by Jessie Evans
He knew he should get back to his own side of the tent before she woke up, but instead he closed his eyes and inhaled. Her hair smelled like wood smoke from the campfire last night, but beneath it was something sweet and fresh that reminded him of a summer hay field just before dusk. She smelled like hope and all he wanted to do was wrap her in his arms and hold on tight.
But his arms couldn’t give her more time and he was too far gone for hope. Still, he couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to the top of her head and silently wishing for whatever came next for her to be as painless as possible.
“Good morning,” she murmured, blinking sleepily as she pulled her head away from his chest. “Sorry. I must have moved in my sleep.”
“We both did,” he said. “No need to apologize.”
She ducked lower in her sleeping bag until only her eyes were peeking out over the top. “I was dreaming about you.”
“Oh yeah?” Canyon tried to keep his voice casual, but he’d woken up hard and the husky note in Grace’s voice was only making him harder.
If she told him about a naughty dream right now, he might not be able to keep from making her dream a reality. Every second he spent with her made him want her more. At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it to Saturday morning without tasting her lips and every other part of her he could get his mouth on.
“Yeah, we were kids,” she said, making him feel like a jerk for jumping to raunchy conclusions. “We were in different bodies, but somehow I knew it was you and I was so happy to see you again.”
“Sometimes I wonder about that,” he said, touched. “Every once in a while I meet someone I would swear is already a friend. If that makes sense.”
“It does.” Her legs curled in her sleeping bag as she turned to face him. “I kind of like the idea of reincarnation and running into old friends again.”
“Or old enemies,” he said. “There’s another bull rider on the circuit who I swear did me wrong in another life. Loathed the guy at first sight and never have gotten over it.”
She made a considering sound. “That’s a less pleasant idea. I’d rather believe that once the bad guys are gone they stay gone.”
“Me too, I guess.” He reached out, tugging her sleeping bag low enough for him to see her face. She was so beautiful, with her curls wild around her head and her cheeks flushed with sleep.
All he wanted to do was kiss her good morning, but instead he asked, “Are you ready to learn to swim? I figured we could go out right after breakfast before the beach gets too crowded.”
Her lips pressed together and a shadow passed behind her eyes. “Can we wait until later this afternoon? I wanted to take a walk this morning.”
“I’m up for a hike,” he said. “Probably better to get that in while it’s cool.”
“I wanted to go by myself if that’s okay,” she said, nibbling on her bottom lip. “I have some things to think about and a walk always helps me sort through my thoughts.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I can keep myself entertained.” He sat up, running a hand through his hair before reaching for his cowboy hat and plunking it on to hide his bed head. “I’d planned to come here alone, so don’t feel like you have to keep me company.”
“I enjoy keeping you company,” she said, seeming distracted as she wiggled out of her sleeping bag and kicked it back toward the other side of the tent. “And I’ll be back soon. I don’t think my walk will take that long.”
“All right,” he said, but he got the feeling that there was something she wasn’t telling him.
She barely said a word during breakfast and jumped half a foot in the air when he tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention before handing over the can of bug spray.
“Sorry.” Her breath rushed out as she took the canister in one shaking hand. “Lost in thought.”
“Well, don’t think too hard,” he said. “And be sure to stay on the trails and make noise while you walk. There are mountain lions around here. Usually, noise will keep them away, but if you see one, don’t turn your back on it.”
“I know,” she said absently, her gaze fixed on something over his shoulder. “If I see one I should make eye contact, lift my arms to look bigger, and if it attacks, fight back so it doesn’t think I’m easy prey.”
He nodded, surprised. “Where’d you learn about mountain lions?” He turned, glancing behind him, but there was nothing there except the row of trees shielding their campsite from the next one over.
“I used to live on a ranch,” she said, setting the bug spray back on the table without using it. “I’ll be back soon. Enjoy your coffee.”
Canyon tried to enjoy his coffee, he really did. For about two minutes.
Then he grabbed his backpack, threw a few bottles of water and the bug spray inside, and started after Grace.
He’d follow at a distance. That way she could have her time alone and he could be sure that she was okay. After nearly losing her twice in two days, he didn’t like the idea of her out in the woods without anyone looking after her. The woman was an accident waiting to happen. She had every right to end her life if she decided that’s what she needed to do, but he was going to make sure it was her choice, not a case of shitty luck or forgetting that she didn’t know how to swim.
That still didn’t sit right with him. How could a person forget something like that? Most people who didn’t know how to swim were terrified of water. They wouldn’t dive in with the confidence Grace had.
The woman was full of contradictions, but that was one of the things he liked about her. One thing was certain, life would never be boring with Grace around, a fact confirmed twenty minutes later when the trail opened up on the edge of the picnic grounds. He spied her perched on top of a table at the fringe of a large gathering, eyes skimming back and forth as a group of men and women unloaded pickup trucks full of food and decorations.
