As much as she believed that one of the Tribunal would show up soon, worry continued to eat away at her.
After resting for a few minutes, she ventured closer to the edge. Rock formations that could have been caves wrapped around the point below her. Behind her, tops of trees were broken by the occasional field or glimpse of beach. More trees and an even higher elevation blocked her view of the other sides of the island.
No signs of any lakes or brooks. Stagnant ponds wouldn’t be of any help. Trying not to be discouraged, she sat facing the ocean, taking her amulet in her hand.
She’d always been so quick to try blocking Alex from her mind, she wasn’t sure how to go about opening herself to reach him or if it could even be done.
Her headache continued to pound, but she closed her eyes, thinking of nothing but Alex and Tate. Someone would find them. Someone would come.
“Darby?”
Bryce?
Unsure how long she’d been lost in thought, she backtracked to see him limping his way to the top.
If he’d come to make more accusations, he was going to find it a wasted trip.
Seeing him grit his teeth when he leaned heavily on his injured leg, she shuffled down a few meters to meet him. “You shouldn’t have climbed up here with your leg like that.” He needed to get better, not worse.
“You shouldn’t have taken off.”
She held out her good hand to help him. “Guess I should have left a note like you did this morning.”
He gave her a steely look.
Hurting a little too much to get worked up over his disapproval, she let her hand fall back to her side when he didn’t take it.
Fine. He could get his stubborn ass to the top himself.
“The ground doesn’t slope quite so much over there.” She nodded to the hillside half a dozen feet to the right.
“I’m good.” Hiding his pain, he kept to the path she’d taken.
She waited for him to go ahead of her, then went with the easier path, nearly stumbling just as Bryce looked over at her.
Would have been too much to ask for him not to notice—
The rest of that thought was snatched away as her foot slid through the mud hidden by the tall grass.
CHAPTER NINE
“Darby!”
He reached the closest tree, his fingers locking around the slim trunk when his bad leg buckled. Fuck.
A string of curses reached his ears, and he dragged himself back to his feet and made it another few feet before he noticed he was bleeding again.
He cleared the next group of trees, grateful he didn’t find her smashed up against one, more broken than she’d been after the crash.
“Dar—” He staggered to a stop, desperation and relief colliding inside him.
She sat in the middle of a mud puddle at least six feet across and every inch of her was covered in a brown sludge that looked like a full-body facial gone horribly wrong.
It was impossible to tell how hurt she was from the furious words she spouted that probably would have made even Dante blush.
She wiped some of the mud from her face and flung the gathered sludge off her fingertips. “Un-fucking-believable.”
Bryce couldn’t help but laugh. Either the adrenaline had finally caught up with him or he was so relieved that she was okay that he was on the verge of losing what was left of his mind.
“You’re not…” Darby’s eyes narrowed, fiery pools of blue in a sea of brown. “You are.” She said something under her breath that he didn’t catch, but looked so goddamn cute—and annoyed—that he only laughed harder.
The break in tension sent him sliding to the damp ground. It was sit or fall over, and it ended up being more of the latter since every rumble of laughter that caught his chest hurt like hell. But the longer she sat there glaring at him, glaring but alive, the longer he laughed.
A handful of mud nailed him in the jaw, some that didn’t quite reach splattered across his shirt and pants.
“I deserved that,” he managed, grinning.
More grumbling from Darby that sounded a lot like…give him a concussion?
“What?”
“When you fell off your damn surfboard during spring break—”
“When you knocked me off,” he corrected.
“—I wish you had ended up with a concussion. Maybe then we could have avoided all of this.” Whatever she said after that was barely recognizable, but her lingering anger sobered him.
For a moment he tried to imagine how his life might have turned out if they’d never met, never fallen in love.
He wouldn’t have taken a year off school. Wouldn’t have fought so much with his father, or fought with her brothers. Wouldn’t have fought with her.
But at the same time, he never would have glimpsed the mischievous look in her eyes when she was up to something or discovered that she giggled in the first few seconds after she fell asleep.
He wouldn’t have laughed every time he saw her unashamedly steal another pen left laying around, convinced they were lucky. Never would have stayed up all night, refusing to sacrifice a second of sleep when he could spend each one learning the sweet, addictive taste of her.
Never would have seen the heart-wrenching smile she had seemed to reserve just for him, the one that convinced him he could take on the whole world if that’s what it took to keep her safe, happy.
She’d changed his life.
While she was right about them avoiding plenty of complications over the years, he realized in that moment he wouldn’t change a second of what they’d shared.
So why in the hell hadn’t she told him about the baby?
Letting out a sigh, he regained his footing and trudged into the mud to reach her. He held out a hand.
She eyed the peace offering with skepticism. “Isn’t this supposed to come with a warning that you don’t bite?”
“I don’t like to lie.”
