Justin slipped his gun out of the waistband of his pants, checked the ammo, and started off without another word. Soon, he disappeared off into the horizon. I stayed by the fire, keeping my hands nice and toasty.
It dawned on me then, now that I was alone, how strange and scary this whole situation was. Justin and I were stranded in the middle of the Australian outback, miles from civilization, possibly with murderous henchmen on our trail. Despite it all, however, I felt safe, secure. If there was one person I could be stuck in a situation like this with, I knew that I could do a lot worse than a very capable man like Justin.
I stared into the fire, watching the tongues dance as the wood crackled. A pair of soft pops sounded in the distance, causing my head to snap up in attention. About ten minutes later, Justin returned to the camp, the body of a small kangaroo slung over his shoulder.
“Damn,” I said. “You really shot a kangaroo.”
“It’s good eating,” he said. “You ever had one before?”
“I didn’t even know people ate them.”
He dropped the body near the fire.
“I would say you’re in for a treat, but I’m not sure how much my limited cooking skills can dress this up.”
Justin took the multi-tool out of his pocket and flicked open the knife.
“Ah, you might want to turn away for this,” he said.
Not wanting to watch the animal get butchered before my eyes, I turned around and focused my eyes on the horizon. The sky was now totally black, the sliver of the waning moon hanging among the endless sweep of stars. After about fifteen minutes, Justin spoke.
“Here,” he said, handing me a stick skewered with raw meat. “Cook this over the fire.”
I took the stick, skeptically inspecting the chunks of pink meat speared through it. But my hunger was very, very insistent by this point, and I wasn’t about to turn down food. I held the stick over the flame for a bit, watching the meat turn from pink to a darker, cooked color.
As it roasted, I glanced up at Justin. The fire flickered in his gorgeous eyes, a look of total purpose on his face. Sitting here with him, knowing that he had me taken care of, that he had this situation about as under control as one could hope, made me feel safe and secure. I felt close to Justin—a different kind of closeness than mere sexual attraction.
“Thanks,” I said, as the smell of cooked meat filled the air, making my stomach rumble.
“Anytime,” he said, giving me a wink that made a lovely flash of excitement run through my aching body, the stars above silent witnesses to our happy little camp.
Chapter 10
Justin
“Should be good to eat,” I said, seeing that the last traces of rawness had been cooked out of the kangaroo. “Dinner is served, I guess.”
“I think we ought to have a cheers for this,” Delaney said, the slight trace of a smile on her lips.
“If you’ve been holding out some booze on me this whole time, we’re gonna have words,” I said playfully.
“No booze, but I think this might be an occasion for breaking out the water.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Delaney reached into the duffel bag and pulled out the two bottles of clear water. She handed one over to me, and I twisted the cap off. Delaney raised her bottle in the air like a champagne flute.
“What’re we drinking to?” I asked.
“How about ‘not dying in the middle of the outback,’” she said.
“Works for me.”
We tapped the ends of our bottles of water and took sips. I thought back to our drink at the bar, when the only thing I was worried about was wondering how to get this hot little thing into bed with me. But though we had more pressing concerns, I couldn’t help but still be insanely attracted to Delaney. I was starting to think right here by the fire would be a very nice place for round two.
“How’s the meat?” I asked, taking a bite out of my own serving.
“It’s…not bad,” she said. “Kind of tangy, actually.”
“Could use some hot sauce,” I said. “But it beats starving.”
“Might even take a little of this home in a doggy bag,” she said, flashing me another one of those smiles that I couldn’t get enough of.
A few minutes passed, the silence of the desert air broken up by the cracking and popping of the warm fire.
“So,” said Delaney. “I’ve learned that you’re not a logging company agent.”
“That you have,” I said.
“Now, call me paranoid, but it’s starting to make me wonder what else you might be hiding from me,” she said. “I mean, if you’ll lie to me about that, what else are you holding back? How do I even know you’re an ex-SEAL? How do I know you’re a mercenary bodyguard? For all I know, you might be some lunatic kidnapper, and those guys were sent to rescue me from you.”
“Okay, you got me,” I said. “I’m actually with the Longbridge mafia.”
“Funny,” she said. “But seriously, how do I know that anything you’ve told me is true?”
“I suppose you don’t,” I said. “And I’m not sure how I could convince you otherwise.”
Delaney looked away for a moment.
“Well…you could start by telling me why you were in Longbridge to begin with. I mean, you said your job was in Alice Springs, right? Then why on earth would you be taking a sixteen-hour-total detour to the middle of nowhere?”
I said nothing for a moment, figuring out how much I wanted to tell her about my reasons for being here. My first instinct was to lie again, to avoid the truth. But I realized that with everything that I’d put Delaney through, giving her an honest answer was the least I could do. Besides, I really, truly, did want her to trust me.
“It’s my father. Or, was my father. He passed about a year ago, and I was in town to visit his grave.”