The fact that she had decided to take a break wasn’t strange, but the intensity in her expression as she searched the faces of the people swarming around the beach side of the picnic grounds certainly was. It looked like she was searching for someone in particular though she hadn’t mentioned anything about having friends in the area.
Canyon eased back into the woods to lean against a tree, keeping watch. A part of him insisted he was being a nosy bastard and it was wrong to observe Grace without her knowledge, but the other part of him was too curious to care.
What was she up to? And why did she look like she was about to be sick to her stomach?
Twenty minutes ticked by, with Canyon watching Grace and Grace watching the family set up a long table to hold foil-covered dishes and get fires started in oversized barbecue grills. Lawn chairs were set up in a big semi-circle in the shade and a baby pool was pulled out of one of the trucks and filled with water. Soon, toddlers in swim diapers splashed in the pool under the gaze of watchful grandmothers and, down by the beach, the older kids ran wild with water guns, squealing and laughing as they splashed through the shallow water.
But Grace didn’t move a muscle until a white truck pulled down the road to park next to the rest of the family vehicles. When she spotted the truck, her spine went rigid and her hand flew to her chest as if to keep her heart from leaping out onto the ground at her feet.
Canyon watched two men around Grace’s age swing out of the truck, fighting a sudden wave of jealousy. He had no claim to Grace. If she were here to meet an old boyfriend, that was none of his damned business. He should walk away and give her some privacy, but he couldn’t stop thinking about their conversation last night. If this was the person she was coming to say goodbye to, he wanted to make sure she was safe while she did it. Saying, “I love you and goodbye,” to a kid is less complicated than to a former lover.
Grace slid off the picnic bench and wandered slowly across the crowded family gathering toward the two men, her footsteps halting and awkward, leaving no doubt how difficult this meeting was going to be for her.
Canyon studied the men m
ore critically. One of them had black-brown hair, impossibly broad shoulders and a reserved air about him. The other was slightly shorter and less bulky, with reddish brown hair, freckles, and an easy smile that seemed like a permanent fixture on his face. They were both good-looking and obviously close friends.
No, cousins. Or brothers.
When the taller one slammed the driver’s door closed and turned, Canyon could see the similarity in their features. It was subtle—something through the forehead and cheekbones—but they were obviously family. The similarities deepened when Grace stopped in front of them and they both glanced down at her with matching expressions of polite surprise.
The shorter one frowned at something she said, but he grinned while he was doing it, clearly trying to put Grace at ease. The dark-haired one spoke next, shrugging his shoulders politely. Both of the men seemed happy to talk to a pretty girl, but Canyon got the distinct impression that neither of them knew Grace. There was no tension or familiarity of any kind.
Canyon had just about decided that he was wrong about either of the men being the person she’d come looking for when Grace took a sudden step backward. She shook her head back and forth for a moment before she turned and ran, racing through the men and women milling around the grills, past the children playing on the beach, and down a narrow trail that led downstream.
The brothers exchanged a baffled look, clearly surprised by whatever Grace had said, but neither of them seemed inclined to follow her. The taller one only settled his brown cowboy hat more firmly on his head and the freckled brother shrugged before moving toward the back of the truck to start unloading.
By the time he’d pulled a cooler from the truck bed, Canyon was already at the trailhead, hurrying after Grace.
CHAPTER TEN
Lily Grace
Tears filled her eyes and the trail swam unsteadily before her, but Lily didn’t stop running. She ran until her legs ached and her lungs burned. She ran like she was never going to stop though she knew there was no escape. She could run for a hundred miles and it wouldn’t change a damn thing.
There are some things you can’t run from. Time is one of them. You can’t escape it, can’t fence it in, can’t lock it behind bars or order it to turn backward. What had passed had passed and she had missed it all. She’d missed everything and now her babies were gone and she would never see them again.
The thought wrung a fresh sob from her chest and sent a sharp pain stabbing through her side. She finally staggered to a stop at the edge of the trail, sitting down hard on a rotting stump, feeling more alienated from her new body than she had since she arrived in it.
This wasn’t her body. This body had never given birth. This body didn’t know what it was like to hold a child for the first time and suddenly understand that you were so much stronger than you’d ever imagined because love had made you that way.
There was nothing like that first, fierce rush of adoration for your baby, that moment when you knew you would fight every dragon in the world to keep your little one safe. She would have given her life for either one of her sons, sacrificed anything for their happiness.
And that’s why she’d run. She was too late for her words to do anything but hurt the ones she loved the most.
“Damn you,” she sobbed as a wave of misery bent her double. “Damn you, damn you, damn you,” she chanted as she pressed her arms tight into her stomach, feeling like she was about to be ripped in two.
She wasn’t sure who she was cursing, or where to direct all the rage bubbling beneath her grief, only that she had to let it out or be destroyed by it.
“Why?” she asked, her voice breaking as she tilted her head back to look up at the sky through the leaves of the trees. “Why!”
“Grace? What’s wrong? What happened?”
