculation in his vivid green eyes.
No angle. No performance. Just a man walking a hard trail because he’d promised he would, who’d fixed her blisters because they hurt and he could do something about it, with no strings.
As she walked, not only did she feel lighter than she had before the first-aid break, but a knot inside her that she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying for years had loosened too.
She thought of the year she’d gone searching for herself in the thin air of the Himalayas, waiting for the altitude to cause a breakthrough if she just climbed high enough. She’d hired a sherpa, trekked for weeks, sat in freezing monasteries waiting for enlightenment to arrive.
Around seventeen thousand feet, when she was gasping for oxygen and clarity, she thought she’d find the piece of herself that had gone missing.
She hadn’t.
She’d come home with photographs and a journal full of half-finished thoughts and the same hollow ache she left with. Only now she had a storage closet filled with expensive gear and a story that sounded good at dinner parties.
“You’re quiet.” Hawk’s voice broke into her thoughts.
Funny how she and Hawk hiked together in silence for miles and miles, yet it never felt uncomfortable. She didn’t feel the need to fill the dead air with chatter, and neither did he.
In fact, Hawk may be the first person she’d ever had that with.
But his comment on her silence told her something else—he knew when her silence was easy and when it wasn’t.
She drew a deep breath, mulling that over for a heartbeat. She kicked a loose stone out of her path.
“Just thinking. I went to Nepal once. Trying to find myself, or whatever you call it when you’re rich enough to turn an identity crisis into a vacation.”
He made that sound again—the low, huffing noise that made her body prickle with the memory of his hands on her.
“Find anything?”
“A sherpa named Pemba who was more grounded at nineteen than I’ve ever been in my life.
And a lot of cold nights wondering why I still felt like a fraud.
” She laughed, but it didn’t have much humor in it.
“I thought if I got far enough from my father, I’d figure out who I was without him.
Like I could outrun the Winthrop name while using Winthrop money.
But it turns out you can’t outrun genetics no matter how high you climb. ”
He didn’t say anything to smooth over the emotions that were thick in her words. He just kept his steady pace, two steps ahead, shoulders straight as he carried his pack for miles like it weighed as much as a cloud.
“He never told me he was proud of me,” she went on before she could talk herself out of spilling her guts to her bodyguard-turned-lover, who was becoming…more.
“Not when I closed deals that made him millions. I used to think if I just did enough…earned enough straight A’s in school, had enough achievements, gave enough of myself…
eventually he’d see me for the woman I am.
Right up to the end…” Her throat constricted, but she got the words out anyway.
“I never stopped hoping. But in the end, even that proved him right. Because it was its own kind of stupid.”
Hawk paused and turned to face her. But he didn’t rush to take her in his arms and fix her feelings the way he did her blisters.
He only reached for her hand. She gave it to him, and he brushed his callused thumb over hers, a warm stroke that told her that he was here for her, during every harsh step of the way through the wilderness and navigating her feelings too.
“I can’t make excuses for the man.” He pitched his voice low. “I didn’t know him or what was going on in his head. I can’t force him to make an apology, even though you deserve it.”
Her heart swelled, and salt waited on the back of her tongue.
“But I can tell you what I see. I am in awe of you, Sinead. Every single day out here, watching you keep pushing when most people would have quit two hours in—you’re amazing.
This whole thing, this adventure, this mystery we’re chasing—I’m so damn glad I get to do it with you.
Whatever is up around that bend.” He looked at the shadowed trail. “Wherever we end up next.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“I’m a better man for doing this with you.”
A noise escaped her, low and pained.
Hawk searched her eyes. “Maybe the man I was before would quit after we find what lays at the end of this trail. But I won’t quit. I’m staying. With the team. With you.”
She stared up at him, blood pounding in her ears.
Who knew. She’d traveled the world chasing an elusive peace.
Nepal, safaris, cities on four continents, therapists in three time zones—and it turned out all she’d ever needed was standing in front of her in the Wyoming wilderness, dirt on his boots and salve still on his fingertips, telling her she was amazing and sounding like he meant it.
“Nobody’s ever said that to me,” she choked. “Not without wanting something after.”
“I don’t want anything after.” He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her bug-bitten ear. “Just this. Just you, walking next to me when we find whatever’s out there.”
She leaned into his touch. Leaned into the moment and the sound of his voice.
Maybe her father really had known something she didn’t when he sent her out here. Maybe he’d known, in the calculating way he knew things, that this wilderness held more than coordinates and old legends.
And maybe it didn’t matter anymore why she’d started this journey, only that she got to keep walking it with Hawk beside her.
She turned her lips into his palm and kissed it, dirt and calluses and all. It felt more intimate than any of the kisses she’d ever given any man before him.
His expression softened, and his smile was tender as they both absorbed the moment.
They fell back into step. The trail narrowed ahead of them, evening light slanting through the pines. For the first time since she had to call for help because men were following her through the woods, she let herself believe that maybe the danger really was behind them.
That maybe, from here on, all that was left to chase was the mystery itself.