Page 54 of Lost With You
Dylan stood in front of Casey’s hotel room door, staring at the brass numbers, summoning the courage to put his heart on the line just as the door swung open wide.
There she was. Her dark hair damp, falling to her shoulders. She sported a pair of sweats he recognized as Anne’s, based on the wordsVassar Collegewritten up one leg. He scoured her face, searching for some sign of her emotional state, but her pale, uncertain expression hit him in the solar plexus.
He said, “Hey.” It was all he could manage.
“Hey,” she aped back, curling a hank of damp hair around her finger. “Is the party still going?”
“Yes. Even though the king and the queen of the prom have left.”
He watched her lashes flutter, fall, and then rise again. His heart slipped a few inches higher toward his throat.
He gestured to her knees. “Are they still swollen?”
“They’re beat up pretty badly.” She jerked her chin to where the polo shirt clung to his slim waist. “How are your ribs?”
“Aching.”
“What a pair we make.” Her lips twitched. “I suppose we’re lucky we weren't hurt worse.”
“Yeah.” He flexed his hands at his sides. “We’re lucky.”
In the strained silence, the elevator dinged. She startled at the sound and then ducked back into the dimness of her room, beckoning him inside. He wasn’t enthusiastic about his family witnessing this conversation, if they were the ones on the elevator, so he stepped in. As he closed the door behind him, he heard his siblings’ voices rising in the hall.
He looked around the room. Sometime during the party, the ranger had returned to the hotel to deliver what he’d retrieved from the rapids. Her backpack, muddy and battered, lay deflated on the carpet. Clothes were strewn around the room, stretched out to dry. The yellow bikini hung from a standing lamp.
She noticed the stray of his gaze and stepped toward the bed, away from him. “All the important stuff survived, other than the laundry,” she said. “But my phone screen is cracked and needs repair. I called my sister from the hotel phone. I just hung up a minute ago.”
He’d just spoken to his sister, too. Or, rather, Anne had had words withhim.Apparently, she’d led Casey to this hotel room, brought her some fresh clothes, and put her in the shower. Then Anne had stomped back to the party to pin him in a corner of the lobby. Casey had clearly been through the wringer for him, Anne had argued, unlike thatotherwoman he’d gone camping with, the one who Must Not Be Named. Then Anne told him it was long past time he found a good, strong woman rather than some selfish witch who worried more about her manicure than her marriage vows.
This day, it was full of rib-crunching punches.
“Your sister,” he ventured, clearing his throat, “must be relieved you made it out of the woods in one piece.”
“Well…I didn’t really tell her where we were going before we left.”
“What?”
“I haven’t been very forthcoming over the past few years.” She grimaced and wrinkled her nose. “That’s going to change, going forward. She and I need to have a long talk. Longer than I could manage on the phone.”
His chest constricted, shooting a dull pain from his injured rib. Casey had mentioned something, early in the trip, about having plans to see her sister. Was she still thinking of moving on? He glanced to the bedside table, where her notebook lay open beside the waterproof plastic bag it had been secured within. A pen lay across the words. There were a lot of them. He was too far away to be able to read any of them.
He turned his gaze on the old carpet at his feet. It didn’t matter what she’dwritten.What mattered was what she was going to say to him after his speech. He’d planned it, but now every rehearsed phrase left his mind. The distance from where he stood with his back to the bureau to where she sat on the bed felt like the width of the Saint Lawrence River.
He began, “So—”
She ventured, “So—”
His voice caught. She breathed a short laugh. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts.
“So,” he repeated, rolling his shoulders. “This has been an interesting three weeks.”
She raised her brows. “That’s an understatement.”
“The expedition is done now.” He couldn’t tell whether she thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. “We’ve never talked about what we were going to do after it was all over.”
Her chest rose and fell, along with her shoulders. “I know.”
“When we get back to the cabin,” he said, widening his stance, bracing himself, “do you plan to head right out for your next assignment?”
