Page 21 of Danger In The Backcountry
“How lonely you get.” His chest constricted around his pent-up breath. All this time he’d questioned why he hadn’t been able to move on as easily as she had, and it turned out, they were equally stuck. Lost.
“Yeah.” Lettie raised her gaze to his, her features softening. Gone was the know-it-all who could do everything herself. This was the woman he’d fallen in love with, who’d allowed him to see beneath the masks others had demanded she wear. Not the scientist who had to keep fighting for recognition. Not the pressured daughter who could never live up to her family’s expectations. Just… Lettie. He’d missed that. Missed her. “I am sorry, Rome. About our anniversary. It was important, and I let my work get in the way. Of everything. And you deserved better.”
His throat dried. He…hadn’t expected that. Rome shifted his hip against the countertop, needing the support as the heaviness drained from his shoulders. He’d needed that. For her to acknowledge one of the many cracks that’d broken their marriage. “I’m sorry, too.”
“What do you possibly have to be sorry for?” Throwing her T-shirt in her pack, she moved on to the next item of clothing.
“For not fighting hard enough to keep you while we were married.” He could admit that now. How quickly he’d given up. “For not being honest how I felt every time you didn’t answer my messages or come home. And for not taking an interest in the things that made you happy.”
Rome cleared his throat. “I’ve always known you were a woman who would do whatever it took to get what you wanted, and it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you all those years ago. You’re brilliant and beautiful and so sure of yourself. You fought day in and day out to leave your mark, and I admired that. You were so out of my league, and I just felt lucky enough you’d given me the time of day.” His own laugh felt off. Hollow. “But then after a few years you started spending more time at the university. You started smiling less. Checking in with me less. And I realized I was the one of those things holding you back. That I didn’t make you happy anymore.”
“Rome.” The softness in her features contorted to devastation.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty.” Embarrassment and a sliver of anguish shot through him. He shoved away from the counter with a little too much force, nearly unbalancing himself. But it was her. It was being in this van with her. It was almost losing her that had thrown him off balance. And he didn’t know where to go from here. “I’m just… I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed.”
“But you were.” Lettie shot off the bed, shifting her weight into her good leg as she struggled to close the distance between them. But the pain in her expression had him reaching for her first. Her short fingernails dug into the skin of his forearms. “You were exactly what I needed. At every turn, you were there. You made sure I wasn’t relying on take out the nights I spent in the lab. You were the one who reminded me that rest was just as productive as work and that I needed to go to bed earlierthan midnight. You stood by me every time my parents threw out another passive-aggressive comment for not doing more with my career. Making more money, publishing more papers, getting the next promotion. You didn’t care about any of that.”
She fisted both hands into the sleeves of his T-shirt for balance. Her voice softened. “You held me in the doctor’s office when the fertility doctor told us we couldn’t conceive, and I sobbed. For hours. No one had ever done that for me before. Not once. Rome, you showed me how to be loved. Because of you I was able to cut off contact with my parents and have the courage to move out here into the middle of nowhere in a van, and I will never be able to thank you enough for that.”
His hands rested at her hips, helping her stabilize, but also, because he couldn’t stand another second of not touching her. Of using her warmth to chase back the terror he’d experienced in the hours she’d disappeared. “You should hate me for how I left.”
“I did. For a while. But the same way you admire me for going after what I want, I admire you for putting yourself first for once.” She pushed at his good shoulder, her smile flashing wide. “It took me leaving my old life behind to see the importance in that. You were a great example.”
“Glad I could be of service.”
“You are. More than you know. I wouldn’t be standing here if that wasn’t true.” Her attention dropped to his mouth, as though Lettie was thinking of closing that short distance between them, and then it was all Rome could think about.
She’d gone on dates since he’d served her the divorce papers—potentially marked those men as targets of a sadistic killer—but there wasn’t an ounce of jealousy in his body. Who wouldn’t want the woman standing mere inches from him?
There was still so much they needed to work out, and a lot of reasons why getting pulled back into her orbit was a bad idea, but he couldn’t think about any of that right now. “Screw it.”
Rome crushed his mouth to hers.
Chapter Nineteen
Rome kissed her.
Neither sweet nor soft as she’d just been imagining. This was a reclaiming of something he’d lost, something he’d missed. Overwhelming and hard. Lettie sucked in a sharp breath, and her ex-husband—husband?—took full advantage, angling his head to one side for deeper access.
Hints of mint toothpaste cooled in her mouth, and a rush of shivers down her arms followed in its wake. Her insides coiled tighter and tighter with each stroke of his tongue as he backed her into the countertop, sandwiching her between cool quartz and the heat of his body.
Her senses rocketed into overdrive, her hands skimming down his arms, under the hem of his T-shirt. She needed to touch him. Needed him to touch her. Everywhere. To remind her he was here. That they’d survived. Logically, she understood her brain’s need to come down after the adrenaline surge, but this didn’t feel like just some biological need they were giving into.
This was a reawakening. Of everything they’d given up.
And she never wanted it to end.
Rome slid her hips down the length of the counter, never once breaking their kiss. Her thigh hit the side of her mattress, and before she had a chance to maneuver her clothes and pack out of the way, he’d thrown her onto her back and covered her with the length of his body. His body heat filtered through the thin scrubs she’d gotten from the hospital.
This. She’d missed this. Missed him and the security he’d provided, the warmth in her bed at night. Someone to rely on. She’d gone out of her way to detach from everyone around her, only to realize it didn’t fix anything. It didn’t take the hurt away, and it sure as hell didn’t bring back the one person who’d helped her become more secure in herself. A whimper escaped her chest as Rome pulled back.
“I’ve got you, sweet one.” He rolled his hips into hers, hitting all those sensitive nerves and lighting her up from the inside as he leveraged his good hand into the mattress. He kissed her again, this time at the corner of her mouth. Then the other. Featherlight yet so full of everything she’d been craving since he’d left. In an instant, the van blurred in her vision as Rome flipped their positions, landing her straddled across his hips. Threading his fingers through her hair, he tugged her back to him with another sweep of his tongue along her bottom lip. “I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”
Her breath shuddered from the promise. He was a man of his word. He always had been, but this… Them? Where did this leave them? Giving their marriage a second chance? He hadn’t asked his lawyer to submit the signed divorce papers to the courts. In the eyes of the law, they were still a couple, but while they’d admitted their faults and offered their apologies, their issues went past that. There would still be late nights with her job and his feelings of inadequacy. There would still be her parents’ attempts to pull them apart and his contracts with the National Park Service. Who was to say they’d be able to merge the lives they’d built apart these past six months?
“Lettie, look at me.” His voice countered the buzz of nerves shooting through her. And then his hand framed her jaw, lifting her gaze to his. “We don’t have to do this.”
His heart beat out of control beneath her palms. Were his nerves getting the best of him, too? He was here. They had thesemoments where none of that mattered, where they could ignore the fact she was potentially responsible for the deaths of four people. Where a killer couldn’t get to them. She had to remind herself of that. They were safe.
