Chapter 31 Lara
Lara
“Adam Eden is James Braun,” Calder said without skipping a beat as soon as we were back at our campsite.
“I can’t believe it,” I murmured, taking the fresh pouch of water and a protein bar he offered me; there were no Michelin stars out here, only a growing galaxy of real ones. “I thought maybe I misheard her . . .”
“You didn’t,” he grunted. “I recognized him from the picture Callum found of Braun from his law firm. Older now. Longer hair. But the same person, no question.”
That was why he’d flinched when Eden appeared . . . and not when Dr. Julia called him James.
As much of a revelation as it was, it paled in comparison to hearing them talk about my sister.
“She’s here,” I murmured, almost in a daze, watching him finish a message on his phone; I assumed to Callum, confirming that Braun and Eden were the same.
My tongue turned to lead, and dread coiled like a snake about to strike in my stomach. Rachel was here. We’d found her.
What had they done?
“I just can’t believe . . .” That was it.
That was the whole statement. I couldn’t believe.
It was somehow exactly what I’d been expecting but nothing I could’ve prepared for.
Like watching Ian flatline. “We can’t—I can’t let them—” I broke off, tearing at the laces on my boots.
My stomach turned as I recalled what he’d said about her, about them.
“I know,” came Calder’s low reply as he crouched in front of me, framing his hands on the sides of my knees. “We won’t.”
Even his promise couldn’t loosen the grip of fear around my throat.
“What are we going to do?” I heard myself whisper. I wasn’t just ceding to his direction anymore—I was begging for it.
“We’re going to get Rachel out of there,” he said. “But first, you’re going to eat.”
I was too . . . too many things to feel hungry. Even the bar in my hand looked like more than I could stomach, but I opened it and began to eat anyway.
Satisfied that I wasn’t going to stress-starve myself, Calder returned to his meticulous process of creating our campfire. Three strikes of his flint on the pile of deadwood and a flame ebbed to life.
“Do you think they’re holding her in that building without the windows?”
“No. That was for food and storage. There were additional units for climate control on the back of the building,” he replied.
My mouth rounded, drawing his brief but hot attention. “Where do you think she is? How are we going to find her before tomorrow?”
I’d been too focused on the group on the lawn—looking for Rachel and then watching the horror show of that man manipulating all those women—to look at anything else.
Sliding open his phone, Calder pulled up the aerial image again and zoomed in. “Here’s where we were. I think Rachel is in this building.” He held it in front of me and pointed to the building right behind the one we’d stopped at. “I think that’s where all the women stay.”
“So why wasn’t she out there with the rest of the group? And I didn’t see Brielle, either.”
“They probably keep the new arrivals, the ones going through initiation, separated from the rest of the women. They’d want to make sure they’re adequately indoctrinated before letting them absorb into the larger group.”
My stomach turned again, and I almost gagged. “So how do we get to her?” I forced the question out.
Calder panned again on the image, brow furrowing in thought. Hearing the crinkle of the empty protein bar wrapper in my fist, he immediately set his phone to the side and took the garbage from my hand and stuffed it into his pack.
“It’s too risky to get to her where she’s staying. Even if I could map out a path, without observing the patrol of the guards to know for sure where they are going to be, it’s not . . . ideal.”
“Calder—”
“The men are armed, Lara,” he interrupted, his eyes darkening. “Not all of them. I saw three at the gathering with weapons. I’m assuming they rotate between security and—” He caught himself. Not that it mattered.
“Between security and the women,” I finished thickly.
Calder grimaced but nodded.
“So what is your plan?” I asked, my voice hardly more than a sound, the answer screaming through my bones.
“I want to wait until they bring her to Eden’s cabin. Then she’ll be separated and alone while the rest of them are at the morning meditation.”
My breath seesawed in and out of my lungs. He had good rationale for his plan, but I hated the idea that the safest place to rescue Rachel from was the middle of the lions’ den.
“It’s the only time the rest of them, including security, are in one place.
They’ll bring her to his cabin and head to the lawn.
His cabin is more secluded than the rest, so it should be straightforward to slip in and get her.
Even if Eden only talks for fifteen minutes, that should be plenty of time,” he said, and his jaw flexed so hard, it was a miracle it didn’t crack.
