Page 27 of A Heart to Find
“Keira, if I had stayed…”
She didn’t want him to finish the sentence. She didn’t want his regrets or his excuses. She wanted to get away. To slide into her fleece pajama pants and to sip hot cocoa by the fire in her room. Alone with her thoughts and feelings.
“You were so innocent. So focused on building a future together.” He paused.
She couldn’t speak. A lump lodged in her throat and her heart pounded so loudly, she almost couldn’t hear him at all.
In a lowered voice, one laced with sadness and disappointment, he continued. “I would have crushed you.”
His words hung in the dark space between them.
“You did.”
She turned away, tears threatening to ruin a perfectly good retort.
He touched her hand then. For what? To comfort her? To reassure her that taking their relationship into his hands and smashing it into pieces without even consulting her about what she wanted was a choice he had made with her best interests at heart? To make himself feel better for walking away and never looking back?
She pulled her hand away and glared at him in the moonlight.
“Thank you for the company today. I think I’d like to walk the rest of the way myself, if you don’t mind.”
She didn’t care if he minded, but she’d be polite until the very end.
When he reached for her again with that sad face and his hair falling so close to his eye, she turned away again and headed off the main trail. She’d cut through the woods to escape him if she had to. He’d get the hint then.
“Keira, not that way!”
She muttered about him not telling her what to do, but kept it low so he wouldn’t hear. She had no desire to sound like a belligerent child. She had her pride, after all.
“Keira, it’s dangerous! Wait!”
“You may be the world traveler, but I have spent plenty of time in the woods in my lifetime. Don’t worry about me.”
Her toes grew numb from the snow filling her shoes, and she caught herself in a pile of snow twice before it started thinning out, but the walk to the hotel was a short one from this point.
“Keira! That ice isn’t safe to walk on!”
Ice? As soon as the words reached her ears, she heard the telltale sound of crackling beneath her right food. Not daring to shift her body weight, she cursed herself for being foolish enough to leave the trail.
She knew better. She had let her emotions make her reckless.
And now she was going to have to accept his help.
Not wanting him to risk walking on the ice and getting himself in the same predicament, especially since he outweighed her, she calmly shifted to the side.
Phew. The crack didn’t spread. She was safe.
She took another step, happy she had escaped the danger of an iced over body of water.
Another crack shattered the stillness of the air, and before she had time to curse her bad luck or lack of judgment, her foot slipped into the icy water. Unable to break her fall, her body hit the ice hard, not quite breaking the impact of her head slamming against the hard surface.
Chapter 6
Jared’s heart froze as he watched in horror as Keira went down. He hadn’t wanted to rush toward her and frighten her into making sudden movements, but that meant he hadn’t been there to catch her, either.
She didn’t respond to his calls immediately, but by the time he reached her side, her eyes were opening. Seconds. She had only been out for seconds.
He reminded himself to breathe as he spread on his belly to reach out to her. She gave a slight smile and reached her hand out to grasp his. She managed to free her foot from the icy water, and pulling slowly, she was nearly off the ice when the rest of her started falling through.
