Strange, but I hadn’t thought about that time in a while. I used to replay it daily.
Years ago, a hunter had called in a tip that he’d stumbled across a meth house in the mountains. I’d only been working with Cormac for about a year, and in those days, we’d done everything together. True partners. Friends. So the two of us had gone scouting to see if we could find the cabin. The plan had just been to scope it out, then call in for the local drug task force to take it down.
We’d found the place easily enough. It had been a shitty old hut, miles from any road or house. We’d stopped about fifty yards away, close enough for Cormac to pinpoint the place on GPS and take some photos.
He’d just dug his phone from a pocket when we’d heard a branch snap. Then everything had happened in slow motion.
The guy who’d lived in that cabin had been out in the woods, doing whatever it was that meth addicts do. He’d seen us approach and had planned on killing us to keep his hideaway a secret. At least, that was what I assumed.
Had he not stepped on a branch, I’d probably be dead. Instead, that had given me enough warning to draw my gun and shoot him four times in the chest.
Cormac had been closer. He would have gotten hit first. But I’d saved his life.
Maybe that was where it had all gone wrong. Had I known what would happen, maybe I would have let that addict kill us both.
“Vance.” Lyla’s voice pulled me from the memory. She leaned her cheek into my palm.
I cleared my throat as I dropped my hand. “Winn seems solid. I don’t think you have cause to worry, but you should just ask her if she’s okay. Chances are, she’ll say yes. Whether she means it or not. But just keep asking.”
“Is that what someone did for you? Kept asking if you were okay?”
“Yes.”
“Who? Your family?”
No, not my family.
Cormac.
And that was how he’d become my family.
But Lyla wouldn’t want that answer. It made Cormac too likable. Too good. So I did what I did best—changed the damn subject.
“Winn knows that we’re sleeping together, doesn’t she?”
Lyla blinked, taken off guard for a moment. But in our short time together, she’d already picked up that when I was done with a topic, I was done. So she nodded. “Yes, but I asked her to keep it between us.”
A secret. That had been my idea. So why did I hate it so much?
“I’ve never kept a man secret before,” Lyla said. “It’s strange.”
“I’m not asking you to keep a secret.”
“You’re leaving. I know the stakes here.”
The stakes. The fucking stakes. Yeah, I knew them too.
“I won’t lie to my family. Honestly, someone will figure it out anyway. I’m surprised they haven’t yet.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I have this habit of wearing my feelings like jewelry, bright and sparkly for the world to see. I trust people just because people can trust me. That’s how I was raised. That’s who I am. Lately, I just . . .” She let her gaze slide away, unfocused past my shoulder. “Don’t feel like myself.”
Of course she wouldn’t feel like herself.
“Hey.” I hooked my finger beneath her chin, tilting it up until her eyes came back to mine. “Are you okay?”
Tears filled her eyes. “Not really.”
My heart squeezed. Fucking Cormac. This was on him. These tears were on him. “What can I do?”
She sniffled, reaching up to dab the corner of her eyes. “Help me find this waterfall.”
If a waterfall was what she needed, then a waterfall was what we’d find.
I took her by the shoulders, turning her around. Then I smacked her ass. Hard. “Lead the way, Blue.”
It didn’t earn me a laugh, but I’d keep trying to make her smile.
We hiked for another hour, mostly in silence. But whatever heaviness weighed on Lyla seemed to fade while her frustration mounted.
She stopped walking so quickly that I nearly plowed her over.
“What?” I asked.
She huffed and tossed up her hands. “I’m lost.”
Was she? There was a faint noise in the distance. I’d heard it for the past few minutes, just assuming she had too.
“Shh,” I said.
She tensed. “Why?”
“Listen.”
“To what?”
This woman. I clamped my hand over her mouth, earning a growl. Then with my free hand, I pulled off her beanie so she had nothing over her ears.
The moment she heard it, her gaze tipped up over her shoulder to meet mine. Those blue eyes lit up like stars.
