Chapter Six
Will woke the next morning gritty-eyed and pissed off and dreading leaving the safety and solitude of his tent.
He would fully admit to anyone who would accuse him of it that he was a coward. He’d never had to be brave, and he’d never had to fight. That was Brandon’s expertise, and Will had never learned it.
Ever since his mother had blamed him for telling her about his father’s affair, and the possible child he’d created with someone else, Will had learned that being brave and doing the hard thing only got you a cart full of shit.
So it didn’t bother him he had spent the night hiding from an angry woman in his tent. It was a better alternative to the shit.
He’d heard her stomp around outside for a while after he’d zipped up his tent. He’d listened carefully, not willing to fall asleep until he’d heard the zip of her own. Once she’d paced off her anger or whatever and gotten into her own tent, he’d gotten snatches of sleep, always straining to listen for any possible bear sounds.
Every time he’d woken up, listening too hard to the sound of a Colorado wilderness night, the same thought had run through his head.
Christ, why would she want to dredge all those old memories up? So they could be more uncomfortable around each other? So he could be reminded of all the ways her confession all those years ago had betrayed his trust? So he could be reminded of all the ways his terrible response had been a betrayal of hers? Why would either of them want to relive one of the most terrible days of his life?
Right up there with Mom’s anger at him and threatening to cut him off, and when Courtney had flippantly announced she’d had an abortion.
Odd, he could rationalize those both away. Mom had needed a target for her hurt to land, or maybe she’d come to love her reputation more than her children. Whatever it was she’d needed him to be the scapegoat. Shitty? Sure, but there was some reason, some need behind it.
With Courtney, well, it wasn’t like they’d had a typical marriage. They’d always had fun together, and they’d never communicated. They’d never talked about what they wanted, and he’d been more than happy to stay in Colorado with Bran while Courtney spent most of her time traveling for her modeling career. Sure, it had hurt that he’d lost the chance at his child without even a say in it, but he couldn’t blame her for looking out for herself without consulting him. That had always been who they were.
Both incidents had cut him open, bled him dry, but he’d found a resigned kind of understanding.
He’d never in a million years understood why Tori would admit she loved him that night, when he wasn’t worth the trouble, and she was worth infinitely more.
Now she wanted to rehash it? Hell no.
He climbed out of his sleeping bag, trying to ignore the itchy feeling building in his gut. He wouldn’t name it and it would go away.
The morning was cool and in any other situation that might have been something like calming and relaxing. He loved a cool mountain morning and the quiet promise of a new day. He liked the hope of dawn and dew. It restored him most days, but today he felt none of that hope for renewal or the excitement at facing the day. All he felt was dread.
He grabbed a sweatshirt out of his pack and pulled it on. He shoved his feet into his boots and then, with a deep breath to steady himself and remind himself she couldn’t make him relive one of the most painful nights of his life, he stepped out into the cool mountain morning.
Tori was already standing outside her tent, her gaze on the eastern sky that was growing pink behind the trees. She had been stretching her hands above her head, leaning back and then spreading her arms out wide, but she stilled as he stepped out.
It only lasted for a second or so, and then she went back to stretching, her eyes never darting toward him.
He should look away, be the coward he always was, but the way she moved was still as mesmerizing as he’d tried to pretend it wasn’t all those years they’d been friends.
She wasn’t blatantly gorgeous like most of the women he’d dated or, in Courtney’s case, married. He’d always gone after women who had the kind of bodies that matched their big personalities, but Tori’s gigantic personality had been trapped in this tiny body. Short, compact, everything about her reminding him of a scrappy little fighter. The gleam in her blue-green eyes, the way she went after what she wanted—stubborn and dogged. She walked through the world as if it was a constant fight, and she was always ready for it. Always determined to win.
She was a force, and something about that made her too pointy chin, and too big eyes, and too sharp face gorgeous. She was tiny, but everything about her was strong and even at his weakest, he recognized that strength and envied it.
He’d always wanted it in ways he’d never been able to make sense of. So he’d befriended it, even though she’d always intimidated him. He’d circled around it, like the earth to the sun, he’d orbited around Tori helplessly attracted and desperately afraid of getting too close in case he’d burn up.
He’d always known she’d burn him up.
A pertinent reminder that he couldn’t look at her like this, think of her like this. He’d survived their friendship because he’d done an excellent job of pretending none of those feelings or fears existed inside of him. Pretending had been the Will Evans way of surviving the world since he’d been a teenager.
Today though, in the pearly light of dawn, and the emotional upheaval of the past who-knew-how-many days, he felt that old want shudder through him. Some weak part of him could imagine his hands on the smooth lines of her body. Something in his mind dared wonder what she might taste like, and as it always did, those thoughts made him hate himself.
Because if there was anything he knew without a shadow of a doubt, it was that Tori Appleby—in her infinite strength that hid some infinite vulnerability she’d never be willing to show—was not for him. He wasn’t strong enough or brave enough or good enough to be the man who touched her.
It was a shame for Tori that she had shitty taste in men.
“Good morning,” Tori offered cheerfully.