“Oh,” said Delaney. “I’m sorry to hear that. But…you said it was your uncle before, right?
“Little white lie. I like to keep personal details personal.”
“I see,” said Delaney. “What happened? With your father, that is.”
“It was a long while back. Longbridge was his hometown, and he was brought back here to be buried after he passed last year. After everything that had happened.”
Delaney said nothing, waiting for me to go on.
“He was an executive, working for an airline based out of Dallas. He traveled all the time, barely ever home. My memories of him mostly involve him coming back dressed in one of his expensive suits, then leaving wearing a different one. He made good money for the family, but he was never around to share in what it afforded.”
I felt encouraged by the way Delaney’s warm eyes were gazing at me intently.
“Then he started leaving more often, staying overseas for weeks at a time. This is about when I was a teenager, around thirteen. I didn’t think much of it at the time. And besides, I was used to the old man not really being around. My mother, on the other hand, started to get more distant, more detached. It was as if there was some fear nagging at her that she couldn’t quite express.”
A frown crossed my face as I remembered my mother’s distress.
“One day, my mother got a piece of news that tore our family apart.”
Delaney raised her eyebrows.
“What was it?” she asked.
“My mother had called up the company my dad worked for, trying to get in touch with my father about one thing or another. And she eventually found out that my dad hadn’t been sent on an overseas trip that month. Actually, he’d taken some vacation time and had told the company that he’d be out of touch for a couple of weeks. My mother did some investigating and found out that he’d taken a trip to Australia. No one knew why.”
Delaney leaned in toward me. I didn’t want to continue, to relive the pain. But now, in the middle of the desert with a beautiful woman listening, seemed like the perfect setting to get through it.
“But she was tenacious and wanted to
get to the bottom of it right away. She pulled me out of school for a week and flew me all the way to Sydney to figure out what the hell my dad was up to. And, I don’t know, maybe she suspected what was going on and wanted me to see up close and personal just what sort of man my father was. I can’t think of any other reason why she’d bring me along.”
I stared off into the night as I continued, remembering the confusion I felt at the time.
“She hired a private investigator while we were there, and it didn’t take him long to track down my father. Turns out, he’d been shacking up with some local woman, living with her when he wasn’t with us in Dallas. My mother brought me along to confront him in the middle of some fancy restaurant downtown. Turns out that the woman he was seeing had no idea he was even married—we were a secret to her.”
“Oh my God,” said Delaney. “So he was living a total double life?”
“That’s right,” I said. “The woman even blurted out that they’d been talking about getting married. Total insane scene right in the middle of the restaurant—a lot for a kid my age to take in.”
“Then what?”
“My mother was a wreck. We flew back to the States, and she just wasn’t the same.”
“And your dad?”
“He stayed. The asshole stayed in Australia. Said he was in love, and he had to do what was best for him. I thought it was a load of bullshit, and I still do. I think he was just being selfish, wanting the thrill of a new love over his responsibilities to my mom and me.”
My mouth getting dry, I unscrewed the cap from my water bottle and took a quick sip. Delaney’s eyes were locked onto me, and I knew that I had her undivided attention. It was strange—all of this was so raw for me, even after all of these years. I’d kept it bottled up for so long, and now here I was letting it all out like it was nothing. And here was this woman I’d only just met, listening intently. I felt her and me growing closer with each passing word.
“I grew up very, very quickly. Like I said, the whole thing turned my mom’s world upside down. For the next couple of years, she just mentally checked out, and getting through the rest of high school was all up to me. Dad sent money, sure, thinking that’d make it all better. But if it were up to me, I’d have thrown that money in the garbage as soon as it showed up.”
Anger rose up in me. I looked away from Delaney for a moment to gain my composure. When I turned my face back to her, she gave me a small smile.
“By the time the end of my senior year rolled around, I was ready to leave it all behind, to get the hell out of there and not look back. And if there was one thing I learned from my old man, it was that I could only rely on myself. So, I decided to join the Marines. Shipped out the day I turned eighteen.”
“How did your mom react?”
“She was still recovering from the divorce. Looking back, maybe sticking around and looking after her would’ve been for the best, but I was so determined to carve out my own path and be the man my father wasn’t that I didn’t care about anything else.”
“So then you were in the service.”
“Yep. That toughened me up fast, forcing me to shed whatever bits of my childhood innocence remained. And I gave it my all. So much so, that some of the higher-ups noticed how much ass I was kicking and told me they wanted me to join the SEALs. Back then I was even more full of piss and vinegar than I am now, and they didn’t have to ask me twice.”
Delaney chuckled. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
“I tore through training, leaving the other recruits in the dust. Broke some records that had been in place for decades. And before too long, it was time for graduation. It’d already been a few years since I’d joined up—I’d been so focused on my duties and training that the time had just flown by.”
“And so you were ready to start the new phase of your life?” Delaney asked, her gaze both soft and interested at the same time.