Water.
She raced toward the sound, leaping over a fallen log as she jogged.
I chuckled, shaking my head as I hurried to catch up.
Not a hundred feet away, past a cluster of bushes, the forest floor gave way to wet, black rocks, some spotted with moss. A stream trickled from a small pool fed from a gentle waterfall.
The current was slow. The cold weather was moving farther and farther down the mountains, and soon, this would be frozen. The waterfall itself was only four or five feet tall, but it was enough to fill the air with a steady rush of noise.
Lyla made her way along the slick rocks, her arms held out wide and ready to catch herself if her foot slipped.
I stayed back, watching as she navigated her way, inch by inch, around the pool’s perimeter. Then when she was close enough, she took off a glove, stretched out a hand and let it disappear into the waterfall.
There was the smile. White and wide, illuminating her whole face.
Fuck, but she was gorgeous. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, not even in a place like this, where nature was showing off. The cool, clear water. The vivid green forest. It was a beautiful place, worthy of paintings or photographs.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off Lyla.
She moved her fingers in and out of the water, letting it dance across her knuckles. Then she yanked it free, probably when the cold got to be too much, and after drying her hand on her jeans, she hurried to put her glove back on. As carefully as she’d moved to the water, she walked away.
“I found it.” Her smile was breathtaking as she stopped by my side.
“You found it.”
The smile vanished. Lyla’s eyes flooded again, and like before, she dabbed at the corners, stopping any tears before they could fall.
“You okay?” I’d keep asking that question. While I was here, I’d ask every day.
She looked around, her gaze leaving nothing untouched. “Being here feels almost like stepping into a different lifetime. And I feel like an entirely different person than the girl I was when I came here all those years ago.”
I couldn’t even remember who I’d been at that age. Too much had happened. Too much had changed.
“I’m glad we came here,” she whispered.
“But . . .”
She sighed. “But it’s a hard truth to face that the life you’re living, the life you built day after day after day because of the dreams you had when you were young, might not be the life you want. In a way, it feels like the girl who came here so long ago got it wrong.”
“Did she?”
Lyla shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Partially. She’d probably argue with me. I miss the confidence I had. I miss the faith that it would all just . . . work out.”
The mental picture of seventeen-year-old Lyla was clear as day. Bright blue eyes, full of dreams.
I’d known another seventeen-year-old girl just like that once.
“I’m thirty,” Lyla said. “Somewhere along the way, I lost that girl. You’re good at finding people, right? Maybe after you catch Cormac, you could teach me your tricks.”
I stepped closer, so close that not even a breath of wind could come between us. Then I laid my hand on the center of her chest. “You don’t need me to find her. She’s right here. Where she’s always been.”
Lyla’s eyes searched mine like she couldn’t quite believe me. Then she fell forward, into my arms, burying her face in my chest. “Thanks.”
“Welcome.” I dropped a kiss to her hair, then let her go.
She took a few steps away, turning to face the waterfall again.
This was my chance to memorize this hidden paradise. To soak it all in. But again, all I could do was look at Lyla.
We were two sides to the same coin. Two people trying to find their way back to center.
Maybe it was too late for me to go back. But for Lyla, I wanted her to find a glimpse of that seventeen-year-old girl. To find the spark.
“We’d better get going,” I said. “I don’t want to get stuck out here in the dark.”
“Neither do I. And I’m starving.”
“Want another granola bar?”
She held up a hand, stopping me from digging one from my backpack. “We’re getting cheeseburgers. Double cheeseburgers.”
I chuckled. “Double cheeseburgers. With fries.”
“Obviously.” She smiled, and when I offered her a hand, she held it tight, letting me guide her down the slippery rocks and back to the forest floor.
“We’ll follow the stream down for a bit,” I told her. “I’m guessing that will be faster. Then we’ll work our way back toward the trail.”
“Okay,” she said, staying close as we hiked.