Page 51 of These Reckless Hearts

“Keep going.” I smile.

He chuckles. “The best kind of distraction is the one that makes you grow. The one that proves that maybe it’s not needed anymore because you’ve risen above it. And that’s what he got with you. He hasn’t gone off the rails in weeks. He hasn’t slipped away to drink himself into oblivion outside his mom’s cell, and that’s about all we can ask for.”

Heat spreads in my belly. “Maybe you should be a psychologist, Lucas Govern. Can you read me, too?”

He grins. “No one needs to read you, Wild Girl. You wear your heart on your sleeve.”

I lean closer to Lucas and a raindrop splatters my nose. My mouth drops in surprise, and I move to stare up at the sky. I knew it was cloudy, but I didn’t realize they were rain clouds. “Did you feel that?”

“I felt it,” Wyatt says, staring up at the sky with his hat tilted back so the drops splatter his skin. He looks like an angel letting the rain trickle onto his face. A country angel, sure, but an angel nonetheless.

“We should head in,” Stone suggests, getting to his feet.

Lucas stands next and pulls me to a standing position. “You sure you don’t want help?” I ask Ninja.

He gives me the same incredulous look he’s been giving me. I just don’t know when the guy freaking sleeps. “You already know what I’m going to say.”

“That Cole will dissolve your balls in acid?”

Ninja’s eyes widen. “That’s a new one. Let’s not give him any ideas, okay?”

Wyatt smacks my ass, hauling me over his shoulder. “We’ll make sure she’s too preoccupied to think of any more ways for Cole to enact punishment on your balls.”

“Keep carrying me like an ape and it won’t be for Cole who I’m thinking up ways to torture. It’ll be for myself.”

Wyatt laughs, the rainstorm dampening the usual echo. It’s just his deep voice threading through my veins. He dumps me on my feet as soon as we get into the tent. The last thing I see is Ninja giving instructions to Pete as the rain increases before Stone zips us in.

“This wasn’t in the forecast,” I grumble. Tomorrow might be a complete wash out. If it is, we’ll have to pack it up and head home. It doesn’t shower a lot here, but when it does, it ruins everything.

Raindrops hit the tent in splatters. It’s not hard yet, more than a sprinkle but definitely less than a deluge. We won’t have to worry about flooding or anything like that.

Stone frets over his lip. “I’m going to tell Ninja to let us know if it gets worse. Just in case.”

I smile at him as he turns. We’re always on the same wavelength.

Wyatt moves around the tent checking for traps. He turns on his phone flashlight and does a once-over. Ninja and Pete have been insanely thorough, but we’re paranoid now.

“We’re good,” he proclaims, sitting on the air mattress we brought with us. It was a creature comfort we decided to indulge in since we had the extra manpower to help carry stuff. My dad would be mortified if he knew I was using an air mattress up here, but it’s so much nicer than the hard-packed ground that’s never even.

Maybe it’s the bed in Stone’s house that’s making me a big baby because I never noticed the difference between sleeping on the family couch and sleeping on the desert floor, but I feel it now. My bones thank Stone Jacobs, that’s for sure.

Now that we’re away from the fire, the cold seeps in. The rain’s made the temperature drop, too. I quickly change into my joggers and oversized sweatshirt that used to be Stone’s from his old college. We push the two queen sized air mattresses together and pretend they will stay that way even though we know they won’t. One or two of us will definitely end up sleeping on the ground. I just hope it’s not me this time.

Stone steps back inside. He sheds his outer layers and then gets in bed next to me. He holds me close, fitting me into his side. Wyatt throws a sleeping bag over us, and I’m so cozy, it takes me no time at all to drift to sleep.

I awake one time when the zipper opens. Lucas answers Ninja, and I can tell by the sporadic drops on the tent that whatever little rainstorm we had passed through already. Maybe we won’t have to pack everything tomorrow and head home. It would be nice to stay up here until we figure out what the squares and x’s mean. If we could just match them to the map—if that’s even how it works—that would be great.

I stay up for a little while, my mind working on the problem, but Stone kisses the back of my neck. “Go to sleep, babe. The problem will be there tomorrow.”

He’s right. I curl myself into a ball and heed his advice, drifting off once again.

The next time I wake, though, is not for anything good. It’s not at the soft caress of one of my guys. It’s not from the steady pitter-patter of rain hitting the tent. It’s not even with ideas to work out what the symbols might mean.

It’s because I’m soaking wet...and moving.

Water rushes into the tent, carrying us away in a driving current. I sit up, my hands splashing in chilled water. I gasp as the cold ices my skin. Our air mattresses butt against one another like rafts, and I grip the side in terror.

It’s like we’re on a dangerous, dark water slide, twisting and turning through the mountain valley. We slam into something rock solid, and the tent collapses around us. Stone and I are thrown into the air, only to land again in a deluge of water pinning us against the same hard surface. The rapids lift higher and higher until I’m choking.

---