have over a million dollars saved up, Sara. That is plenty for you and a baby. Or a few babies. I live cheap and I make a lot of money from different avenues. I’ve saved it all up for a family. For you. But I wouldn’t ever do that extreme stuff if I didn’t have a safety outlet. If I didn’t have a crew I could call just in case. Not with you depending on me. Please believe that.”
Her gaze bounced around. She was afraid to look him in the eye. Hurting. Insecure. “I wasn’t talking about me. Or, you know, looking after me. Just, you know, in case…”
“I was talking about you. I will always look after you. I should’ve done so before now, I just wasn’t grown-up enough to realize you needed me sooner. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, tears coming to her eyes.
“Don’t,” he whispered, and kissed her forehead. “I hate to see you cry. But more importantly, because you don’t have enough water in your system to produce tears without it being harmful.”
“Comforting à la survival expert.”
“Exactly,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around her.
“Okay, enough of the pity party.” She pushed back and raised her chin despite her quivering lips.
He ran his fingers down her cheek, taking a moment to stare at her beautiful face, tired and dirt-smudged. His gaze found her lips, and he couldn’t help himself. He bent to her, his lips touching hers with a spark of electricity. He lingered, running his tongue along her bottom lip, wanting to deepen the kiss and follow it up by exploring her body. Instead, he backed off, noticing her wide eyes and rigid stance.
She wasn’t ready to connect their history, her lust, and her deepening affection—she wasn’t ready to love him yet. She still had to get over the insecurity and heartache she was battling.
That was okay. He wasn’t lying when he said he’d wait.
“My bad,” he said with a smile as he turned.
“Payback, I suppose,” she muttered. “After all, I did make you kiss me in our youth often enough.”
“I thought you didn’t remember our youth together… Wasn’t that the deal? Selective amnesia?”
“Now you’re just gloating.”
He laughed and led on. As they ate the distance to that grassy area, he couldn’t help but think of her choice in Phil. In her ardent desire to hold on to her ex even though she had to have known it was a dead end. Granted, like many women, she’d been duped by all the fairytales into thinking “Will you marry me” meant “happily ever after.” Then, to have that child’s dream fail… well, that would rock a person sideways—especially a girl, who had been fed that idea since she had been a kid.
But what about before that? It couldn’t have been coincidence that, when she finally matured enough to have deep feelings for someone, she chose a guy with the same height and general appearance as Mike. Then she held on with a steel grip, past reason. Past reality.
If only Mike had left a year later. Just one more year for her feelings for him to slowly switch over into real love. Like his had.
But she hadn’t had that year. Instead, subconsciously she must’ve been trying to find what she’d lost when Mike moved away. Lord knows, he’d been trying. Trying, and never finding. The biggest heartache he’d ever had was losing her. Everything else had paled in comparison. When he spoke of knowing what she was going through, he relived what he’d felt for years after he’d moved away from her. Sex had distracted him for a great many years in his teens and early twenties, and making something of himself to be able to support a family had distracted him, but he’d always known he’d return for her. She’d always been the one.
“Oh thank God,” he heard behind him, cutting through his reverie.
They were working their way up a hill coated in knee-high grass and brush, having shed the canopy of trees about fifteen minutes ago. Sara had stopped and turned back the way they’d come, staring down at the thick trench of green lining the mountainside.
“We’d been stuck in the thick of that.” Sara pointed at the strip of green amongst the brown, choked with vegetation and impossible for any rescue party to see what walked within its depths. If they were really surviving, without the safety blanket of the GPS, they would’ve had to send a forest-wide smoke signal to get noticed.
“Surviving is about risk