She turned to her left, seeing Canyon standing a few feet away, his breath coming fast. “You followed me?” she snapped, hands balling into fists, her rage ready to lash out at anyone close enough for it to touch.
He held his hands up by his sides. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe. What happened back there? Why did you run?”
“You want to know what happened?” she asked, with a sob. “Fifteen years happened. I thought I was only gone a year, maybe two. But I was up there wandering around for fifteen damned years! I missed everything.” Her eyes squeezed shut, sending fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “And now they’re all grown up. They’re grown and she’s the mother they remember and they don’t n-need me anymore.”
She heard Canyon moving closer but didn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t stop crying and who cared if he thought she was crazy?
After looking up at Carter and Peyton and seeing the ghosts of her babies’ chubby cheeks in the lean faces of the men they’d become, she felt crazy. She’d wanted to take them by the shoulders and shake them until they turned back into the people she remembered, little people who had hugged her goodnight and drawn her homemade cards every Mother’s Day filled with sweetly misspelled professions of love.
But it was too late.
“It’s too late,” she said, hiccupping she was crying so hard.
Canyon’s hands settled on her knees, but she flinched away.
“Don’t,” she said, sucking in a breath. “I feel like I’m going to fall apart. If you touch me, I will.”
“You’re not going to fall apart, I won’t let you,” he said gently. “Let me get you out of here. There are people coming up the trail.”
Lily sniffed. “I can’t. I can’t get up.” She was telling the truth. She couldn’t imagine ever moving from this spot. She would just sit here and cry until the day Canyon died and her new body fell over.
“Then I’ll carry you.”
Before she could protest, she was in his arms. He lifted her like she was made of air and moved down the trail with a swift, steady stride. But then this body didn’t weigh much.
Just another thing that was different. Wrong.
She didn’t want Grace’s slim legs and tiny hands. She wanted her old body back, stretch marks, love handles, and all. She wanted her old life and all the years she’d missed. Once she was loved. Now, she was nothing but a dead woman inside a dying woman who had failed to be of any use to anyone.
“You should have left me there,” she said, her voice thick as her head fell against Canyon’s chest. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” he said.
Neither of them said another word all the way down the narrow trail or up the rise to the campgrounds. Canyon continued to carry her like she weighed nothing at all and she continued to wonder why she remembered.
They never should have let her keep her memories. Then she wouldn’t have had to realize how much she’d missed.
But maybe they’d wanted her to see that the world had moved on without her. Maybe then she would stop clinging to what she’d left behind and move on to whatever lay beyond the in-between.
“I hope it’s forgetting,” she mumbled numbly as Canyon set her on her feet to unzip the tent. “I hope it’s darkness deeper than sleep and nothing and more nothing and no more hurt.”
Canyon guided her in and helped her lie down on her sleeping bag. Their tent was in the shade, but it was still warm inside, so she didn’t think much of it when he tugged off her shoes and then her socks. But then he reached for the top of her shorts and thumbed open the button and her breath caught.
Her eyes sought his, focusing for the first time since she’d run from the men her sons had become. “What are you doing?”
“Pleasure and hurt are two sides of the same coin,” he said, gently tugging her shorts down her legs. “Figure if you’ve had a bunch of one then you deserve some of the other.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “I don’t need pity sex.”
“Good thing I don’t pity you, then,” he said, pulling off his shirt, revealing his gorgeous chest before he lay down beside her. He brought his big hand to her stomach, letting it heat h
er skin, making her violently aware of how much she wanted him to touch her everywhere else.
“But if you want me to stop, you just say the word,” he said, palm sliding up the front of her tank top to cup her breast through her bra.
She sucked in a breath as he slid her bra strap down her shoulder and his fingers dipped inside, touching her bare skin. He found her nipple, rolling it gently, holding her gaze while he explored her, intensifying the effects of his touch.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, transferring his attentions to her other breast.
Her fingers fisted in the sleeping bag. A part of her wanted to reach for him, but she was too mesmerized by the look in his eyes, that gentle, hungry expression that looked almost like love. It was something she’d never thought she’d see on a man’s face again and it rendered her speechless. She wanted to tell him he was beautiful too, but she couldn’t seem to make her lips move.
“I’ve wanted to touch you like this since you wrapped your fingers around my thumb at the donut shop,” he said, abandoning her breasts long enough to pull her tank top over her head before he rolled on top of her and let his tongue take over.
She gasped, arching into his mouth as he licked and sucked at her nipples. At some point he removed her bra, but she didn’t remember when it vanished or when her fingers threaded through his hair and fisted tight. She was lost in a haze of pleasure, so consumed by the things he was making her feel that she didn’t realize she was completely nude until his hand slid between her legs.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, shuddering as his fingers thrust in and out of where she was already slick with wanting him.
“Is that a good oh God?” he asked, lifting his head from her breasts.
“Yes,” she said, her breath shuddering out as she parted her legs, silently begging him for more. He responded immediately, adding a third finger and pushing in harder, deeper, summoning a cry from low in her throat.