The fire popped, and Calder straightened and went to tend to the flame, but even then, his shoulders didn’t relax.
“What is it?” I rose and went to him. When I placed my hand on his arm, his muscles quaked. “What are you worried about?”
Chin lowered, Calder looked at me, his expression taut. “You.”
“What? I’ll be fine,” I lied through my teeth; I couldn’t make that kind of promise, no matter how much I wanted to. “I’ll do whatever you tell me, but if it’s as easy as you say—”
“I’m not worried about you getting in, Lara. I’m worried about what happens once you’re there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You saw them, Lara. None of those women are being held against their will. There are more of them than guards. They weren’t handcuffed or under duress—”
“No, they were brainwashed,” I countered, prickly. “And probably drugged.”
“And I want you to be prepared that Rachel might be, too.” His words were harsh, but they needed to be.
Like alcohol on an open wound, the idea burned into my brain.
I knew I was saving her, but what if she didn’t?
What if I went into that cabin tomorrow and instead met a woman who didn’t want to leave?
I tensed. I’d considered a lot of things in the last twenty-four hours, but somehow I hadn’t considered this. That when we found her, she might not want to be rescued.
I echoed a sentiment we’d shared before. “I’ll do whatever I have to to keep her safe . . . even if she hates me for it.”
I hadn’t realized my chin had drifted down until his fingers came to rest underneath it. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Me, too.” My head angled, searching for his mouth. For his steadiness and his savagery. For the way that, for those brief moments when we were together, it was only my own desires at the front of my mind, and it was with a man who made me feel safe enough to be taken care of.
But instead of kissing me, Calder let out a deep groan and drew back. “You should get some sleep,” he said gruffly, turning back to the fire. “I’m going to wait and make sure the fire goes out.”
My feet refused. And my body. And my heart.
“Calder.” He turned, and I saw it again—that guilt he’d mentioned but hadn’t explained. “What did you mean when you said Rachel wasn’t the only guilty one in your relationship?”
He jerked like I’d struck a nerve, and I knew exactly what that looked like.
“We both made mistakes, that’s all.”
“Everybody makes mistakes, Calder. Doing the wrong thing isn’t the same as thinking you haven’t done enough.”
His hand balled at his side. “I don’t want you to have to carry this.”
“Calder.” I took his big hand in both of mine, disbelief pummeling my chest. “Stop being bad at letting me in.”
He hung his head, the angle of his jaw hardening, a picture of perfect torture.
“I meant what I said. I’ve meant everything I said, Lara.
” I blinked and his hands cupped my cheeks, his head held above mine, and his eyes pooling into dark orbs.
“All it took was one look. One look and I wanted you in a way I’d never felt for your sister. ”
Oh god. All the oxygen evacuated from my lungs.
He tried to turn away, and I reached for his face.
“Calder . . .” My palm to his cheek, I turned him to look at me.
“I thought it was a fluke. An anomaly. I wasn’t going to make a rash decision on an anomaly, especially when I wasn’t an expert at relationships.
I wanted you, and I thought it would pass; I thought it did pass when we didn’t see you much.
But then every time . . .” His massive body shuddered.
“Every time it was like being hit with the same drug over and over again. And then the same withdrawal.”
My lips peeled apart. “You wanted me?”
“I was drawn to you. Wanting implies I had a choice.” His thumb notched in my chin as firmly as his words sank into my heart.
“But I’m not—I would never disrespect your sister.
Things weren’t working for a dozen other reasons, but I don’t doubt my own distance and turmoil was what drove her to Allen. ”
“You knew?”
When his chin lowered, my heart broke to hear that he’d known Rachel was cheating on him. Even I hadn’t known. I knew there were times she’d lied about where she was . . . lied that she was with me. Maybe I was naive, but I’d had no idea it was because she was seeing someone else.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Lara. Knowing was only confirmation that I should’ve ended things sooner.” He sighed deeply. “Maybe if I understood sooner how I felt, things wouldn’t have gone the way they did.”
“You can’t blame yourself that she got involved with him.”
“I wanted you the way I should’ve wanted her, and even if I didn’t say it, I’d be a fool to tell myself it didn’t have an effect.
” A harsh breath blew through his lips. “When I told Rachel I wanted to break up, it was a sigh of relief for both of us. We both knew things weren’t working, but I still cared about her.
