Page 29 of Disappearance at Angel's Landing
“Wouldn’t you?” She swiped at her face with a half laugh that didn’t hold an ounce of humor. She’d found her way back into the present, with him, and hell, he’d never seen a more perfect creature in his life. Strong, resilient and so damn beautiful it hurt to look at her and not touch. “I could’ve told my mom the bruises were from soccer. I could’ve deleted the messages my brother-in-law sent. I could’ve prevented all of this. Maybe then they would still love me. Maybe someone else could love me, too, broken pieces and all.”
Shit. He wanted to be that someone. The person who could gather up all her pieces and put her back together. Stronger than ever before. Branch skimmed his hands down her arms, careful of the bullet graze on her arm. There was a reason his ex-wife had cheated on him, left him, divorced him. He wasn’t good enough for Lila, and it’d never been clearer than right this moment. “Most nights I ask myself what I could’ve done differently in my marriage. What would’ve happened if I’d been a little more attentive? Was there a single moment where she fell out of love with me, or was it a lot of moments put together that went over my head?”
Forcing a deep breath, he sank into the feeling of Lila. The way she looked to him for answers, for safety. He might’ve gotten her out of that cave, but he’d failed her in other ways,and right then, he wasn’t sure he could ever be the man she needed. The one she deserved. “I think it’s natural, to take on some responsibility for the circumstances we find ourselves in, but we tend to blame ourselves for the bad while forgetting to give ourselves credit for the good.”
He swept his thumb along her arm. “You’re not broken, Lila. I see you. You’re everything.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I see you.
It was exactly what she’d wanted to hear, yet Lila hadn’t been prepared for the full impact of the words. Her bones felt too big for her body, heart still thundering after Branch had led her back to the tent last night and tucked her into his chest. Safe. Accepted. Supported. Where she’d always wanted to be. He had a power over her that would be death of her. Because when he talked to her like that, when he held her and comforted her after spilling her darkest secrets, she could almost believe the man of her dreams—and countless fantasies—wanted her in return.
Ugh. Why did she have to be so…broken?
Why couldn’t she accept maybe he had meant everything he said last night? And why couldn’t she stop staring at the ceiling of the tent as if it held all the answers?
“I know you’re awake.” His voice was gravelly, deeper than usual, and her lady bits were the first to take notice. Holy moly, the man could do some damage with few words.
Branch pressed his chest against her back, shoulder to knee, though he was so much bigger than her. She loved it, this sudden need for him to get as close as possible, despite a whole lot of reasons why he shouldn’t. Number one: morning breath. His hand slid over her hip, across her low belly, and she wanted nothing more than to melt into him. To forget all the bad outside these crappy canvas walls and live out one of the fantasies she’dbuilt in her head. Years of therapy had gotten her to a place of being able to hold her own in any given situation with a man, but there was something visceral that convinced her survival instincts that Branch wouldn’t ever hurt her. “Your stomach announced your presence before the rest of you stirred.”
Traitor. Her stomach vaulted into her chest as Branch planted a kiss on her shoulder. Forget butterflies. An entire Cirque du Soleil act had started up behind her ribs. While they’d done nothing more than share that one kiss and fall asleep in each other’s arms last night, Branch Thompson had made her feel a whole lot of dangerous things that scared the crap out of her.
Pushing her upper body off the unyielding ground, Lila added a few inches of breathing room between them. Didn’t help. Because looking at his face first thing in the morning was suddenly all she wanted to do with the rest of her life. “You’re one to talk. I fell asleep to an entire orchestra performing in your intestines.”
Okay. Those words were not sexy. At all.
But his laugh sure as hell was. It filled the tent with a warmth the sun couldn’t touch as it crawled over the horizon. His touch fell from her hip as he rolled onto his back.
“Touché.” Muscles flexed across his stomach and chest as he hauled himself upright. And what an impressive show it was. In fact, Morning Branch just might be the new star of her unachievable fantasies from here on out. If this whole investigation left her—and her heart—in one piece. “I’ll get us some breakfast.”
Yeah. There was little chance of getting out of this without more bruises.
