by Selena Kitt
Ric caught up with her when she stopped to clutch the stitch in her side.
“Get away from me!” she panted, trying to shove him away. “I don’t ever want to see you again!”
“You don’t have to.” His arms wrapped around her from behind and she struggled to free herself. “But I’m not letting you die of hypothermia out here. We’ll pack up and I’ll take you back.”
“Let me go!” she screamed, using her nails to rake his arms. Even her short nails could do damage. He hissed breath through his teeth when she did that, but he didn’t let her go. “I wish you really had died in that cave! Let me go!”
“I wish I had to.” His breath streamed beside her ear as he lifted her, kicking, off the ground, and started carrying her back.
“Fuck you!” She kicked hard—she was more fit now than ever, and she knew she was bruising his shins, but he didn’t seem to care. It certainly didn’t stop him. “Let me go!”
“Stop it! You’ll die out here, Leesa!” he growled.
“Let me die!” She elbowed him hard in the ribs and he gave a low grunt of pain, but he didn’t stop his forward motion back to the cave. “I want to die! I’d rather die out here than go back in there with you!”
Suddenly all the fight went out of her and she collapsed. Her body went limp and she slithered out of his arms and into the snow. It was cold, numbing, and that was good. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, the pain finally hitting her. This was no sharp sting—this was an all-over body ache. It hurt in every part of her. Every muscle, every organ. Her heart hurt, but so did her liver and her kidneys and her goddamned spleen. He’d invaded every cell of her body, and now all of those places that had been filled with light had gone dark. It was agony.
“Leesa.” He picked her up like she was a little bit of fluff, holding her to his chest. “Oh Leesa, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
She couldn’t get any words out. Instead, she just hid her face and cried as he carried her back into the cave. A wave of heat blasted her and she suddenly felt how cold her body really was and shivered.
“D-d-don’t!” She protested, teeth chattering, when he set her down on the mattress and started stripping her bare.
“I have to get you warm.” He stripped too, and then pulled the sheet over them both, scooping her up, her back against his front. “Let me make you warm.”
“Noooo!” she howled, trying to struggle out of his arms again. Her fingers and toes were tingling with cold. “Oh my God, Ric, what have you done? What have you done?”
“I’m sorry,” he choked, keeping his big arms around her as he buried his face in her hair. “I love you, Leesa. I love you. I love you so fucking much.”
She stilled, miserable. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I’ve never done this before.” His big arms were shaking as he held onto her so hard she could barely breathe. Not that she cared. “It’s no excuse. I was just... I was afraid of how much I loved you. How much... how much you could hurt me. Even after I knew how I really felt, I went ahead, because I thought... I needed to trust you. I thought if you could prove it to me, that I wouldn’t be so afraid...”
“Afraid of what?”
“Losing you.” His lips brushed her neck and he barely held back a sob. “And now I’ve lost you.”
“You haven’t lost me.” Her tears wouldn’t stop, but she didn’t care. She turned to face him, letting him see her torment, the sheer amount of pain he’d caused her. “The awful truth is… I’d rather die out there in a snowbank than be without you.”
“What are you saying?”
She kissed a tear that had slipped down into his stubble.
“Simply that I love you. You could break my heart a million times over and that wouldn’t ever change. I will always love you.” Her voice was thick with sorrow and she took a shaky breath. “But bloody hell, Ric, this better be the last test. And I hope to God I just passed it.”
“Not a test.” He grabbed her tight to him, tucking her head under his chin. His heart was beating so hard against her ear. “I just knew I had to tell you. I had to come clean and be honest with you, even though I was sure you would leave me. I couldn’t start our life out with lies, no matter what happened.”
“You hurt me,” she whispered and his arms tightened around her. “You hurt me so much. Please don’t do that again. No more, Ric.”
“I promise,” he said hoarsely, rocking her against him. “Oh God, baby, I promise you. I’ll never do anything like that again.”
They stayed that way a long time, listening to each other breathing. She didn’t know how long. Her body had warmed, and her heart had been broken, but she’d survived it. They both had. Part of her thought she was being stupid and weak—how could she be lying in the arms of a man who had planned, and succeeded, in hurting her beyond measure—but another part of her knew better.
She could leave him. She had that power. And so did he. But he was still here. He’d faced his fear, he’d told her the truth and admitted his mistakes, as grievous as they were. She could forgive him for falling in love with her—for being so afraid of losing her, he went to desperate measures to make her prove it to him.
Even if he hadn’t consciously meant his confession to be a test, it had been.
And she had stayed. In spite of her heartache. In spite of the pain.
She loved this man and she’d passed every test he’d thrown at her.
“Ric... can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything, Leesa.”
“Why did you build that wall around your heart?” She put her hand there, over his big, beating heart, feeling it stutter a little at her question.
“I told you. Fear.”
“Of being hurt?”
“Yeah.”
“...but who hurt you?”
He didn’t answer her for so long she lifted her head to look at him.
“Do you know?”
He nodded, but still didn’t say anything. The expression on his face was beyond pained.
