Surrender: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  “Brian?”

  He didn’t slow down, simply said, “What?”

  “Stop and talk to me.”

  “We need to keep moving.”

  “Brian! Stop!”

  He heaved an aggrieved sigh and turned around. “What is it?”

  “Your limp has gotten worse.”

  “So?”

  “You’ve been drinking a lot of water.”

  “So?”

  “How’s your—” She cut herself off. “I could use a break.”

  “Already? Are you tired?”

  “Not really, but—”

  “Then let’s keep moving. We have another hour of daylight before we need to stop and make camp. With any luck, we’ll be past the fire’s devastation by then.” He turned and started walking again. He didn’t want her asking any more questions. He was worried that the fire had burned its way a lot farther across the backcountry than they could walk in another hour. He wanted green limbs he could use to make a cover over their heads and boughs for a bed. He wanted the hope of the odd wild blackberry or blueberry or strawberry they could pick and eat. He wanted rabbits and squirrels they could trap and a cool stream of water running through an even cooler forest.

  The August sun was hot. His body was hot. He was walking through hell, with no end in sight.

  “Brian, I’m hungry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Can we eat the last Snickers?”

  Brian realized it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consume a few calories, since they had another hour of walking to do before dark. “Why not?”

  He could use the break. Not that he would have admitted that to a living soul. He bit back a groan as he settled on a downed pine. It felt wonderful to give his leg a rest.

  Tag reached for his PG bag, and he let it slide off his shoulder into her lap. She fished around inside until she came up with the Snickers.

  “Should we eat the whole thing?” she asked. “Or just half of it?”

  “Let’s go whole hog. We need the energy.”

  He watched a smile flash on her face and disappear. “Thank goodness! It feels like my stomach is folded in half with nothing in the middle.”

  She opened the Snickers, which was gooey from the heat, and put the wrapper back in his PG bag—no littering in the forest—then broke it in half and handed him the larger portion. As she licked her fingers clean, he watched her with hungry eyes. But he made no attempt at playfulness. He didn’t have the energy.

  She shot him a grim smile as she knocked her half against his half and said, “Down the hatch.”

  He put the whole thing in his mouth at once, chewed it, and swallowed it. He watched her nibble off a tiny bite at one corner.

  She caught him staring and said defensively, “I want to make it last.”

  He shook his head at her logic. “It’s not going to fill you any fuller just because you eat it slower.”

  “My stomach doesn’t know that. I’m tricking it into thinking this is the whole bar.”

  Brian chuckled. He knew they ought to get moving, but he wasn’t looking forward to putting weight on his injured leg.

  “What are the chances of someone finding us now that we’re out here walking around?” Tag asked.

  “Better than they were. Not as good as I’d like.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a big forest. It would be easy to miss us.”

  “You don’t think we’ll be found?”

  “Oh, they’ll find us all right. I don’t know about your family, but Aiden won’t stop looking until he finds us—or our cold, dead bodies.”

  He saw Tag shudder and wished he hadn’t been so blunt.

  “Leah won’t stop either,” she said. “It’s too bad they can’t work together.”

  “What makes you think they haven’t joined forces?”

  She shot him a pained look. “After all the animosity? All the dirty tricks? Why would they?”

  “Since we were lost together, they could agree to call a truce long enough to pool their search efforts.”

  “I suppose it’s possible. I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Did all the drama between our families have anything to do with why you broke up with me in high school? Or was it all about you wanting to leave me before I left you?”

  She looked startled that he’d brought up the subject of their brief stint as boyfriend and girlfriend.

  The fever must be affecting my judgment. Do I really want to open this can of worms? Yes, I do.

  If it was only her fear that he would abandon her that had kept them apart, he felt sure that could be overcome. Family pressure was a trickier proposition.

  “Vick didn’t trust you not to hurt me. She said she wasn’t going to speak to me again until I broke up with you. She meant it.”

  “You couldn’t tell me that at the time?”

  “What difference would it have made? You obviously didn’t care one way or the other. You never said a word to try and change my mind.”

  “Only because I didn’t think it would do any good. You sent me a note. You didn’t even tell me to my face.”

  “There was no way we could have kept dating once our families got involved,” she argued.

  “Within the past month, one of my brothers married one of your sisters. Despite our fathers. Despite opposition from me.”

  “You tried to stop Connor from marrying Eve?”

  Brian snorted derisively. “I knew—from my own experience—that getting together with a Grayhawk was an iffy proposition for a Flynn.”

  He watched Tag drop her gaze, acknowledging the guilty truth of what he’d said. “And I had my divorce as an example of what can go wrong when two people don’t know each other well before they marry. But despite making a marriage of convenience, my brother and your sister seemed pretty damned happy the last time I saw them in church.”