Enough to decide there was no good to come from telling her how I felt about you.
Honestly, I didn’t even know how I felt about you.
I just knew I felt something I couldn’t shake.
So we parted as friends with our own secrets; she had Allen, and I had you. ”
“Please don’t say you feel guilty for not telling her, Calder. It wouldn’t have done any good,” I blurted out. “You were her first call. In spite of everything, she still turned to you.” Instead of me.
His mouth drew tight. “But after she learned there was no baby, that changed.”
“How?” I swayed toward him.
“I tried to console her. To be there for her. I told her you would be there for her, too, but it wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She wanted us to get back together, Lara,” Calder said hoarsely, his eyes snapping to mine.
“She begged me in the parking lot of the hospital as she sobbed in my arms. She was so attached to that baby, to the idea of having a family . . . I don’t .
. . I tried to calm her. To tell her she would have plenty of support.
Plenty of people who’d help and be there for her.
That she’d find someone else. That this wasn’t the end of her chances to have a baby. ”
Oh, Rachel.
“She wouldn’t . . . accept it.” His throat bobbed.
“She started blaming herself for why we ended, saying it was because she was nervous about commitment and that Allen had been fun and easy but a mistake, and she knew that now. And all she wanted was a baby and a family and someone who’d care for her the way I had.
But it was when she kept apologizing . .
. wanting to take responsibility for something that wasn’t her fault. I couldn’t . . .”
My heart stilled to slow, heavy beats that pushed my next words out. “So you told her the truth.”
The quake and ripple of his body, the heaviness of his breath—it all gave me the answer.
“I didn’t know what else to do except be honest.” His throat worked to try to swallow. “I wanted her to stop blaming herself. I wanted her to just breathe for a damn minute and realize what she was asking for from me wasn’t what she wanted, either—wasn’t what she deserved.
“She deserved someone who felt for her what I felt for you. Who ached to be near her the way I ached to be near you. Someone who knew after only minutes around her that his life was changed. That something had changed in him. I hoped—” He blew out a breath.
“It doesn’t matter what I hoped. What happened was, I made it worse.
The only thing she wanted from me after that was for me to find someone else to take her back to campus because she never wanted to see me again.
” His jaw pulsed. “So I called Cassius to give her a ride.”
I didn’t know my heart could break in so many places. For my sister. For Calder. For everything that could’ve been . . . and wasn’t.
“How do we not feel guilty when our best for someone wasn’t enough?” I asked because I didn’t have an answer. I still carried the weight of the man who’d died in my emergency room despite every attempt to save him.
Now it made sense why Rachel had never wanted to talk about him. Why she’d let me think Calder was the reason for how everything turned out . . . or maybe why she was too hurt to correct my assumption.
“I wanted you then, too, Calder,” I confessed, needing him to know. “More than admiring your anatomy. My crush on you was like a contagion. Something that altered my DNA. A bar that was set by a man I couldn’t have.”
“When you kept your distance, I assumed Rachel told you everything, and you wanted nothing to do with me.”
How different things might’ve been if she had.
“Is that why you never said anything to me?” I asked, spreading my hands over his chest.
His gaze dimmed. “No.” His voice dipped lower.
“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know what I felt, but I was afraid—” He broke off and swallowed hard.
“I was afraid whatever it was, could be what Mom and Cassius had. And even then, even five years later, he was hollow. Even now . . .”
Right then, I knew the most traumatic thing about his mother’s murder hadn’t been finding her body or thinking he could’ve saved her, it was all of that in the context of watching Cassius’s grief consume him.
“I didn’t water what I felt because I was afraid of what would grow.”
My fingers curled over the thud of his pulse like I could hold his heart in my hand and take the pain away.
“And now?”
He let out a harsh breath. “Now I want you too much to be afraid of anything except not having you.” He slid his finger along my cheek. “And what about you? Do you feel guilty for wanting me now?”
“Maybe I take too much responsibility for my sister and for what’s happened to her, but I also take responsibility for my feelings. I’ve never felt guilty for wanting you. Not then, in secret. And not now, out loud.”
His nose brushed mine, and a low sound rumbled from his chest. A weight relaxing. “How loud?”
The coarse texture of his voice coaxed a hot shiver up my spine. “Fuck me, Calder, and find out.”