by Nicole Helm
“No. Can’t change the past, right?”
“Right.”
They both returned their focus to setting up their tents, and Tori could only hope that was that.
Chapter Five
Will had never much cared for the softer sides of adventure stuff. Those activities that might be hard on the body, but gave the mind too much time to think. Hiking. Camping.
He preferred throwing himself into a raging river in a kayak or raft, or flinging himself up the side of a mountain. Things that required agility, strength, skill, and focus.
But putting up a tent only took so long, and he was currently debating the need for a fire. They didn’t need one at all, even with night falling and the temperatures cooling off. An MRE to eat, a sleeping bag to keep warm, they were set.
All that was left to do was wait. For night to fully fall. For it to be late enough to sleep. For it to get light enough to go back to Mile High in the morning.
Waiting had never been his strong suit.
The problem was he had a little niggle of unease that Lilly and crew had set this up. She hadn’t been wrong about almost anything since she’d shown up in Gracely, but surely she’d have to be wrong at some point. Why not about this?
“H-holy shit.”
He glanced at Tori, who’d stumbled backward from her tent, eyes wide, hand over her heart.
“Wha—” But he saw it then, or more heard it, then turned to it. Ambling out of the tree line around the clearing was a bear.
A big fucking bear.
He’d seen a lot of bears over the years, but never this close, and never this big. Christ. The large creature stood at the edge of the clearing, its nose in the air clearly sniffing.
“Do you h-have bear spray?” she asked, her voice quiet and a little shaky but not panicked. “Mine’s in the tent.”
“Yeah, just need a few steps.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm his over-beating heart. “Why don’t you come closer?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the bear to see if Tori would listen. Instead he edged toward his pack, which was only a few inches away. As much as the advice to make lots of noise usually worked in getting a bear to go away, the bear was so calm Will was loath to startle it with yelling.
Tori moved next to him and for the first time since he’d noticed the animal, he flicked a glance away and toward Tori. She stared at the bear, but her jaw was set. Whatever fear might have lurked she had locked down.
“Stand behind me.”
She snorted, and the bear tilted its head toward them.
“I’m going to start making noise, and if I have to spray it, you don’t want to be downwind. So just stand behind me like a good girl.” Which he said to get a rise out of her, yes, at the least sensible moment.
“Say ‘good girl’ again and I’ll feed you to that bear myself,” she muttered, but she took a step behind him.
The bear ambled along the edge of the trees, mostly sniffing at shrubs, but occasionally looking their way.
“Shoo, now,” Will said in a calm voice, trying to sound forceful but not startling.
“Oh my God, you did not just tell a bear to shoo.”
“What would you suggest? Be my guest.” He made a gesture toward the bear, who seemed utterly unaffected by both his shoo and their arguing.
“Hey, bear! Get out of here!”
“Hey, bear,” Will muttered. “You think it responds to ‘hey, bear’ more than ‘shoo’?”
“I think it doesn’t matter what we say, it matters that he goes the hell away,” Tori huffed. “Thus far, neither of us have figured out the right words.”
The bear munched on some bush, continuing to pay them no mind. Will didn’t want to go up and spray the thing when it wasn’t being antagonistic, but he also didn’t want to stand here all night with Tori all too close.
Somehow her proximity seemed way more dangerous than the bear, though all in all, both were minding their own business—lurking about the edges of his clearing and or life like a potential threat—whether to life and limb or emotional and mental well-being.
He gripped the bear spray in his hand. He couldn’t get rid of Tori, but he could get rid of the bear. It was something, anyway.
He stomped his feet, and yelled “Hey!” a few times. Tori followed suit, adding clapping to the mix. The bear looked at them, damn near quizzically, and then took a step forward.
Without even discussing it, he and Tori both stopped making noise. Will held his breath, and he had a feeling she was doing the same. Especially as the bear took another step their way.
Will fumbled a little but got the bear spray cap and safety off, but before he could even worry about how to spray the bear, it stopped, sniffed the air again, turned around, and lumbered back into the trees.
Will let out the breath he’d been holding. Coming into contact with predators wasn’t exactly uncommon, but it wasn’t common, either. Especially that close up.
He turned to Tori and she had her hand covering her face, and she was shaking.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked, wrapping his hand around her arm before he thought better of it.
It was only as he tried to draw her closer to offer a little comfort that he realized she was laughing. Laughing.
“I just kept thinking . . .” She laughed again, trying to take a gulp of air. “If that bear ate us, boy, wouldn’t everyone back at Mile High be sorry they’d set us up.”
It shouldn’t be funny, but his own laugh bubbled up and out. Maybe a little adrenaline-induced, but a loud, long laugh nonetheless. “I would have haunted their asses.”
She laughed even harder, and he couldn’t help but laugh too. Getting killed by a bear would have been quite the story-worthy end.
It took him a few minutes to realize Tori had stopped laughing, that she’d sobered, and mostly that his hand was still wrapped around her arm.
She held it tense now, frowning at his fingers, and for some reason he couldn’t get his brain to turn on and release her.
