BRIAN WAS BATTLING against time. He felt feverish, which was the beginning of the end, where sepsis was concerned. The first thing he did, once he was outside the cave, was check to see if their communication equipment had survived the fire. He found his Bendix King, but the radio had melted. We won’t be calling for help on this. He left it where it was.
His Pulaski tool and the cargo box, which had contained additional food, were buried under the giant spruce that had come down over the cave opening. He fought off a wave of despair. I should have gotten this stuff inside. I should have found that foxhole and gotten us out of that cave. I should have done better…at everything.
“Now what?” Tag asked.
He took a deep breath and let it out. No sense worrying over spilled milk. He had to focus on getting the two of them back to civilization in one piece.
Tag’s face bore streaks of soot where she’d shoved her windswept blond hair behind her ears with blackened hands. In the waning light, the ravages of the seven days they’d spent in the cave were evident. Deep hollows furrowed her cheeks, and her beautiful blue eyes looked bleak. He resisted the urge to offer comfort. He didn’t want to suggest their situation was hopeless.
But it’s pretty damn bad.
There was no telling how much timberland the fire had consumed. Until they reached green forest they had no hope of finding berries or something they could trap and eat. Nor did they have wood for a fire to keep away wild animals that might be foraging for food in the devastation, like wolves and coyotes—and the vultures that soared overhead.
Brian had slung his PG bag over one shoulder and settled the rolled-up parachute across the other. “Are you okay with that sleeping bag?” Tag had offered to carry something, and it had a strap she could throw over her shoulder.
“I’ve got it. We should get moving, Brian. The sun’s heading down.”
It had taken far longer than he’d expected to work his way around the rock to search for the items they’d left behind, which had turned out to be an exercise in futility. He retrieved his compass from his PG bag. It had been useless while they were trapped in the cave but was absolutely necessary now. “We were headed west when we left the Otter. I think our best bet is to head back to the open area where we dropped the smoke jumpers. There’s a slight chance they haven’t been evacuated yet, and even if they’re gone, they may have left some supplies behind.”
When their job was done, smoke jumpers packed up their gear, leaving the forest as pristine as they’d found it, and hiked, sometimes several hours, to a spot where they could be picked up by a vehicle. If the site was too remote, as this one was, they’d be airlifted out by helicopter, once the fire was under control. Brian knew from experience that the odd bit of food—a heavy can or damaged item too inconvenient to haul away—might be left behind.
He tripped when his bad leg didn’t make it over a downed limb and swore as he recovered his balance.
“Are you okay?” Tag asked.
“Don’t be asking me every five minutes how I am,” he answered curtly. “Save your breath for walking.”
She shot him a look that said he was being a prick. “God forbid a Grayhawk should ask about the well-being of a Flynn. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Doesn’t she understand I’m trying to protect her from the truth? Doesn’t she understand I want to get her somewhere she can survive on her own, if I’m laid low by the infection coursing through my body?
She was looking for an argument, but he turned his back on her and headed through the morass of downed trees, picking the easiest, safest route he could find over the steep hills and deep gullies. He never looked back, trusting her to follow.
Except for warnings like “Watch that limb,” or “See that crevice?” or “Be careful here!” they didn’t speak for the next two hours. Brian did his best to control his limp and avoid stumbling, because he didn’t want Tag to know how much his leg was bothering him. He drank often, knowing his excessive thirst was caused by fever, and because he felt sure they’d run into a stream before they ran out of water.
He was surprised at how much woodland the fire had demolished. They’d walked nine or ten miles over burned-out terrain, and he still couldn’t see green forest.
“Brian?”
He didn’t slow down, simply said, “What?”
“Stop and talk to me.”
“We need to keep moving.”
“Brian! Stop!”
He heaved an aggrieved sigh and turned around. “What is it?”
“Your limp has gotten worse.”
“So?”
“You’ve been drinking a lot of water.”
“So?”
“How’s your—” She cut herself off. “I could use a break.”
“Already? Are you tired?”
“Not really, but—”
“Then let’s keep moving. We have another hour of daylight before we need to stop and make camp. With any luck, we’ll be past the fire’s devastation by then.” He turned and started walking again. He didn’t want her asking any more questions. He was worried that the fire had burned its way a lot farther across the backcountry than they could walk in another hour. He wanted green limbs he could use to make a cover over their heads and boughs for a bed. He wanted the hope of the odd wild blackberry or blueberry or strawberry they could pick and eat. He wanted rabbits and squirrels they could trap and a cool stream of water running through an even cooler forest.