She frowned up at him, taking her time slipping her hand into his. He didn’t care about the mud or the fact that her eyes gave nothing away. She was within reach, warm, safe.
Everything else aside, he kept coming back to that, his mind touching on how close he’d come to losing her. Twice. He didn’t know why she never told him about the baby, and at the moment he didn’t care.
They had more than enough time to talk about it, to talk about a lot of things when there wasn’t a soul around to interrupt them, but right now he just wanted to take a second to be grateful she was right here next to him.
Her fingers closed around his, and he pulled her to her feet. Still wary of the mud, she gripped the front of his shirt for extra leverage.
Keeping ahold of her, he wiped away some of the mud on her cheek.
Her lips parted. “What are you doing?” She sounded a little breathless. From the fall, or their proximity?
“Making sure you’re okay.” He tipped her chin back a fraction until she met his gaze. Her eyes were still the same stunning blue, her brows pulled into a familiar frown that he wanted to gently kiss away.
He’d kiss it all away if he could. Every awful confrontation and biting insult, every furious look or cruel dismissal.
Every moment but the ones like this, when it was just the two of them and his heart was racing, and all he needed was to hold her for one more minute, and then another, and another…
“Why?”
Something that might have been hurt lingered beneath the question, forcing his attention from where it had strayed to her mouth.
“Why does it matter if I’m okay? You didn’t even want to talk to me earlier. Didn’t want to look at me.”
“I was upset.” She couldn’t blame him for that. A plane crash on top of the last two crazy days she’d capped off with one hell of a bombshell.
“And I wasn’t?” she challenged, her eyes watering before the tears that might have fallen were swallowed by a fire that threatened to incinerate him on the spot. “You’re not the only one worried about getting
through this. I’m scared too. But the difference is, I’m not being a dick.”
He let out a breath. Why could things never be simple between them?
She pulled away from him, and the only thing that kept him from stopping her was not wanting to jar her shoulder.
“You were right, we need to talk.” He followed her.
“Now it’s convenient for you? Lucky me.”
“Come on, Darby.”
She whirled around. “No. You didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to listen to me. Just because you’re suddenly feeling conversational, doesn’t mean I am.”
“Don’t be—”
“Stubborn? Furious? An ass?” She threw up her good hand. “You wanted the truce. You wanted one night with no strings. You wanted me on that plane to prove we could be friends, and the second we run into a bad situation, you couldn’t have been any less of a friend. I’m done doing things your way, on your schedule. I’ll talk when I’m good and ready.”
Despite the slick mud, she managed to stride away, heading back in the direction of the plane.
* * *
Forty minutes later she was still marching ahead of him, though her pace had slowed. She’d ignored his attempts to talk to her, and every time he thought about apologizing for being an ass, he remembered that she’d been pregnant years ago and never told him.
After she’d found out that he’d hidden his amulet and lied about who he was, she’d left without a word. He’d tried for weeks to get her to talk to him. He’d done everything to apologize, risked his academic career, even alienated his own family, determined to make her see that he wasn’t who she thought, and it had gotten him exactly nowhere.
After numerous confrontations with her brothers and a few black eyes, he’d given up, accepting that she wanted nothing to do with him. He’d been so hung up on proving that his last name didn’t matter that he hadn’t stopped to consider that he might be misjudging her, until she’d shut him out of her life and shown her true colors.
Or so he’d thought.
Not until he’d given up, determined to put her and her family behind him and fix the rift he’d caused in his own, did she bother to reach out to him. She’d refused to talk to him when he’d done everything but break down her door, and the second that stopped and the attention went away, she suddenly wanted to talk to him.
He stopped in his tracks.
Had that been when she’d tried to tell him about the baby? The calls he hadn’t returned? Would she have used her pregnancy to keep him coming back or had she just wanted him to know?
Maybe the latter was just wishful thinking, but he didn’t want to believe she was that manipulative. The woman he’d rediscovered on St. Lucia wouldn’t have played him like that. He’d even said as much to his father…
Bryce slowed, and put too much weight on his bad leg. Pain clawed into his thigh and he stopped, cursing under his breath as Darby disappeared around the last point leading to the beach near the plane.
Doing his best to block out the pain, he thought back to his recent conversations with his father and Thomas’s repeated warnings about Darby, ones Bryce had been quick to shoot down.
Had his father known something or had he just wanted Bryce to keep his distance? Darby had made her own comments earlier, still so quick to condemn his father. And then there was the heated conversation between the two that Alex had sent him to break up…
Christ, his head hurt.
Somewhere over the years he’d stopped caring whether he’d been right or wrong about her. Just getting through each of their run-ins without remembering their past had taken work, and then they’d fallen into the predictable habit of insulting one another or ignoring each other altogether.
The past hadn’t mattered, but now, ten years later, it was all he could think about.
Darby was the only one with answers, and right now she wasn’t talking to him. And he wasn’t entirely sure he could blame her.