Because the day had been hot, they were both wearing T-shirts, so his hand gripped her bare forearm. Tori had always exuded a gritty kind of toughness, but her skin was soft, tanned, a little mole right where his thumb imprinted into her skin.
He heard her inhale sharply and it was a reminder he hadn’t done that in too long, so he gulped air he belatedly realized he needed.
It broke whatever spell had settled over them and she jerked her arm from his grasp. She took a step backward, not meeting his gaze as she wrapped her arms around her midsection.
Nothing was funny anymore. It was heavy and weighted, that ugly thing that existed between them because of one stupid night a million years ago when she’d told him she was in love with him.
Love. She’d used that word like it wasn’t a weapon or a threat. Like it was something soft and easy, but he’d known better.
Love hurt. Love broke things and people. Love was hard, and he wasn’t any damn good at hard.
* * *
Tori was trying to breathe through her body’s torturous response to Will’s hand being on her arm. Her arm. Why should her heart beat against her chest like it was trying to escape? Why should her breathing be uneven, her legs shaky?
It was a touch, a simple one, and it meant nothing.
Except Will always meant something even when she desperately wanted him not to. Because it was as much the look as the touch that shoved her back seven years to her heart breaking all over again.
“We should build a fire. Maybe that’ll keep the bear away overnight,” he offered into the all-too-heavy silence.
“Yeah,” she managed to mutter, though she still felt thoroughly shaken. If only it was because of the bear and not because of a little arm touch. “I’ll find some firewood.”
“Get your spray.”
She bristled at the command, more because she was irritated with herself for being such an idiot to have her head full of Will when she should have her head full of not gett
ing attacked by a bear.
They worked in utter silence doing everything needed to collect supplies and then build a fire. The sun was slowly setting, but it’d be a while before it got full dark, and then what? Every creak and crack of the forest would convince her the bear was back, and how was she going to sleep through that?
And then, worse, so much worse, would be the places her mind would wander in her non-sleeping state. Mainly Will’s tent. Will.
Will, Will, Will, damn it, how was it so easy for her life to revolve back to this point? Where Will Evans was the center of the universe she revolved around.
She cursed as she missed the piece of wood she’d been cutting down into kindling and scraped her finger with the blade.
She sucked her finger into her mouth, and realized disgustedly she was lucky she hadn’t cut her whole damn finger to the bone. As it was, she’d at least need a bandage to stop the bleeding to protect the cut from the work she was doing.
“You need a bandage,” Will said, so matter-of-factly she wanted to argue with him out of spite. Who was he to decide that? Maybe she could do just fine without a bandage.
But she wasn’t going to repeat the mistakes of twenty-five-year-old Tori. New life. New person. She needed to accept there was a time and a place to be contrary, and alone in the woods with a bloody finger and a bear ambling about probably wasn’t it.
Will had pulled a first aid kit out of his pack and grabbed some disinfectant and a Band-Aid. He paused for a second, standing in front of her, and in that pause she felt something jittery and light.
Anticipation.
She was like an addict. Only her drug was too-handsome men who would never, ever give her what she needed.
After that all-too-potent moment of hesitation, Will took her hand and sprayed the disinfectant. Out of sheer force of will she didn’t flinch or hiss though it burned like a bitch.
He held her hand in his, competently wrapping the Band-Aid around the cut. It was far too much like the arm-touching thing before. All that awareness coursed through her, as potent and dangerous as it had been when she’d been young and stupid. Just like then, she was certain he felt it too—the way the air warmed and something sparkled to life between them.
But she’d been wrong then and she was wrong now, and that meant something had to change. It meant she had to be stronger than she’d been back then.
“Maybe they were right.” Avoiding wasn’t working. Pretending wasn’t doing jack shit, so maybe she needed to do the thing she’d never done before. Maybe instead of pretending or running, she needed to face the thing she least wanted to.
Will’s hazel eyes met hers, wary and confused. “Who was right about what?”
“We need to hash it out. All of it.”
He dropped her hand, his eyebrows drawing together, his eyes searching her face as though he were waiting for the punch line.
“Maybe it’d be good.” Could it be any worse than this? Maybe if they talked that night through, bit by excruciating bit, she could dull that shiver of want when he was too close.
“I don’t think so,” he said softly, but she knew that tone. Will was only soft when he was sure, when there was no changing his mind. But she would try to, God she had to try.
“It isn’t working. Whatever this is doesn’t work for me. We need to try something else, and you said yourself Lilly is always right. Maybe this was her plan all along, because everyone can see it, Will. They can see this doesn’t work.”
The idea of talking about it made her shaky, but she was sure now—especially in his reluctance. This was the thing they needed to do. Maybe they’d both moved on, but they hadn’t healed. She was tired of this feeling like a picked scab. She needed it to be an old scar that couldn’t crack and bleed.
There was no change in Will’s expression. He stood there stiff and blank and when he met her pleading gaze, all she saw was emptiness.
When he spoke, his voice was flat. Final. “It’s working for me.”
Then, much too much like that night on their favorite Boulder overlook, Will turned his back on her and walked away.
