“I thought I could forgive you.” Hot tears started down her cheeks. She didn’t bother to try to hide them or wipe them away. Let him see. “I can’t. Or maybe I won’t. You didn’t give me a choice when you left. You just did what everyone else did, what all of you thought was the right thing for me. And you, of all people, I trusted to believe in me. Now, I don’t even know what you think of me, but whatever it is, I don’t have much faith that you actually know me better than anyone else.”
He could say whatever he wanted. Hang around. Even blow her mind with amazing sex again. Not a thing he could do would make her believe him at this point. And she only had herself to blame. She’d been the one to finally ask him why he’d left all those years ago.
And it really had been enough to make her stop believing in the both of them.
“Sophie!”
Brandon’s hand shot out as he yelled her name. He grabbed her shoulder and yanked her toward him. There was a strange sound like a dart hitting a board, then he was shoving her farther down toward the floor of the front seat. “Stay down.”
The SUV started to reverse, but there were more popping sounds and the whole vehicle lurched to one side.
Someone was shooting at them. Maybe? None of it sounded the way she thought it would. Too many movies. All she recognized was the sound of glass breaking, but the windshield hadn’t shattered.
Brandon cursed. “We’re not going to make it to the service road like this. Both headlights are out. I’m going to break an axle in the dark.”
He yanked the steering wheel, and the whole car swerved and collided with something. Maybe the corner of the cabin? She kept her head down, protecting herself as best she could with her arms, and sobbed.
“Ten seconds, Sophie, then I need you to open your door and roll out. You’ll be near the woods. Run like I showed you. Can you do that? Sophie?”
His words cut through her panic, cold and hard.
“Yes.” She forced the word out of her throat.
“Keep going, no matter what you hear.” His instructions were delivered in concise cadence. There wasn’t a hint of the earlier tension or emotion.
This was Brandon when someone was trying to kill him. Actually, someone was here to kill her. He was just in the way.
“I could step out. Let them—”
“No.” Still calm. The authority in his voice brooked no argument. “Not because it’s not your choice. Because it won’t work out the way you want it to. They’d still kill me. Do you want to die and just have me killed because I saw it happen?”
“No.” She choked on the word.
She didn’t want him dead. Especially not because of her.
“Then don’t make that choice.” He was so reasonable. “You’re down to three seconds.”
Oh no. Fear stabbed her in the chest, and her stomach twisted as she turned toward the passenger-side door. The SUV swerved again.
She couldn’t do this.
But she had to. He wouldn’t tell her to if it wasn’t what had to be done. He needed her to do this.
“Go. Now.”
She yanked the door handle and shoved the door open. Rolling to the ground, she scrambled to get her feet under her. Her medical boot had almost no traction on the dry leaves at the edge of the forest. The woods were right in front of her, and she dove into them, sobbing as she crashed through the undergrowth.
Twigs and branches scratched her arms, snagged her clothing. She pushed through and hoped she wouldn’t trip and impale herself on any broken tree stumps. There’d been a few thickets, canes of wild blackberries. She’d been delighted to see them before, but now the thought of blundering into them made her reach her hands out in front of her as she rushed forward.
They’d walked through here during the day. But the winter days were short. Sunset came early. The sun had gone down already, and darkness fell fast in the woods. She tried to find the visual markers she’d noted earlier in the day—the tree struck by lightning years ago that’d kept growing, the huge moss-covered rock. They’d become shadows against the night, and she reached out to touch them, lean on them, as she ran to each one.
There were shouts behind her. And growling. She heard gunfire, this time the way she’d imagined it would sound, loud and sharp in the night. Bark cracked next to her head, and splintered wood hit her cheek.
Panic blanked her mind. She ran again.
Her ankle started to throb. Within a few steps, sharp pain stabbed up through her right leg. The medical boot was heavy and had started to twist on her foot with the running over the uneven ground. She stumbled across the dry streambed and scrambled, trying to get up the bank. Any moment, she expected to feel sharp pain in her back. Or maybe she wouldn’t feel anything at all when whoever it was finally managed to shoot her.
All she knew for sure was that she had almost gotten up to the higher ground Brandon had shown her, and she didn’t know where to go from there.
Her throat was raw and the air burned in her lungs as she rolled over the edge of the bank. There was a loud, crashing noise, and brilliant light flashed back in the direction from which she’d come. Far through the trees, she thought she could see gold and orange.
The cabin was on fire.
Chapter Twenty