The August sun was hot. His body was hot. He was walking through hell, with no end in sight.
“Brian, I’m hungry.”
“Me, too.”
“Can we eat the last Snickers?”
Brian realized it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consume a few calories, since they had another hour of walking to do before dark. “Why not?”
He could use the break. Not that he would have admitted that to a living soul. He bit back a groan as he settled on a downed pine. It felt wonderful to give his leg a rest.
Tag reached for his PG bag, and he let it slide off his shoulder into her lap. She fished around inside until she came up with the Snickers.
“Should we eat the whole thing?” she asked. “Or just half of it?”
“Let’s go whole hog. We need the energy.”
He watched a smile flash on her face and disappear. “Thank goodness! It feels like my stomach is folded in half with nothing in the middle.”
She opened the Snickers, which was gooey from the heat, and put the wrapper back in his PG bag—no littering in the forest—then broke it in half and handed him the larger portion. As she licked her fingers clean, he watched her with hungry eyes. But he made no attempt at playfulness. He didn’t have the energy.
She shot him a grim smile as she knocked her half against his half and said, “Down the hatch.”
He put the whole thing in his mouth at once, chewed it, and swallowed it. He watched her nibble off a tiny bite at one corner.
She caught him staring and said defensively, “I want to make it last.”
He shook his head at her logic. “It’s not going to fill you any fuller just because you eat it slower.”
“My stomach doesn’t know that. I’m tricking it into thinking this is the whole bar.”
Brian chuckled. He knew they ought to get moving, but he wasn’t looking forward to putting weight on his injured leg.
“What are the chances of someone finding us now that we’re out here walking around?” Tag asked.
“Better than they were. Not as good as I’d like.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a big forest. It would be easy to miss us.”
“You don’t think we’ll be found?”
“Oh, they’ll find us all right. I don’t know about your family, but Aiden won’t stop looking until he finds us—or our cold, dead bodies.”
He saw Tag shudder and wished he hadn’t been so blunt.
“Leah won’t stop either,” she said. “It’s too bad they can’t work together.”
“What makes you think they haven’t joined forces?”
She shot him a pained look. “After all the animosity? All the dirty tricks? Why would they?”
“Since we were lost together, they could agree to call a truce long enough to pool their search efforts.”
“I suppose it’s possible. I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Did all the drama between our families have anything to do with why you broke up with me in high school? Or was it all about you wanting to leave me before I left you?”
She looked startled that he’d brought up the subject of their brief stint as boyfriend and girlfriend.
The fever must be affecting my judgment. Do I really want to open this can of worms? Yes, I do.
If it was only her fear that he would abandon her that had kept them apart, he felt sure that could be overcome. Family pressure was a trickier proposition.
“Vick didn’t trust you not to hurt me. She said she wasn’t going to speak to me again until I broke up with you. She meant it.”
“You couldn’t tell me that at the time?”
“What difference would it have made? You obviously didn’t care one way or the other. You never said a word to try and change my mind.”
“Only because I didn’t think it would do any good. You sent me a note. You didn’t even tell me to my face.”
“There was no way we could have kept dating once our families got involved,” she argued.
“Within the past month, one of my brothers married one of your sisters. Despite our fathers. Despite opposition from me.”
“You tried to stop Connor from marrying Eve?”
Brian snorted derisively. “I knew—from my own experience—that getting together with a Grayhawk was an iffy proposition for a Flynn.”
He watched Tag drop her gaze, acknowledging the guilty truth of what he’d said. “And I had my divorce as an example of what can go wrong when two people don’t know each other well before they marry. But despite making a marriage of convenience, my brother and your sister seemed pretty damned happy the last time I saw them in church.”
“That’s because Eve had a crush on Connor in high school. She was already half in love with him.”
He arched a rueful brow. “What makes you think I didn’t love you?”
“You never said so.”
“You weren’t listening. Or you’ve conveniently forgotten what you don’t want to recall. I distinctly remember saying the words.”
“Flippantly. You said ‘I love you’ flippantly.”
