I kept moving, knowing that wasn’t the whole truth. Jacob wasn’t na?ve enough to believe it was either. He knew something else had happened—he just didn’t know to what degree.
“The next morning. You didn’t find out that Matt was Matt until the next morning.” He let those words simmer in the air. “That means you spent your first night of your honeymoon, as man and wife, doing what? Watching reruns and ordering room service? Holding hands and reading to each other?” Jacob paused, the sarcasm in his voice palpable. “Fucking like a couple of animals until the sun rose?”
My feet broke to a stop. Slowly, I turned around to face him. He didn’t stop moving up the trail until he was right in front of me. His eyes met mine and I made sure to look straight in them. “You want to talk to me like that, you’ll just have to wait for your precious answers.”
My voice was calm, but everything beyond that wasn’t. He knew. He could see it in my face or had read it on Matt’s or had figured it all out on his own. Jacob knew Matt and I had been together the way any couple would on their wedding night. He knew. Now he just needed to hear me confirm it.
“I’d been drinking. One minute I was awake, and then I woke up the next morning. I don’t remember. Sorry.” As I fed his words back to him, his jaw ground together, but he stayed quiet. “To tell you anything else would be a lie.”
Turning around, I attacked the rest of the trail. I knew I couldn’t not tell Jacob, but for right now, this would have to do. I wasn’t ready to tell him the truth, and from the anger I could imagine dammed up inside him, he wasn’t ready to hear it either.
This wasn’t the right time. Out here in the middle of some isolated trail, no witnesses, no where to go besides up or down was not the ideal spot for someone to tell their jealous-to-the-extreme fiancé they’d just slept with his brother. Multiple times. And that it had been the best sex of my life—not that I was planning on mentioning that, but still, it was the truth.
My shoulder lifted as I moved. “I just can’t remember,” I repeated, wondering if he believed those words as much as I had.
“Don’t play games with me.” His feet scrambled up the trail after me. “Don’t lie to me.”
When my head whipped back to glare at him, I found him right behind me again. So close his feet were falling into my footprints as soon as I stepped away. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it? You accusing me of lying? You accusing me of playing games?”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what that means.”
The sky was a swirl of grey, but the wind was just a breeze back here. I couldn’t tell if that was because we were sheltered from the storm or if the storm was dying, but it made me hopeful that we’d weather it.
“Enlighten me.” Jacob’s hand found my wrist, pulling on it to stop me.
My eyes narrowed into slits at him before dropping to where his hand was tied around my wrist. “Let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what happened.” With his other hand, he found my waist and twisted me around.
My blood felt like lava right then—molten and scorching. “Take your hands off me. Now.” I gave him a moment to do so. He didn’t. “You want answers, this is the guaranteed way to never get them.” I tried to shake his hand off of my waist, but it felt plastered to me. His fingers roped around my wrist felt the same. “Jacob, I’m serious. Take your damn hands off of me.”
“Why? You like Matt’s on you better?”
My free hand twitched at my side, coming so close to slapping him I could feel the tingle in my palm from the imaginary strike. “Let. Go.”
His head shook, his eyes trained on mine. “No.”
I pulled against him, but he was as serious about not letting go as his hold was. “Let me go, Jacob.”
His fingers only tightened, making my wrist hurt enough I could feel my pulse throbbing in it. “Never.”
I could see from the look in his eyes he was talking about something other than just our present situation, but I was not in an understanding mood right then. Since words were getting me nowhere, I pulled against him. It didn’t get me far. Using every scrap of strength in my body, I twisted and pulled against him, somehow managing to get free of his hold all at once.
All of my momentum sent me flying backward though, staggering a few steps until the heel of my boot caught on something.
Jacob tried to grab my hand to catch me as I fell—I didn’t miss the look that cast over his face as I flew back—but he couldn’t get to me. I had just enough time to try to twist around to break my fall, just getting one hand beneath me when my body crashed into the ground.
A breath rushed out of my lungs from the impact, my body feeling like I’d just collided with a slab of cement instead of compacted earth.
“Cora! Shit! Are you okay?” Jacob slid onto his knees beside where I’d fallen on the trail, his face worried as he scanned my body like he was looking for signs of blood or bones puncturing through the skin.
It had been a hard fall, but not that bad of one.
“I’m fine.” My eyes squeezed closed as I started sitting up, my head throbbing from the movement. It wasn’t until I’d sat up that I felt one side of my face was hot and wet. When my hand touched my temple, where the pain was resonating from, my fingers came away glazed with blood.
“Your head.” Jacob’s throat moved. “It’s bleeding.” His voice was the very embodiment of calm, but his eyes were as uneasy as I’d ever seen them.
“Yeah, I just figured that out,” I said, realizing the blood was winding down my face and dripping onto my tank. Great time and place to get a head injury.
“I need to get you to the hospital.” Jacob had already taken off my daypack and was unbuttoning his dress shirt. He pulled out of it one arm at a time.
My head shook as I touched at my temple again. Head lacerations bled like crazy. “No, get me to Matt. I don’t want to go to a hospital for a few stitches.” I guessed it would only take a few, instead of the fifty it seemed from all of the blood flowing from it. “He can take care of me. Just take me back to Matt.”
I hadn’t realized what I’d said, or how I’d said it, until I looked at Jacob.
“Please? He travels everywhere with the requisite doctor stuff for exactly this kind of thing. I’d rather have him stitch me up than someone I don’t know after waiting who knows how long in an emergency room.”
Jacob didn’t say anything, but he nodded. “If that’s what you want, I’ll get you back to Matt.”
The note of resignation in his voice confused me. I’d expected more anger, but instead I’d found almost the opposite. I’d expected a fight instead of a surrender.
“Don’t.” My head shook as he gripped the arm of his shirt. “It’s your favorite shirt. I’ve got a bandana in my bag we can use and some gauze in the first aid kit.”
Jacob didn’t say anything. He just ripped off the sleeve of his shirt. “Yeah, and you’re my favorite person. Hell with the shirt.”