They’d lost track of the killer and the gun that could’ve killed her, but Lila knew in her heart the hunt wasn’t over. The man who’d killed Sarah Lantos might’ve convinced himself of hisheroic role in this mess, but that didn’t mean he deserved to get away with murder. One way or another, NPS was going to find him, and she wanted to be there when they did.
Grabbing her pack, she kept her attention on changing back into her uniform rather than watching the way Branch had jumped at the opportunity to feed her. No one had really done that for her. Sure, her parents made sure she’d been fed as a kid, but once she’d hit ten or eleven, her mother had taught her to cook her own meals apart from dinner. Even then, her mom had made it seem like feeding the family was more a burden than anything else. None of her past boyfriends—however few and far between—had made the effort to ensure she ate. Rather, they’d expected her to feed them. But Branch… He was taking care of her.
And maybe that was the scariest part of all. She’d gone so long taking care of herself, she wasn’t sure how to let someone else do it. And that kiss? Wow. It’d been deep and slow, and oh so intense, she was still feeling it in her nerve endings. His touch, his weight—all of it combined into a dangerous cocktail. That kiss had whispered promises of something she’d dreamed about since she’d met him. It promised forever, but she and Branch didn’t have that. Not with the gaping wounds she’d exposed.
The smell of cinnamon and apples hit her a split second before Branch offered a small plastic bowl and a spoon. “Can’t say it’s as satisfying as Cherry Garcia, but oatmeal should hold us over until we reach headquarters in a few hours.”
Right. All this was temporary. The real world wouldn’t wait forever. Soon or later, search and rescue would set out to see what had become of them, and she and Branch would have to give their statements about the past twenty-four hours. And explain why they’d failed to hold onto Sarah Lantos’s killer. She could see Risner’s winning smile now—part hyena, part snake—as he found the last reason he needed to dismiss her from theservice. Ugh. Lila stared down into the over-sugared mush in her bowl and closed her eyes. “I will not stab him for talking about ice cream. I will not stab him for talking about ice cream.”
“Not a morning person.” Branch settled himself on his sleeping bag as she peeled open her eyes. It was admirable the way he tried to fold his legs crisscross-applesauce with his size, but there didn’t seem to be any obstacle that held its strength against him. Especially her ovaries. “Noted.”
Her heart hiccuped. He said that as if he planned to wake up next to her after today, which was just straight-up ridiculous, but if he could read her mind, he would either be traumatized or turned on. Both, if he was as awesome as she believed him to be.
They’d return to headquarters, Risner would fire her, she’d pack her crap as Sayles looked on, and she’d never see Branch or any of the other rangers again. They’d get what they’d wanted since she started working in Zion: a great view of her ass on the way out. The end. She swallowed the groan in the back of her throat along with a chunk of apple.
“If you don’t terrify people a little bit, then what’s the point of all of this?” Shoveling oatmeal into her mouth—and not thinking about the two pints of Ben & Jerry’s in her freezer in her soon-to-be former shoebox of a house—Lila finished off breakfast and shoved her hands into her uniform top over her sleep shirt. The less they dragged this out, the better. Then again, she never could rip off a Band-Aid without crying.
Within a few minutes, Branch had cleaned and packed their dishware. They each rolled and stored their sleeping bags with a mental inventory of the supplies they had left between them. It wasn’t much, but the hike back to headquarters shouldn’t take more than five hours if they kept a steady pace, though their injuries would add some time.
The sky had darkened some since she’d woken, but it wasn’t until Lila shouldered her pack that she caught a whiff of rainin the air. Storm clouds had started gathering in the north, bringing a gust of frigid wind. She hadn’t packed any long-sleeved protection.
Branch followed her gaze on the incoming clouds. They were moving in fast, rolling over each other and bringing nothing but dread. “Let’s move.”
The banter they’d shared evaporated as the wind picked up, rocketing her nerves higher. It wasn’t as though they weren’t trained to survive in severe weather. Both she and Branch had gone through hours of wilderness survival before signing on with NPS. They both knew the potential of getting wet and suffering hypothermia despite the summer temperatures. Additionally, search and rescue would call off any attempts made to recover her and Branch due to the storm.