He frowned. “I don’t think any man says those words without considering what they mean.”
“Men say sweet things to get what they want from a woman.”
“You mean sex? But we were already having sex. So why did you dismiss the possibility that I meant what I said?”
“Because I didn’t for a minute believe you.”
“Why not?”
She looked uncertain. “You couldn’t have loved me.”
“Why not?”
“What does saying ‘I love you’ even mean?” she countered. “How do those words change anything?”
“I wanted to share everything with you. I wanted to tell you my secrets and hear yours. I wanted to hold you close and take care of you and be together forever.”
“Seventeen-year-old boys don’t think like that.”
He shot her a sardonic look. “They don’t? How would you know that? You don’t have brothers. From what you’ve told me, King wasn’t around much. From whom—which brothers or uncles or cousins or other boyfriends—did you learn how boys think?”
She pursed her lips. “What kind of secrets would you have shared?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Not really. If you want me to believe you, tell me something you would have shared with me.”
“All right. I was afraid when I first went out with you that you were dating me just so you could dump me at some embarrassing moment.”
“I was.”
He raised his eyebrows as though to say Thought so!
She hesitated, then asked, “If you believed that, why did you go out with me?”
“Have you looked at yourself? You were the most beautiful girl in school.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“At least in my eyes. I remember you were always laughing. I wanted to be a part of whatever it was that kept you feeling so happy.”
“Have you heard of laughing to hide the pain?”
“You weren’t happy?”
“When I was with Vick, I always felt good, like I belonged. But most of the time, no, I wasn’t happy.”
“Why not?”
“Now you’re asking for one of my secrets.”
“I think I’m entitled.”
She hesitated so long he thought she wasn’t going to speak. At last she said, “My mom ran away. My dad was always gone. I grew up feeling like there must be something wrong with me, if my parents didn’t love me enough to want to stick around.”
“What about your twin? What about Leah and Eve? Are you going to tell me they didn’t love you?”
“It’s not the same thing. I wasn’t very old when my mom took off, but she took something from me—something of me—when she left. Leah’s done her best, but I think she feels the loss of our mother even more than I do. Maybe my father could have filled the hole inside me, if he’d hung around more. But he didn’t.”
“So you didn’t believe I could love you?”
“I didn’t believe anyone could love me.”
He wanted to comfort her, but what did you say to someone who felt so unwanted? So invisible? Especially when you’d loved her yourself and that love had been so soundly rejected?
The silence stretched between them
“I’m glad you had Vick,” he said at last. “The two of you were like this in high school.” He twisted two fingers together.
She sighed. “For the past five years, Vick has been gone from the ranch most of the time, doing whatever it is she does to save endangered species.”
“Like salamanders and butterflies?”
“Like grizzlies and wolves. She’s got a place in Montana I haven’t seen. I keep expecting her to invite me to stay with her, but she says she only uses the cabin as a base for travel. She’s been giving Matt hell about taking the ranch away from us, but she’s upset more for Leah’s sake—and mine—than her own. She’s only home for a few days at a time before she takes off again. We Skype, we talk on the phone, we text all the time. But it’s not the same. Our lives have taken different paths—mine based here, hers in Montana.”
“So she’s rejected you as well.”
She shot him a hurt, angry look. But she didn’t contradict him. “People think I’m the outgoing twin, the happy one. But if I am, it’s because Vick was always there beside me. I miss her.”
“You should go visit her in Montana, whether she invites you or not.”
“Maybe I will. If we get out of this alive.” She glanced at him and said, “So you really loved me?”
“Yeah. I was mad for you. I got pressure from Aiden to break up, but I never would have done it. I would have kept dating you no matter what he said. You never gave me the chance.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that he’d never really gotten over her, that he would always regret what might have been. What would be the point? Their moment had come and gone. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could ever trust any woman again, let alone a Grayhawk. Especially one who’d already rejected him once because of her family, and who also had a terrible fear of abandonment.
What if I could keep her close long enough to convince her I’m not going anywhere?
As they walked through the desolate landscape, the lowering sun at their backs, Brian let himself imagine what it might be like to fall in love with Tag again, to be the one to fill the gaping hole her parents had left inside her, to hear her laugh and know that he was the one who’d put the radiant smile on her face.
The fantasy almost made him forget he was dying.