“You don’t have to tell me.” She frowned, touching his cheek in the firelight. “It’s okay.”
She tucked her head back under his chin, feeling his chest rising and falling with his breath.
“God, Leesa, I was so little.” He swallowed. “I didn’t even remember my real mother. And she was nice to me. It... fuck.”
She held her breath, not even moving.
“It felt nice,” he whispered to the cave walls. “To make her feel good. It made me feel good.”
“Oh my God.” She knew instantly who he was talking about, although she couldn’t have said how she knew. A lightbulb just went off and she flashed back to what he’d said about his first stepmother, during the talk they’d had at the range—she turned to the person closest to her, when she needed someone.
Goosebumps rose up on her arms. “Oh Ric. I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He cleared his throat. “For a long time, I blocked it out. I thought my weight was the cause of my problems—but it was really just a solution to another problem.”
“A coping mechanism?”
“Sure. But it became more than that. When I was... big... it was my catch-all for not risking anything. I could blame feeling rejected on being repulsive.”
“You were never repulsive.” She lifted her head off his shoulder and took his face in her hand, pulling it towards her.
“You were never objective.” He stroked her knuckles with his thumb. “The thing is... it started so early, it was like it had always been a part of me. I didn’t know anything else, any other way of being. Then something happened that made me realize, while I’d succeeded in walling out anything that might hurt me—I’d also walled myself in.”
“What was that?” she asked. “You said something happened. What happened?”
He breathed out too long and too hard before replying. “Do you mind if I don’t answer that?”
His hesi
tation gave her the answer and she loved him for not wanting to hurt her by reminding her of her part in his need to strip away his past.
“Was it after we kissed? When our parents went missing?”
“Yeah.”
Annalesa held onto him hard. “I loved you then, Ric. I love you now. You did wall me out—pretty effectively sometimes. But you never lost me. You never lost my love. It was always there, ready for you to come accept it.”
“Jesus, Leesa.” He sighed. “I wish I hadn’t been so blind.”
“Objectivity fail,” she agreed with a nod and a smile. “The ‘real you’ has always been beautiful. Amazing, strong, beautiful and utterly flawed. And I love you. Not in spite of your flaws, Ric. I love those too. Even the way you have to constantly test me to make sure I’m not going anywhere.”
“You weren’t feeling the love earlier.”
“I think you were spot-on, when you said you were born here.” She traced her finger over the swirls of his ink. “That’s what we do, when we’re learning something new. We have to test the boundaries and make mistakes and fall down. And get back up.”
“That’s fucking humbling.” He sighed. “I hate falling on my ass.”
“I’ll kiss it and make it better.” She smiled when he snorted a laugh.
“That’s not what Anders told me.”
“I should hope not.” She laughed. She could imagine Arensen taking the tough-love thing to the extreme. “What did he say?”
“He told me to get off my ass.” Ric grinned. “Then he said—if you fall six times, you just have to get up seven. He’s the one who taught me that failing isn’t fatal. But failing to change just might be.”
“It’s nice to agree with him about something.”
“It’s nice to hear you in agreement with him about something!”
She laughed, relaxing in his hold as he put his arms around her. There was something incredibly peaceful about being with him as he unfolded, letting her in. In spite of his painful confession—or maybe because of it—she’d never felt closer to him. It was like there was some invisible cord connecting them, and every time they had an argument and made up, the cord was cut—then tied back together, bringing them even closer than before.
“Do you feel free?”
“God, yes.” That was one question that demanded absolutely nothing of her. “I’ve never felt this free.”
“I didn’t go through the physical transformation you did, but...” She kissed his chest. “I’ve never felt so free either. For me, it started when I decided that I was going to do anything you asked, just so I could prove to you that I really do love you.”
“Present tense?”
“Very much.” She smiled. “But it wasn’t easy for me. I had to surrender myself. I had to trust you—that you weren’t going to make me jump through all those hoops just so you could leave me, broken and humiliated.”
“Christ,” he muttered, squeezing her. “I’m so sorry. I’m a heartless goddamned bastard.”
“You didn’t leave,” she reminded him. “You stayed. I stayed. I think that’s what relationships are really about. Staying, even when it hurts and working through the pain. Elsa’s left two men in her life—one who loved her and another she loved—because she was afraid to stay. I’m not going to make that mistake.”
“You’re a saint.”
“No.” She snorted. “I’m not. I hated you too, sometimes. But even when I was pissed at you—and part of me is still pissed at you, you goddamned heartless bastard—I forgave you. Because my love for you is that big.”
“That’s the kind of big I like.” Ric pulled her on top of him and held her hard, molding his body against hers.
“You’ve got another kind of big I like,” she teased, wiggling on top of him.
“Evil temptress.” He smiled.
They were both too emotionally drained to make love, but she liked the light in his eyes anyway. She lay on him for a long time, his slow, steady pulse almost lulling her into a meditative state.
“I can’t tell you how happy you make me, Leesa.” He stroked her hair. “It’s like all my future birthdays at once.”
“Let’s make all of them good.” She stroked his jaw with her thumb. “Are you going to tell me about your most significant birthday? I mean... death-day?”