  “That’s because Eve had a crush on Connor in high school. She was already half in love with him.”

  He arched a rueful brow. “What makes you think I didn’t love you?”

  “You never said so.”

  “You weren’t listening. Or you’ve conveniently forgotten what you don’t want to recall. I distinctly remember saying the words.”

  “Flippantly. You said ‘I love you’ flippantly.”

  He frowned. “I don’t think any man says those words without considering what they mean.”

  “Men say sweet things to get what they want from a woman.”

  “You mean sex? But we were already having sex. So why did you dismiss the possibility that I meant what I said?”

  “Because I didn’t for a minute believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  She looked uncertain. “You couldn’t have loved me.”

  “Why not?”

  “What does saying ‘I love you’ even mean?” she countered. “How do those words change anything?”

  “I wanted to share everything with you. I wanted to tell you my secrets and hear yours. I wanted to hold you close and take care of you and be together forever.”

  “Seventeen-year-old boys don’t think like that.”

  He shot her a sardonic look. “They don’t? How would you know that? You don’t have brothers. From what you’ve told me, King wasn’t around much. From whom—which brothers or uncles or cousins or other boyfriends—did you learn how boys think?”

  She pursed her lips. “What kind of secrets would you have shared?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Not really. If you want me to believe you, tell me something you would have shared with me.”

  “All right. I was afraid when I first went out with you that you were dating me just so you could dump me at some embarrassing moment
.”

  “I was.”

  He raised his eyebrows as though to say Thought so!

  She hesitated, then asked, “If you believed that, why did you go out with me?”

  “Have you looked at yourself? You were the most beautiful girl in school.”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “At least in my eyes. I remember you were always laughing. I wanted to be a part of whatever it was that kept you feeling so happy.”

  “Have you heard of laughing to hide the pain?”

  “You weren’t happy?”

  “When I was with Vick, I always felt good, like I belonged. But most of the time, no, I wasn’t happy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Now you’re asking for one of my secrets.”

  “I think I’m entitled.”

  She hesitated so long he thought she wasn’t going to speak. At last she said, “My mom ran away. My dad was always gone. I grew up feeling like there must be something wrong with me, if my parents didn’t love me enough to want to stick around.”

  “What about your twin? What about Leah and Eve? Are you going to tell me they didn’t love you?”

  “It’s not the same thing. I wasn’t very old when my mom took off, but she took something from me—something of me—when she left. Leah’s done her best, but I think she feels the loss of our mother even more than I do. Maybe my father could have filled the hole inside me, if he’d hung around more. But he didn’t.”

  “So you didn’t believe I could love you?”

  “I didn’t believe anyone could love me.”

  He wanted to comfort her, but what did you say to someone who felt so unwanted? So invisible? Especially when you’d loved her yourself and that love had been so soundly rejected?

  The silence stretched between them

  “I’m glad you had Vick,” he said at last. “The two of you were like this in high school.” He twisted two fingers together.

  She sighed. “For the past five years, Vick has been gone from the ranch most of the time, doing whatever it is she does to save endangered species.”

  “Like salamanders and butterflies?”

  “Like grizzlies and wolves. She’s got a place in Montana I haven’t seen. I keep expecting her to invite me to stay with her, but she says she only uses the cabin as a base for travel. She’s been giving Matt hell about taking the ranch away from us, but she’s upset more for Leah’s sake—and mine—than her own. She’s only home for a few days at a time before she takes off again. We Skype, we talk on the phone, we text all the time. But it’s not the same. Our lives have taken different paths—mine based here, hers in Montana.”

  “So she’s rejected you as well.”

  She shot him a hurt, angry look. But she didn’t contradict him. “People think I’m the outgoing twin, the happy one. But if I am, it’s because Vick was always there beside me. I miss her.”

  “You should go visit her in Montana, whether she invites you or not.”

  “Maybe I will. If we get out of this alive.” She glanced at him and said, “So you really loved me?”

  “Yeah. I was mad for you. I got pressure from Aiden to break up, but I never would have done it. I would have kept dating you no matter what he said. You never gave me the chance.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her that he’d never really gotten over her, that he would always regret what might have been. What would be the point? Their moment had come and gone. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could ever trust any woman again, let alone a Grayhawk. Especially one who’d already rejected him once because of her family, and who also had a terrible fear of abandonment.

  What if I could keep her close long enough to convince her I’m not going anywhere?

  As they walked through the desolate landscape, the lowering sun at their backs, Brian let himself imagine what it might be like to fall in love with Tag again, to be the one to fill the gaping hole her parents had left inside her, to hear her laugh and know that he was the one who’d put the radiant smile on her face.

  The fantasy almost made him forget he was dying.

  TAYLOR SPENT THE next hour thinking about what Brian had admitted. He’d loved her. He’d wanted to keep dating her. He’d been willing to defy his family. She was the one who’d walked away. It was a novel idea, and she was having trouble accepting it.

