Page 48 of Lost With You
“Don’t do that again.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “Not ever.”
“Do…what?”
“Disappear,” she said. “When I needed you most.”
He ran his hand up her back and gripped the slender nape of her neck. It flexed against his palm as she swallowed hard.
“You’re here, with me,” he said, forcing the pain out of his voice. “We’re safe now.”
“There is no ‘safe.’” Between them, her hands curled into hard, tight fists. “Safe is an illusion, Dylan. It always will be.”
Words banked in the back of his throat. His vision went blurry. She was thinking about the life she’d lost. The one that had propelled her away from her old home. Was that it, then? Only an hour or so ago, she’d given him a glimmer of hope when she’d said, in her sideways kind of way, that she was willing to give this relationship a go. Was that hope crushed now, so quickly? When they returned to his cabin, would she make a beeline to her van and haul out, leaving nothing but dust in her wake?
He held Casey in silence, his mind racing. Now was not the time to ask these questions. She was in shock, shaking in his arms. He was in shock, too, and not just from the accident he’d been in in his teens when he’d met his ex on a trip similar to this. Youthful crushes could be powerful…he’d been in over his head, just like now. But now he knew that what he’d shared with his ex-wife had never been equal. It had never been shared.Thiswas real love flooding through him as Casey moved within his embrace. This feeling had so many contradictions. Tenderness and determination. Yearning and deep satisfaction. A sharpness of conviction and an unquestioned trust. He didn’t give a damn if Anne would tease him until the end of days. He was bringing home from this expedition the woman with whom he intended to spend the rest of his life.
If Casey would have him.
He closed his eyes, pushing away the urge to divulge all of this, to try to convince her that she could build a new home with him. No trite, reassuring words would convince this woman, after all she’d suffered, that it was safe to surrender her heart again.
She would have to come to that conclusion on her own.
“Casey.”
Her shoulders pulled together as if she were ducking his words.
“Hey.” He tugged gently on the back of her head, but she didn’t pull her cheek from his chest. “We can’t stay here. We have to keep moving.”
“I can’t believe,” she said into his shirt, “that you’re worried about the expedition after—”
“We need dry clothes.” He glanced at the swiftly running river. “We have to find the canoe and our gear.”
“It’s all gone.”
“Some of it might have been thrown up on the banks. Your knees need bandaging, Casey. We need the first aid kit.”
Her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks as she eased herself away from him. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and then glanced at his side, which he gripped with one hand.
She frowned. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s just a bruise.” He dropped his hand and turned away so she wouldn’t see him wince. “Let’s focus on the priorities.”
“My notebook.” She drew in a sharp breath. “I need to find my notebook.”
A dark hand closed over his heart. She was coming out of her shock thinking about the article she would have to write. Or perhaps about the next assignment, far away from him.
He tried not to take that as a bad sign.
“We’ll find your notebook.” It was encased in plastic, as were their phones. “Let’s keep moving.”
***
“Hello!”
Casey stopped short on the bank of the river, not quite sure what she’d just heard. For three weeks, the only human voice she’d encountered in these woods had been Dylan’s, and he was standing right beside her.
“Hello!”
“Here!” Her body surged with adrenaline as she bounded up the riverbank toward movement between the trees, in spite of the pull of her scraped knees. “We’re over here!”