“You bet your ass I was,” I said. “By now my mom was doing better and was eager to see me graduate and officially become a SEAL. And I was more than happy to see her back in the real world, slowly putting her life back together. Just one problem—my dad decided that this would be just the time to come back and try to make amends.”
Delaney’s eyebrows raised, and I could tell she was on edge as she waited for me to go on with what happened next.
“There I was, up on stage and dressed in full uniform. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. My graduating class was there with me, and the crowd was eager to see their loved ones walk the stage. I spotted my mom and got ready to take part. Then, I spotted my father, sitting right there front and center.”
“Are you serious?” she asked, her gorgeous eyes going wide. “He showed up?”
“He showed up—like it was no big deal. There he was, in one of his fancy suits, sitting there with a big smile on his face. I pretended like I didn’t see him and went on with the ceremony.”
“Then when it was over?”
“Despite all the training I went through, how much they made me toughen up, my stomach was in knots all the way through the ceremony. I knew I was going to have to face him, and I didn’t know if I wanted to punch him in the face or try to be a grown-up and put everything behind us. I was definitely leaning toward the former. But when the ceremony ended and the crowd began to get up and wait for their graduate to come down from the stage, I knew what I wanted to do.
“I stepped off the stage, and there he was, waiting for me. That same smile on his face as he waited for me to come up to him.”
“And what did you do?” she asked.
“I didn’t hit him,” I said. “Though in retrospect, that probably would’ve been kinder. At least that would’ve been something. Instead, I just blew past him, acted like he wasn’t even there. I heard my name squeak past his lips and saw his arms, ready for a hug, fall to his sides in defeat. But I didn’t give a damn—I wanted to make him hurt in the same way he’d hurt my mom and me.”
“Did he try to come talk to you?”
“Nope. I guess he got the hint. I went over to my mom and gave her a big hug, letting her gush over me in the way only moms can. And by the time I got the nerve to turn around and look in the direction of where he’d been standing, I saw that he was gone.”
“That’s rough,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to think about that. I mean, he was a prick, sure, but at the same time, he’s your dad.”
“Is your dad in your life?” I asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Old-fashioned rancher-type. Man of few words and even fewer emotions. Loves me to death, though.”
“You’re lucky,” I said. “Some people don’t have as simple of a relationship with their parents.”
“I can tell,” she said. “But your father…now he’s gone.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Didn’t say a word to the old man for over a decade. Then, I got news he had cancer. Sent me a letter, telling me that it’d been detected far too late to do anything. But he didn’t say how long he had. So I put it in the back of my head, figuring there’d be time, you know? Time to figure out what I was supposed to do. Then a few months later, I got another letter, this one from his wife letting me know he’d passed. And that was that.”
“And now you’re here, trying to figure out what to do with all of these emotions that you have no idea what to do with.”
“That’s about the long and short of it. Oh, and not to mention the whole ‘on the run from criminals who want to kill me’ thing.”
“And being stranded in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet,” added Delaney.
“Let’s not forget that,” I said with a wry smirk.
“Hey,” she added, leaning in and giving me a friendly punch on the leg. “At least you’ve got some grade-A company for this hellish physical and emotional ordeal.”
She was joking, but there was more than a little truth to her words. I’d always thought of myself as the kind of man
who’d be able to handle anything on his own, but having Delaney here listening to me pour my guts out over my family drama made everything…easier. I watched the fire dance in the pit before me.
Leaning back, I stared at the stars above, not sure what to do with the feelings roiling inside of me.
Chapter 11
Justin
I was restless and confused. I’d thought I had a handle on things, but putting them out in words like I’d just done made me realize that I really didn’t know how I felt about it all. Not sure what else to do, I laid back, weaving my hands together behind my head.
“That looks comfy,” said Delaney. “Mind if I join you?”
“Huh?” I asked, not entirely sure what she meant.
Before I could say or do anything else, Delaney got onto her back and slid next to me, her body only a few inches from mine. I was conflicted. Part of me wanted to tell her to give me some space, while another part of me wanted to slip my arm around her neck and pull her close. Maybe even give her a kiss while I was at it.
“Stars are crazy out here,” she said, looking straight up.
She was right about that. Out in the middle of nowhere, no electric lights for miles, the stars were brilliant and infinite, the faint band of the Milky Way visible across the sky.
“Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen the stars like this,” she said. “You know how it is in Dallas—light pollution everywhere.”
“No kidding,” I said, my gaze flicking from one glittering star to another. “Reminds you of just how small you are in the grand scheme of things.”
Silence fell over the two of us for several long moments. Thoughts collected in my mind, and I wasn’t sure what they were all leading toward.
Finally, I spoke.
“What’d you think of this place when you first showed up?” I said.
Delaney snorted.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “I thought it was a total wasteland. I mean, not only the landscape but everything. My job takes me to some pretty far-flung places, but this has got to be the most remote.”
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