She’d left countless messages with his roommate, messages he’d ignored. It had been safer for both him and his relationship with his father to believe Darby was screwing with his head. That way he didn’t have to call her back, didn’t have to get his hopes up, only to have her crush them all over again.
So he’d ignored the calls, the messages…until they finally stopped.
Because she’d lost the baby?
Although questions continued to swirl through his mind until he was almost dizzy, his anger at Darby began to fade, only to be redirected at himself. If it was true, and she’d tried to tell him she was pregnant and he’d ignored her when she’d needed him most…
No wonder she thought he was an asshole. He should have been there for her, for their baby. It would have only taken one call to find out what she wanted. One phone call, and it might have changed everything.
Bryce didn’t think it was possible to feel any more miserable than he already was. The sick twisting in his stomach disagreed.
He stumbled over the ground, going down to one knee.
Son of a bitch.
He wiped at the sweat running into his eyes. The sun had drifted behind some clouds a while ago but it felt like the heat had only increased.
By the time he hobbled the rest of the way around the point, the pain in his leg kept him from going any farther.
“You can’t stay there.” Darby came from the direction of the camp area, the backpack he’d found in the plane slung over her good shoulder.
What was she up to?
He watched as she dumped the bag on the sand close to the water. She was getting cleaned up.
Apparently the pain in his leg had picked a good time to kick up.
She stared at him. “I mean it, Bryce.”
“You usually do.”
There wasn’t much ground left to cover when she strode toward him. “Why are you so determined to be a pain in the ass?”
“I’ve been told it’s a family trait.”
She blew out a breath. “All I want is to get cleaned up and maybe feel halfway normal, given the circumstances. A little privacy is not too much to ask.”
“That’s the problem with your case.”
A slim brow caked in mud arched over her eye. “Still playing the lawyer?”
He ignored the dig. “Sometimes winning over the jury is just as important as how you present the facts.”
“We’re talking about a stupid bath, not whether it was Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.”
He tried not to grin.
“If you even think about laughing at me again,” she warned, her amulet brightening.
He held his hands up. “Whoa. I’m not the one assuming that I’m standing here just because I want to see you naked.”
Her eyes narrowed, then her gaze softened as her attention fell to his leg, that adorable frown sliding back into place. “You’re hurting.”
He nodded. That part definitely wasn’t a lie. Hurting was even an understatement when he was half-convinced his leg might crumple beneath him if he took one more step.
But Darby—looking at her, talking to her, remembering her—made the pain a little more bearable.
“I didn’t realize. You shouldn’t have followed me.”
“I was worried.”
She didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t argue either. He took that as a good sign.
Confused, annoyed, mildly exasperated—all of it was preferable to her anger.
She tipped her head, and he realized there might have been a small, practically nonexistent smile on his face.
“You do want to see me naked.”
Well, when she put it that way. “I wouldn’t want to miss the show.”
“We’re not talking about a wet T-shirt contest.”
He tugged at the bottom of her mud-crusted shirt. “You’re a bit too dirty for that.”
Darby rolled her eyes.
“And I hate to point out the obvious, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Un
less you’ve forgotten.”
The way her breathing quickened for just a beat told him she was definitely remembering it now.
Either she didn’t realize or she didn’t care that he still had a hold of her shirt. He used that little bit of leverage to coax her another inch closer.
“I’m putting another deal on the table.”
“After the way the last one turned out, Councilor?”
“I’ll leave you to your bath…” Not until the word left his mouth did he remember they’d only showered together. He’d never watched her sink into the water, taking her time soaping her entire body…
“And in exchange you want what?” Darby prompted when he trailed off.
God, the heat was scrambling his brain a little too much. “You and I will talk about what happened ten years ago.”
“One condition.”
“It wouldn’t be a deal if there wasn’t one.”
“Two then,” she amended, that mischievous glint back in her eye. “I’ll tell you everything as long as you let me finish and don’t jump to conclusions halfway through.”
“Okay,” he agreed, more than a little curious.
“And you’ll accept that I’ve got just as much to contribute here as you do.”
Ah, so she was still thinking about his comment about sleeping in then.
He offered a hand, but right before she took it to shake, she paused.
“One more thing.”
He shook his head.
She shrugged. “Like you said, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Why should I care if you want to watch?” As though she was calling his bluff, she tugged her shirt over her head and let it drop to the sand.
He had to work hard—really, really hard—not to look away from her face. His leg might be busted and his internal temperature on the fritz, but every other part of him was running on all systems go.
Turns out their complicated history didn’t count for much when she was half-naked and he was half-convinced he was still in love with her. With everything else that had happened, it wasn’t surprising that little detail had slipped under the radar, sneaking up on him at the most unexpected moment.
But hadn’t he known it for a while, felt it the night before the crash when she’d been back in his arms?
Must Be Magic (Spellbound Book 4) Page 15