Page 52 of Tormented Hearts

Like he had all the time in the world to prove what he said was true.

* * * * *

When her father sent her on this wild goose chase through the wilderness, she wondered if he knew something she didn’t.

Like how every step—less painful now, thanks to Hawk’s care—would mean more than just being closer to finding those coordinates.

She’d met a lot of people in her life, both real and fake. Business and personal.

But she didn’t expect to find herself here, walking again, and not even thinking about her feet, her sore muscles or the bug bites dotting her arms like a bad rash. All of it had faded into background noise, the kind of discomfort that earlier consumed every thought but was now barely registering at all.

Something had shifted the moment Hawk knelt in front of her with that first aid kit like it was the most natural thing in the world.

She had watched him work, focused on his steady hands, capable and yet gentle as he carefully applied the salve and bandages.

Those hands could kill—she’d seen that too. But when he touched her…they were magic.

As they put another mile between themselves and what Hawk called the fairy glen, Sinead’s old habits returned. Even as gratitude bloomed in her chest, some clinical, guarded part of her mind ran its usual checklist. Was this real? Was he telling her the truth, or was this just another performance, another version of the safari guide angling for a bigger tip, another investor smiling too wide across a boardroom table, another so-called friend who wanted to ride on her father’s name?

She turned the question over as they walked, searching Hawk’s profile for the tell she always found eventually. But there was nothing. No calculation in his vivid green eyes. No angle. No performance. Just a man walking a hard trail because he’d promised he would, who’d fixed her blisters because they hurt and he could do something about it, with no strings.

As she walked, not only did she feel lighter than she had before the first-aid break, but a knot inside her that she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying for years had loosened too.

She thought of the year she’d gone searching for herself in the thin air of the Himalayas, waiting for the altitude to cause a breakthrough if she just climbed high enough. She’d hired a sherpa, trekked for weeks, sat in freezing monasteries waiting for enlightenment to arrive.

Around seventeen thousand feet, when she was gasping for oxygen and clarity, she thought she’d find the piece of herself that had gone missing.

She hadn’t.

She’d come home with photographs and a journal full of half-finished thoughts and the same hollow ache she left with. Only now she had a storage closet filled with expensive gear and a story that sounded good at dinner parties.

“You’re quiet.” Hawk’s voice broke into her thoughts.

Funny how she and Hawk hiked together in silence for miles and miles, yet it never felt uncomfortable. She didn’t feel the need to fill the dead air with chatter, and neither did he.

In fact, Hawk may be the first person she’d ever had that with.

But his comment on her silence told her something else—he knew when her silence was easy and when it wasn’t.

She drew a deep breath, mulling that over for a heartbeat. She kicked a loose stone out of her path.

“Just thinking. I went to Nepal once. Trying to find myself, or whatever you call it when you’re rich enough to turn an identity crisis into a vacation.”

He made that sound again—the low, huffing noise that made her body prickle with the memory of his hands on her.

“Find anything?”

“A sherpa named Pemba who was more grounded at nineteen than I’ve ever been in my life. And a lot of cold nights wondering why I still felt like a fraud.” She laughed, but it didn’t have much humor in it. “I thought if I got far enough from my father, I’d figure out who I was without him. Like I could outrun the Winthrop name while using Winthrop money. But it turns out you can’t outrun genetics no matter how high you climb.”

He didn’t say anything to smooth over the emotions that were thick in her words. He just kept his steady pace, two steps ahead, shoulders straight as he carried his pack for miles like it weighed as much as a cloud.

“He never told me he was proud of me,” she went on before she could talk herself out of spilling her guts to her bodyguard-turned-lover, who was becoming…more.

“Not when I closed deals that made him millions. I used to think if I just did enough…earned enough straight A’s in school, had enough achievements, gave enough of myself…eventually he’d see me for the woman I am. Right up to the end…” Her throat constricted, but she got the words out anyway. “I never stopped hoping. But in the end, even that proved him right. Because it was its own kind of stupid.”

Hawk paused and turned to face her. But he didn’t rush to take her in his arms and fix her feelings the way he did her blisters.

He only reached for her hand. She gave it to him, and he brushed his callused thumb over hers, a warm stroke that told her that he was here for her, during every harsh step of the way through the wilderness and navigating her feelings too.