And braced herself for the confrontation. Even if the timing wasn’t ideal, Cade needed to know the truth. He’d deserved to hear it ten guilty years ago.
And she couldn’t put it off any longer.
Her stomach tensing, she forced her gaze up to his. A muscle in his cheek ticked, and his lean jaw tightened beneath the stubble.
She hitched in an unsteady breath. “When you left on that last trip, I…I was pregnant.”
He blinked. Then his jaw slackened, and for a second he looked stunned, as if she’d said the last thing he’d ever expected.
But then his expression stilled and his eyes turned blank. His wide shoulders stiffened, and she realized he’d misunderstood.
“Cade, no.” She reached out to touch his arm and he flinched back. His rejection flayed her, like a whip on her raw nerves. “I didn’t…I mean, I lost the baby. I miscarried. I didn’t—” Oh, God. “I never would have had an abortion.”
A dull red stain inched up his neck, but his expression only turned colder. And she realized she was botching it badly. Everything was coming out wrong.
She twisted her hands, then rubbed her palms on her thighs, searching for a way to explain. “I found out just after you left.”
“And you didn’t think I needed to know?”
The flat fury in his tone made her cringe. “Of course I did. I wanted to tell you right away. I was so happy and excited, and I wanted that baby so badly. But I wanted to tell you in person, to see your face when I broke the news.”
She had envisioned that romantic moment, had played it all out in her head. The music and candles. The tenderness in his sexy blue eyes. The joy.
“I thought you’d be coming back soon,” she whispered.
She searched his eyes, hoping for some sign of softness, but his hard face stayed unrelenting. And a sinking feeling filled her gut. He wasn’t going to make this easy—which was probably what she deserved.
“And then, when you called to tell me you’d gone to Alaska, I just…I felt abandoned, betrayed.” Crushed by the anger and hurt. Dazed that the man she had trusted had left her, and that her worst fear had finally come true.
She forced air into her lungs. “I started cramping after that. And I…”
She closed her eyes, remembering the panic and fear. She’d been nineteen years old and surrounded by strangers, more alone than she’d felt in her life.
She clutched her trembling hands together, then gestured, helpless to stem the old pain. “I didn’t know what to do. I drove to the hospital. They told me there wasn’t anything I could do, that I just needed to rest. So I went back to the apartment.”
She shifted her gaze to the cave’s dark wall, her mind focused on the agony of the past. How she’d lain on that sagging plaid couch, scared and lonely, afraid to move, and desperately needing Cade.
“And then…I just started bleeding and it wouldn’t stop.” She pressed her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes until the horror passed, until the shocking visions receded. Then she fixed her gaze on Cade. “And I drove back to the hospital.”
“Alone?” A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“Yes, I…They admitted me, but I still lost the baby.” Her chest wadded up with remembered feelings, that soul-numbing pain and grief. The guilt that she’d done something wrong and had somehow been to blame.
And as she’d lain there in that hospital bed, her hopes and dreams crashing down, the harsh reality had sunk in. She wouldn’t have that cozy family. Cade wanted to smokejump more than he loved her. She was alone, abandoned, just as she’d always feared.
He worked his jaw. “And you didn’t call me.” It wasn’t a question. They both knew that she hadn’t. The base would have patched an emergency message through.
“I didn’t think…” She spread her hands. “I thought you wouldn’t want—”
“To come back when my wife was in the hospital?” He stared at her, his face etched with disbelief.
A tight ball formed in her chest. “I thought you’d rather stay on the fire.”
“Hell.” The muscles along his jaw tensed, and he curled his hand into a fist, looking angrier than she’d ever seen him. “You didn’t give me a goddamn chance.”
She couldn’t deny it. She had made assumptions, big ones. And she hadn’t let him decide. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes narrowed in disgust, and then he turned and stalked to their bags. Despair spiraled through her as he hefted them up.
“Cade,” she pleaded.
He strode to the entry without answering, and in one furious movement yanked his fire shelter loose.
Stones fell and crashed around him, and the dog bolted to the back of the cave. Sunlight slanted through the rising dust, and he kicked the loose rocks aside. Then, without looking back, he twisted out of the opening and disappeared.
A sick, heavy feeling churned through her belly, and suddenly, like the pile of stones falling, the truth tumbled in on her, sucking the air from her lungs. She’d told herself he didn’t care, that he loved smokejumping more than her.
But it wasn’t true. He would have come home. He would have rushed to her side if she’d called him. He never would have ignored her needs, her pain, no matter how busy he’d been. He wasn’t that kind of man.
She raised her hand to her throat. Of course Cade would have come back, and he would have mourned with her, grieved with her, stayed with her, just as he’d helped her over the mountain.
A sense of foreboding slugged through her chest. Oh, God. What had she done?
Her nerves trembling, she snatched up the leash and squeezed through the crack in the rocks, pulling Dusty behind her. Once outside, she stopped and blinked in the startling brightness.