  His admission shouldn’t have made any difference to her, coming as it had, so many years later. Except, if it wasn’t important, why had he mentioned it? And why had she felt such a stirring inside when he’d told her how much he’d cared?

  “Brian.”

  He ignored her and kept walking.

  “Brian!”

  “What is it now, Tag?”

  She heard the irritation in his voice, which suggested his leg was hurting and his fever was worse. She bit her lip, unable to ask directly whether he still had feelings for her, or whether they’d died long ago. Their lovemaking in the cave had been the result of seeking comfort. It didn’t have more meaning than that.

  Maybe it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. Once they were safe, once they were back in the world where Grayhawks and Flynns were enemies, she could ask her question and get a more honest answer.

  “Look!”

  Brian stopped so abruptly Taylor ran into him, nearly knocking him down. She grabbed handfuls of his shirt at the waist to keep him upright, then let go and sidestepped so she could see where he was pointing.

  “The forest,” she said in a whispery voice. “The evergreen forest. Thank you, God.”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

  She laughed. “Actually, it looks like we’re just heading into them.”

  Brian chuckled. “Let me try that again. We have a ways to go before we’re home free.”

  Taylor put a hand up to shield her eyes and admired the yellow and orange and purple sunset. “Not a minute too soon. Once the sun gets below that mountain, it’s going to be as black out here as it was in that cave. How long do you think it’ll take us to reach the green stuff?”

  “Another ten minutes ought to do it. What was it you wanted to say before?”

  “Nothing important. It can wait.”

  “Let’s hoof it, then. It’ll be a lot easier to set up camp if we still have some light to work with.”

  Taylor marveled at Brian’s fortitude as they trekked that final ten minutes. She hadn’t realized how hot it had been in the charred landscape until they reached the cool, green forest. “Oh, this is heaven,” she said as they moved into the trees.

  “Find as many dead limbs as you can and stack them up near this tree.” He pointed to a blue spruce. “We’re going to need firewood to stay warm overnight.”

  “You really think it’s going to get that cold?”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  It dawned on her that a fire would also keep predators—wolves and cougars and bears—away, and Brian likely hadn’t wanted to remind her of the danger.

  Brian dropped the parachute and his PG bag, then pulled out his knife and began trimming off limbs to use as a bed to keep them off the ground. Once he had a carpet on the ground under the spruce, he began making a contraption she realized was a snare for a small animal. He gave her a satisfied smile. “With any luck, we’ll have meat for breakfast.”

  Taylor had grown up eating venison and buffalo, but she’d never tried squirrel or rabbit. Her mouth watered. Right now, at the end of the seventh day since she’d eaten a decent meal, either or both sounded pretty good.

  “Should I look around for a stream?” she asked.

  He glanced at the disappearing sun. “We can do that in the morning.”

  The sun was there, and then, suddenly, it wasn’t. The darkness was astonishing.

  Taylor grabbed for her headlamp and snapped the light on. “
I’ve been camping in the wilderness, but I don’t remember it ever being this dark.”

  “We should have started the fire sooner, I guess.” He began breaking up some of the dry wood she’d retrieved.

  She knelt beside him as he dug a fire pit in the dirt, then put together flammable pine needles, small twigs, and larger branches for their fire.

  “The last thing we want to do is start another forest fire,” he said with a crooked grin.

  “That would be one way to get the smoke jumpers in here to rescue us,” she pointed out.

  “Unless the fire got us first.” He struck a match and lit the tinder. “I’m glad I brought a whole box of matches with me. I only had two left when I looked the evening I was planning to jump the fire, and I stopped to get another box. I’d hate to think of us trying to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together.”

  “You’ve done it before, though, haven’t you?”

  “Eagle Scout,” he said. “Survival badge.”

  She smiled. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without Aiden’s help. Shit. Even if he’s still looking, by now he probably thinks I’m dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if he said ‘good riddance’ and gave up the search. He hates my guts.”

  “I thought you two were close. Why would he hate you?”

  “It’s nothing that concerns you.”

  “Oh, I see. Now that you think we’re going to get out of here, you’re clamming up. Spill, Mr. Flynn. What did you do to piss off your brother?”

  “I don’t think I can tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It concerns your sister.”

  “Which one?”

  “Leah.”

  “Now you have to tell me. What did you guys do?”

  “I bet Aiden that he couldn’t get Leah to fall in love with him.”

  “That was a safe bet,” Taylor said as she settled cross-legged on the sleeping bag Brian had laid over the boughs, so she could be warmed by the fire.

  “You’d have thought so.” Brian settled a larger branch on the snapping fire and joined her.

  “Are you telling me Aiden won the bet? I don’t believe it.”