This time though she wasn’t left with a broken heart. There were no tears in her eyes, no pain in her chest.
No, this time, all she was was angry.
Chapter Six
Will woke the next morning gritty-eyed and pissed off and dreading leaving the safety and solitude of his tent.
He would fully admit to anyone who would accuse him of it that he was a coward. He’d never had to be brave, and he’d never had to fight. That was Brandon’s expertise, and Will had never learned it.
Ever since his mother had blamed him for telling her about his father’s affair, and the possible child he’d created with someone else, Will had learned that being brave and doing the hard thing only got you a cart full of shit.
So it didn’t bother him he had spent the night hiding from an angry woman in his tent. It was a better alternative to the shit.
He’d heard her stomp around outside for a while after he’d zipped up his tent. He’d listened carefully, not willing to fall asleep until he’d heard the zip of her own. Once she’d paced off her anger or whatever and gotten into her own tent, he’d gotten snatches of sleep, always straining to listen for any possible bear sounds.
Every time he’d woken up, listening too hard to the sound of a Colorado wilderness night, the same thought had run through his head.
Christ, why would she want to dredge all those old memories up? So they could be more uncomfortable around each other? So he could be reminded of all the ways her confession all those years ago had betrayed his trust? So he could be reminded of all the ways his terrible response had been a betrayal of hers? Why would either of them want to relive one of the most terrible days of his life?
Right up there with Mom’s anger at him and threatening to cut him off, and when Courtney had flippantly announced she’d had an abortion.
Odd, he could rationalize those both away. Mom had needed a target for her hurt to land, or maybe she’d come to love her reputation more than her children. Whatever it was she’d needed him to be the scapegoat. Shitty? Sure, but there was some reason, some need behind it.
With Courtney, well, it wasn’t like they’d had a typical marriage. They’d always had fun together, and they’d never communicated. They’d never talked about what they wanted, and he’d been more than happy to stay in Colorado with Bran while Courtney spent most of her time traveling for her modeling career. Sure, it had hurt that he’d lost the chance at his child without even a say in it, but he couldn’t blame her for looking out for herself without consulting him. That had always been who they were.
Both incidents had cut him open, bled him dry, but he’d found a resigned kind of understanding.
He’d never in a million years understood why Tori would admit she loved him that night, when he wasn’t worth the trouble, and she was worth infinitely more.
Now she wanted to rehash it? Hell no.
He climbed out of his sleeping bag, trying to ignore the itchy feeling building in his gut. He wouldn’t name it and it would go away.
The morning was cool and in any other situation that might have been something like calming and relaxing. He loved a cool mountain morning and the quiet promise of a new day. He liked the hope of dawn and dew. It restored him most days, but today he felt none of that hope for renewal or the excitement at facing the day. All he felt was dread.
He grabbed a sweatshirt out of his pack and pulled it on. He shoved his feet into his boots and then, with a deep breath to steady himself and remind himself she couldn’t make him relive one of the most painful nights of his life, he stepped out into the cool mountain morning.
Tori was already standing outside her tent, her gaze on the eastern sky that was growing pink behind the trees. She had been stretching her hands above her head, leaning back and then spreading her arms out wide, but she stilled as he stepped out.
It only lasted for a second
or so, and then she went back to stretching, her eyes never darting toward him.
He should look away, be the coward he always was, but the way she moved was still as mesmerizing as he’d tried to pretend it wasn’t all those years they’d been friends.
She wasn’t blatantly gorgeous like most of the women he’d dated or, in Courtney’s case, married. He’d always gone after women who had the kind of bodies that matched their big personalities, but Tori’s gigantic personality had been trapped in this tiny body. Short, compact, everything about her reminding him of a scrappy little fighter. The gleam in her blue-green eyes, the way she went after what she wanted—stubborn and dogged. She walked through the world as if it was a constant fight, and she was always ready for it. Always determined to win.
She was a force, and something about that made her too pointy chin, and too big eyes, and too sharp face gorgeous. She was tiny, but everything about her was strong and even at his weakest, he recognized that strength and envied it.
He’d always wanted it in ways he’d never been able to make sense of. So he’d befriended it, even though she’d always intimidated him. He’d circled around it, like the earth to the sun, he’d orbited around Tori helplessly attracted and desperately afraid of getting too close in case he’d burn up.
He’d always known she’d burn him up.
A pertinent reminder that he couldn’t look at her like this, think of her like this. He’d survived their friendship because he’d done an excellent job of pretending none of those feelings or fears existed inside of him. Pretending had been the Will Evans way of surviving the world since he’d been a teenager.
Today though, in the pearly light of dawn, and the emotional upheaval of the past who-knew-how-many days, he felt that old want shudder through him. Some weak part of him could imagine his hands on the smooth lines of her body. Something in his mind dared wonder what she might taste like, and as it always did, those thoughts made him hate himself.
Because if there was anything he knew without a shadow of a doubt, it was that Tori Appleby—in her infinite strength that hid some infinite vulnerability she’d never be willing to show—was not for him. He wasn’t strong enough or brave enough or good enough to be the man who touched her.