She raised her hand to shade her eyes and glanced around, stunned by the devastation. The fire had decimated the mountain, turning the once-green landscape into blackened wreckage. Smoke still simmered over the scorched earth, wafting and swirling through ashes. Charred trees bent at odd angles, like twisted silhouettes clawing the sky. Here and there, lingering flames crackled through burnt stumps and spewed out dying embers.
She breathed in the acrid stench, coughed, and blinked again. The sunshine seemed too bright in the ruined landscape, too stark. As if it were stripping away her pretenses and exposing the truth, revealing her insecurities and fears.
Her guilt.
Her breathing ragged, she scanned the hillside for Cade. She spotted him several yards away atop a charred knoll, staring down the mountain. His back was straight, his shoulders stiff, warning off any approach.
Or maybe he was grieving for the child he’d never known.
An awful tightness wrenched her throat, and she knew that she had to reach him. “Cade,” she said.
His shoulder jerked as if she’d struck him, and then he slowly turned to face her. His face was tight, his mouth flat, his eyes so distant she shivered. Anxiety climbed up her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have assumed you wouldn’t come back. That wasn’t fair to you. And I should have told you about the baby.”
For several heartbeats, he didn’t speak. His gaze stayed on hers, frank and cold, as if he were weighing her words, measuring her sincerity. Her hopes plummeted even more.
Finally, he tilted his head. “You didn’t want me to come back, did you?”
“What?” Shock tightened her voice. “Of course I wanted you back. How can you even think that?”
He slowly shook his head, his eyes hard. “No, you were looking for an excuse to leave.”
Denials rose in her throat, along with a spurt of panic. “You’re wrong. I felt abandoned without you. I hated being alone.” And she’d dreaded a lifetime spent waiting.
“Then why didn’t you call?”
“I—” A sliver of doubt crept through her mind. Why hadn’t she called him? How had she misjudged his character so badly? Hadn’t she known her husband at all?
Dread piled in as she considered the implications and fought the conclusion sickening her gut. And then suddenly, she couldn’t avoid it any longer. The truth crashed into her mind.
Stricken, she sucked in her breath. “Oh, God. You’re right.” At least in a way. “I wanted you back, but only under my terms.” To fulfill her needs, her insecurities.
But he hadn’t played into that. He’d treated her like a woman, not a child. He’d expected her to cope when he was gone.
And she couldn’t handle that. She’d acted out the needs of her childhood, thrusting him into a role he didn’t deserve. Punishing him for the faults of her father. Ignoring the person he was.
And then when he didn’t play her game, she’d seized the excuse to flee.
And in the process, she’d destroyed something special, something unique, something she’d never find again. She’d taken the gift of this man’s love and tossed it away.
Their eyes stayed locked, and sick dread lurched through her gut. Her heart wrenched with remorse; her face burned with guilt and chagrin. She wanted to weep with the awful realization of how unfairly she’d acted and how badly she’d hurt this man.
She couldn’t excuse what she’d done and had no way left to fix it.
The reverberations of the helicopter broke the tense silence. They grew louder, filling the air with a whomping sound. The dog jerked against the leash, and she tightened her grip to hold him.
Then a shadow crossed overhead, and the ashes swirled by her feet. The helicopter hovered just beyond the cave, then headed for the clearing.
“It’s over,” Cade said, his face devoid of expression. “Let’s go.”
Whether he meant their ordeal or their relationship didn’t matter. Both were finished.
Feeling completely battered inside, she picked up the dog and followed Cade through the ashes to catch their ride.
Chapter 16
“He’s gone?” Jordan gaped at the nurse sitting behind the emergency room desk. “But he can’t be, not with his bad shoulder. A tree crushed him. My God, his head, his ribs, he—”
“Honey, I’m not the doctor. I don’t decide what the patients can do.” The nurse leaned back and crossed her arms over her flowered scrubs.
“I know, but he—” Jordan clamped down hard on her lip, knowing it was pointless to argue. This nurse couldn’t control where Cade spent the night.
But she had to see him, talk to him. She twisted her bandaged hands, her sense of urgency rising. She couldn’t let their trip end this way.
Even if that was what Cade intended.
He obviously didn’t want to see her. He’d ignored her on the flight to Missoula, looking more remote than when their journey had started. And once they’d landed at the hospital, he’d handed the dog over to his smokejumping friend, Trey Campbell, and let the nurses lead him away.
He hadn’t looked back, hadn’t asked to see her again. And now he’d left the hospital without even saying goodbye.
Or had he?
She thought back to those final moments on the mountain, to his hurt over her deception. To the bitterness in his blazing blue eyes. And she realized that he had said goodbye. She just hadn’t wanted to hear it.
But she couldn’t let it end like this. Panic surged and then engulfed her, like a wildfire searing her chest. She needed to find him, plead with him.
Tell him she still loved him.
But arguing with this nurse wouldn’t help. She sucked in a steadying breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I just really need to see him. Could you at least tell me his address? I think he has an apartment nearby.”
“Sorry, we’re not allowed to give out that information.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He’s my ex-husband. We—”
“There’s a telephone book in the lobby. You’re welcome to look in that.”
“But what if he’s not listed? He might only have a cell phone.”
“Sorry.” The nurse returned her gaze to her computer screen.