He knew not to trust that cheerfulness because Tori was never cheerful except when she was about to kill you.
“Morning.”
“Sleep well?” she continued in that syrupy sweet voice.
“Like the dead,” he replied, because he felt like the dead. Gritty-eyed and numb and as though nothing but blackness lay before him.
“Isn’t that nice? Wish I could say the same. I was too busy thinking about all the hours I put into planning how I was going to tell you I loved—”
“You can’t make me do this,” he growled. She couldn’t force him to relive it. She couldn’t.
She smiled at him, sharp and dangerous, that smile he’d always admired because it had never been aimed at him. Now it was on him, and he knew a weapon when he saw one.
“Can’t I?”
A sense of foreboding stole through him because last night he’d been certain that all it would take was a few well-placed words and to walk away, and she wouldn’t push this. Who would want to push this?
But he should’ve known better because Tori was the woman who’d set this horrible thing between them in motion in the first place, and she was not a woman who let things go. Who sulked away, who played the coward.
Which was why, he realized with a clarity he didn’t want, he’d been so mad when he’d come back to Boulder after he’d married Courtney and she’d been gone. It was why he’d been so livid that she’d reappeared seven years later as if nothing had happened.
Because it wasn’t Tori to be a coward, to run away. It wasn’t Tori to give up the fight.
Now she wanted to rewrite the ending? Come back into his life? Face all those old things he’d cut out of himself?
The itch in his gut got stronger, more of a searing, boiling thing. But if he didn’t name it, everything would be fine.
For Brandon, and for Lilly, and for Mile High, Gracely, and the Evans name, he could not give in to this ugly thing inside of him.
Which meant he had to fight, for once in his life, he had to fight.
* * *
There was something passing over Will’s face Tori didn’t recognize. It reminded her a little bit of when she’d first seen him at Mile High on the day of Brandon’s wedding. He’d been so . . . angry, and while she’d imagined their reuniting in a lot of different ways, blind fury on his part had never been one of them.
Everything about his expression was hard, and it made him look older somehow. Older and dangerous, and though Will had always been a danger to her heart, he’d never appeared dangerous.
Unease shivered down her spine, and that was certainly new and different. She’d been so certain she had everything right, and that she was going to win this fight.
For the first time possibly ever, she wasn’t so sure she would. Not against this man she didn’t recognize.
But he didn’t say anything, and eventually he stopped staring at her like he thought he could dismantle her piece by piece. She was a little shaky at that because her saving grace had always been that he didn’t think he could win against her. If he ever thought he had power over her control, she’d be toast. Because it was true. He absolutely had all those things—power and control. It would only take a few little words for him to dismantle her completely. He’d just never known it.
Ignoring the way her stomach curdled and her chest got too tight, she forced her body to relax. “I’ve always wondered what it was,” she said conversationally, “because even if you didn’t have feelings for me back when we were friends, why did you have to—”
“Yeah, we were friends. That was it,” he interrupted gruffly, a steely, furious note to his voice she thought maybe he was trying to hide. “Should I remind you that you ran away a lot faster than I did?”
It was the flat-out lie that unwound some of her control. “Bullshit. You disappeared. I stayed in Boulder. I . . .”
He stepped toward her and even though she wanted to be strong and formidable, her words trailed off. Because he looked dangerous and intimidating, and he’d never been those things. Even that night when he’d flat-out told her that there would never be anything between them, he hadn’t been aggressive.
“What is it you’re trying to accomplish?” he asked, his voice threaded with that same deadly calm it’d had when he’d told her love was never going to be a thing they experienced together.
That question made her hesitate. The answer gave away too much. How would she survive being here, having come here basically homeless and penniless and on her knees, if he knew so many of those old hurts still thrived inside of her? Like he was some sort of disease, one that lived in her blood no matter how many years and treatments she’d employed to get rid of it. A cancer that was never truly eradicated.
“I want to erase it,” she said, more than ashamed when her voice wasn’t the sturdy, determined thing she wanted it to be.
“I guess that’s the difference between you and me, Tori. I erased it a long damn time ago.”
It hurt. She knew he wanted it to hurt. He was good at that, finding the thing to push the dagger deeper.
But beyond her hurt, beyond her anger, she saw something else. Older and wiser and used to the hurt, she couldn’t help but wonder if Will was hurting her on purpose. Not because he was mean-spirited or awful, but because when you hurt someone else it sometimes felt like you were protecting yourself.
Because why would he have been angry when she first arrived if he’d erased it so effectively?
It was a lie, and that stirred her anger all over again. Will had always been adept at pretending, but he’d never lied to her face.
“You’ve already erased it and me,” she said, pretending to ruminate over his words. Putting a few new ones in his mouth because it would piss him off. “And yet here I am. Here we are. But I’m not going anywhere this time, and I don’t think you are either.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then I guess we’ll just see how erased it is for you.” Because she wouldn’t let him have his lie. She’d poke at him until he broke, and then maybe she’d finally have the truth, and some closure. A foundation to build her new life on.
Because damn right she wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he.