She wasn’t going to get used to saying that.
“Patience, young grasshopper. I will, I promise. But first...” Ric sat like he didn’t have a hundred-and-thirty pounds of girl on top of him and kissed her before lifting her off his lap. “Let’s clean up.”
They stayed together in the cave all day, talking, eating, making love. Night fell outside. And finally, Ric said, it was time.
Annalesa watched as he put his hand up to one of the prints on the wall, matching it perfectly. He smiled back over his shoulder at her.
“The one right above is Dad’s, and the one to the left of his is Anders’.”
She gazed from the wall where his hand was printed to the one lit up by the moon from the sky hole, where hundreds of hands had been printed with the ancient charcoal-ochre mixture. The cave seemed warmer, all of a sudden. It felt as if all the spirits of the Sami and Norse ancestors had solidified and risen as one behind them, raising the temperature of the room. It was like being enveloped in safety. She wondered if it was the protection of being in a place where every man in Ric’s bloodline had come of age.
She peered further up the wall, above Brad’s print. “Is your grandfather’s here?”
“Yep.” He pointed to a print about a foot up. The owner of the hand seemed to have had an accident—there was no forefinger.
Ric met her eyes, sharing her grimace. “Let’s just say the magazine reload on the earlier Ryker guns weren’t as smooth as they are now.”
“Ow.”
“Yeah. It made him seriously bad-tempered for the rest of his life.”
“I’m not sure I blame him!”
“Dad did. That’s why he came here with Anders for his rite of passage, instead of coming with his father. They never did get along so well.”
“And then Anders came here with you?”
“Only for the ritual. He understood why I wanted to stay a while afterwards.” Ric smiled.
It went all the way to his eyes, but he still looked wistful. Preoccupied.
“I think he knew in advance what I’d want to do. It was Anders that left all the cookware gear for me here, and showed me where to find the more basic weapons. And—I owe him so much for this—he was the one who persuaded Dad I could handle the extended rite of passage. Dad was having a hard time accepting I could make it out here so long on my own.”
Annalesa wrapped her arms around his waist, nuzzling her face into the velvet skin of his shoulder. “He was probably scared of you having an accident or getting an infection. This place is gorgeous but it’s not exactly operating-theatre sterile, is it?”
“How many years has mankind survived without antibiotics or fear of germs?”
That was a good point. She shrugged against him. “True, but that probably wasn’t his only concern. You’ve been really into your ancestry for a long time, Ric. He might’ve worried about you wanting to become a mountain man instead of rejoining civilization to take over Ryker Arms.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Ric laughed as he turned, putting his hands on her shoulders. “But Anders trained me just like he trained Dad. He made me strong enough to stay here. And he convinced Dad to let me do what I needed to do—now Dad actually trusts me. Both of them are letting me run my side of the business as I see fit, and you wouldn’t believe how much that means to me. I know Anders can be kind of... prickly and hard-headed, but I owe him everything, Leesa.”
She didn’t say anything as she looked up into his face, surprised by the intensity of his expression. His eyes were wide, but his jaw was tight and the little ridge beneath his lower lip had deepened. It was like he was still trying to get her blessing for being so close to Anders.
“Leesa?” he prompted.
“It’s okay, Ric.” She couldn’t help wondering why he thought she needed so much convincing. If anything, she’d done her best to push aside her early negative view of the guy and learn more about him. “He means a lot to you and you’re loyal to him. I’m not going to get in the way of that.”
Ric bent and lifted her, pinning her body against his as he kissed her. She wrapped her legs round his waist, taking a little of her own weight so she could thread her fingers through his hair as they explored one another. She stroked the tip of her tongue on the underside of his and he groaned, gripping hard with his hands across her shoulders and her waist. He retreated slowly from the kiss in a series of gentle nudges until they’d pulled apart.
She rested her face against his neck. A slight tremble went through him as he clung to her, and she knew it had nothing to do with withstanding her weight. She wanted to lay him down on the mattress and massage some of that tension out—wherever it was coming from—but knew he was working his way up to something. She only hoped it wasn’t another confession like the last. She didn’t think she could take any more.
“All right,” He set her on her feet, smoothing his hands down her shoulders. “I’m going to show you what this is all about before I lose my nerve. Come on.”
Dazed, she watched him pull a couple of small, rubber-coated Maglite flashlights from the front pocket of his Bergen. They were about three inches square with a bulb of the same circumference, with a clip on the back. He switched them both on and clipped them to their belts, then lit a couple of oil lamps with matches from his pocket.
She took a lamp as he handed it to her and felt her other hand disappear in his vast, soft palm as he led the way through the back of the cave. They passed the water gulley she’d seen earlier and entered a tunnel which took a few minutes to stumble through.
Their belt lights lit up various rocks along the ground and the oil lamps picked out the stalactites. It was difficult dodging all the obstacles, but at least she didn’t have to duck, unlike Ric. His back and thigh muscles visibly shuddered with the effort of hunkering his way down the passageway. It wasn’t a bad view, anyway, she thought with a smile.