Knowing it was futile to argue, Jordan curbed her frustration and stepped back. She could head to the smokejumper base and ask, but they weren’t open at night. And they might refuse to tell her, too.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
Jordan turned. A nurse pushing a gurney paused by the desk, waiting for her to move.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her face warming, she steadied her crutches and moved aside. She couldn’t take up these people’s time when others had more serious problems.
She’d been lucky on that mountain. Aside from a mildly sprained ankle and a few lost pounds, she’d survived the ordeal intact. And after giving her a tetanus booster, antibiotics and an IV to replace lost fluids, the doctor had allowed her to leave. All she needed now was a hot shower and a few days of rest to bring her body back to normal.
If she could only do the same for her heart.
The nurse wheeled the gurney past, and she caught a glimpse of the young man on it. He looked pale against the sheets, his features racked with pain.
And suddenly, her stomach flipped and her heart stalled. And she couldn’t stop the memories from slamming through her, of herself on that gurney years back—alone and in pain, bleeding and suffering badly.
Her knees grew weak at the memory, and she leaned against the wall for support. God, it had been so hard. That terrible fear, the awful pain. The misery of losing her child. The worry that she’d somehow caused it.
The absolute devastation of knowing Cade would rather leap from airplanes than stay with her.
But that wasn’t true. Cade hadn’t abandoned her. She blinked as reality came seeping back, and with it, the truth. Cade wasn’t like her father. He would have rushed to her side.
She was the one at fault. She hadn’t trusted him or his love, hadn’t given him a chance to help her. Then she’d left him without explanation and blamed him for her mistakes.
How could she have been so foolish?
Her blood still slamming in her ears, she struggled to regain her composure. Just then two women rushed past.
“We’re right behind you, Tommy,” one woman called.
Jordan watched them scurry into the curtained space behind the gurney, and then another truth rocked through her. Unlike her, that man wasn’t alone. He had friends to visit him, a support group, people eager to help—whereas Jordan had cut herself off from society back then. Even when they’d moved to Missoula, she hadn’t tried to fit in.
A bitter taste wedged in her throat. She didn’t like that glimpse of herself, but she had to admit it was true. She hadn’t made friends. She’d used her childhood as an excuse to withdraw from people, then blamed Cade for leaving her alone.
She closed her eyes. How could she have been so immature? Hadn’t she done anything right?
Still reeling from this view of her past, she opened her eyes and hobbled off. The bay doors opened with a quiet whoosh as she limped from the emergency room into the lobby, and then out the hospital’s main entrance. The automatic doors slid open to the dark night and a blast of cool air.
She worked her way to the curb, stopped and stared at the near-empty lot. So here she was again, alone. She didn’t have family or friends in Missoula, didn’t know anyone who could help her, aside from Cade. And she had nowhere left to go.
And that was her own damned fault.
She stumbled to a bench beneath a light pole and sat. Moths swarmed above her in the halogen haze. A few cars passed on the nearby road, people going home to waiting families. But no one was expecting her. She didn’t have that family she’d always longed for or the husband she’d always desired.
Because she’d pushed him away.
Her throat cramped with another spasm, and she blinked furiously to stem the hot tears. She’d messed up everything, all right. She’d wounded the man she’d loved and destroyed his trust.
But she couldn’t alter the past. And she couldn’t just sit here and weep. She wasn’t that weak girl anymore, and thos
e helpless days were long gone. She sniffed back her tears and thought hard.
She could check herself into a motel, the same one she’d stayed in when she’d first arrived. She could take a taxi there and spend the night. Then, in the morning, she could resolve the rental car problem and take the first available flight back East.
But why bother? What did she have waiting in Virginia, aside from her job? She loved her work and had built herself a solid career, but nursing homes existed all over. She could find another job here if she decided to stay. Plus, she no longer had a boyfriend there; she couldn’t date Phil when she still loved Cade.
An ache pulsed down her throat at the thought of Cade, followed by a spurt of dread. She needed to break up with Phil. He was a kind, decent man, and she couldn’t lead him on any longer. No matter how distasteful the task, she had to tell him the truth.
She pulled her cell phone from her bag and turned it on, glad that the battery still worked. Then she paused. She couldn’t do it this way, not by phone. It wasn’t fair to Phil. She’d be taking the coward’s way out, running from her problems again.
And she wasn’t doing that anymore. She wasn’t that scared, immature girl; she was an adult, and she would face her problems head-on.
Which meant she had to tell Phil in person.
And then she had to decide what to do with her life.
A sharp, heavy longing pressed on her heart. God, she missed Cade. Only a few hours apart and already she couldn’t stand it. She missed his eyes, that rumbling voice, that sexy, confident grin. How could she bear to spend her life without him?
Was there any chance he would forgive her? She’d hurt him so badly and ruined the trust between them. Could she convince him that she’d changed?
She had to try.
Because she really wasn’t that young girl anymore. She’d changed over the years. She’d proven that up on the mountain. She’d forded a river and battled a cougar. She’d hiked miles on a wounded ankle and escaped a raging fire.
Facing The Fire Page 17