Page 25 of Danger In The Backcountry
This wasn’t about the crazed desire they’d shown each other days ago. This was about piecing themselves back together, and she’d never been more grateful for her husband than she was right then. “Your clothes are wet.”
“I don’t care about my clothes, Lettie.” Rome raised his attention to her then, the harsh lines around his eyes, caused by years out in the sun, lightening as he gazed at her. His hand worked down her arm slowly, picking up wayward waterdrops from her hair, then back up.
Her throat ached as though she hadn’t used it in years. “Thank you.”
“Yeah.” Securing the towel around her middle one-handed with a talent Lettie didn’t possess, he cocked his mouth into a smile. “You good?”
“I…” She didn’t know how to answer that. Disarmed by his concern, his smile, everything he’d done to make sure she walked out of those woods alive. This wasn’t the same man who’d left her without a word, the cold, detached husband she’d become used to. This was the man she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. Who’d started chipping away at the ice she’d built around her heart in the past three days. “I don’t know.”
He nodded as though in understanding. Like maybe he needed his own chance to work through everything that’d happened since coming across that hiker’s body.
And the shame that’d been suffocating her a moment ago vanished at the realization. That she didn’t have to be strong in front of him. That he was the one person who would never judge her. Because he was hurting in his own way, too.
“I’m going to change in the other room. I ordered a hamburger and fries from room service.” Rome tucked thecorner of the towel beneath the first layer, his knuckles brushing against the skin around her collarbone. The shock to her system cleared out the last remnants of dread, but she’d spent too much energy on merely standing to really appreciate the heat he generated. “They’ll be waiting when you’re ready.”
“And a milkshake?” She could already taste it.
“Of course.” He headed for the door, the steam having cleared out in the two or three minutes since he’d pulled her free from the endless dark cycle of thoughts closing in. “Who eats fries without dipping them in a milkshake? Probably that bastard who tried to kill us.”
“Rome.” She waited for him to face her again, her heart suddenly too big for her chest. Clutching the towel in both hands to steel her nerves, Lettie banished that splinter that tried to convince her he’d had anything to do with these murders to the hellhole where it belonged. “Those men I dated, the victims.” She couldn’t stop her voice catching on the last word, how she’d known each of them men who’d ended up under the killer’s hands, known she was responsible for their deaths. “None of them were what I was looking for.”
Understanding pulled his shoulders back, and from the slight flinch in his expression, she knew he’d pay for the strain on his wound. “What were you looking for then, Lettie?”
No hiding. No keeping it in. She sucked in a deep breath. “What we used to have. Before my job became more important than our marriage.” She was doing this. Breaking her family’s mantra not to show vulnerability, but where had single-mindedness for a scrap of approval and praise gotten her up to this point? “I wanted all night stargazing on the hood of a truck and the peace that came from being in the middle of nowhere with a warm hand in mine. I wanted inside jokes and silent looks across the table. I wanted someone to just…want me again, butnone of them stood a chance. Not as long as I was still in love with you.”
“You had that.” His face fell, exposing all that raw hurt that’d kerneled over the years. Showing her everything he’d kept hidden, and maybe that was why he could confidently tell her the pain would eat her alive if she didn’t get it out. “You had someone who wanted to give you orgasms every night and feed you and care for you and support your goals and do things with you and help you out and nap with you if that was what you needed. And you threw it away.”
“I know, and I’ve regretted it every single day since I came home and found those divorce papers on the table.” She took that first step to mending the burned bridge between them, slowly closing the distance between them. “I was scared you wouldn’t pick up the phone or answer my messages if I reached out, so I didn’t even try. Failure was and has always been a death sentence for me and my family, and when you left, that’s what I felt like. A failure.”
She could do this. She could peel back every layer until she was nothing but honesty and hope, but that splinter was still there. Digging in deeper. “I’m not perfect, and I might not always make the right choice, but I don’t want my life to be driven by a career that doesn’t make me happy anymore. If the past three days have taught me anything being here with you, it’s that there are more important things in life than trying to win the approval of people who do whatever they can to ensure I understand what a disappointment I am, and I want them. All of them. I want… I want you, Rome.”
“What would change?” His hand flexed into a fist at his side, water dripping from his long-sleeved shirt. “What would change between us, Lettie? You said it yourself. You’re contracted with NPS here in Zion for another six months, and I have jobs linedup all over the country after I’m done here. How would we make this work?”
After he put down Sam. After he destroyed months of hard-earned research she’d invested in the black bear to gather data to launch her tracking device. Lettie notched her chin higher, meeting his gaze. She shrugged one shoulder. “We could try. Please. Can’t we just try?”
Setting her hand against his chest, she pressed against him, angling her mouth up to close the distance between them.
Not expecting Rome to pull back.
Her hand slipped and she nearly fell forward at his retreat, catching herself at the last second. Her aching body screamed in response, but she managed to stay on her own two feet.
Shaking his head, he added another foot of distance between them, leaving her cold and embarrassed and empty. “This won’t work unless we can be honest with each other.”
“What are you talking about?” She’d been honest. She’d told him everything.
“My uncle didn’t die in a hunting accident.” Rome pressed his mouth into a thin line. “I’m the one who shot him.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lettie stared at him.
One second. Two.
It took another breath before she seemed to process what he’d said. She clutched on to the edge of her towel as though it could help her distinguish reality from her mind playing tricks on her. “I don’t understand.”
“I killed my uncle.” He couldn’t explain it any better, but that seed of hope he’d felt for the past few minutes—hell, Lettie wanted him, wanted to give them another chance—howled as it died at the look on her face. “I told you my parents left me on his porch a week after I was born. Turned out, he wasn’t any better of a human being than they were. My first memory of him isn’t a good one, but his property spanned over fifty acres. Not a neighbor or soul close enough to figure out what was going on over the years, how often he would beat me for the slightest excuse.”
He hadn’t told her this. He hadn’t told anyone this, but the idea of her learning it from someone else—like that Springdale PD officer—Rome couldn’t stomach that. Lettie deserved the truth. Deserved to know that he wouldn’t ever be worthy of her love or her time or her commitment.
