by Janie Crouch
And realize that the storm was approaching faster than either of them had thought. The temperature had dropped ten degrees since they’d started their climb.
“I think we better stay in here and ride out this storm,” Zane said. “Even if we make it up to the top, there’s not much shelter up there at all. At least here we’ll have a better chance of staying dry.”
They needed supplies. Water-resistant material, warmer clothes, sleeping bags. But all those items were still in the packs they’d dropped when they ran. All they had was what Zane had taken out of his hiking pack and left in the small backpack in the plane. In other words, stuff that hadn’t been good enough to make first string.
He took the backpack off his shoulders and brought it around to unzip it. He had a second pair of jeans, an extra pair of socks, a sweatshirt and a half-full water bottle. But best of all, a rain poncho.
“Don’t guess you have a satellite phone in there?” she asked as he set the items out.
“I wish. Nothing particularly great.”
“But added warmth and element protection. So better than nothing.”
They decided that Zane would put on the extra pair of jeans under his current hiking pants. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but at least it would be an added layer. Caroline slid on his socks which came up to well over her knees and put on the sweatshirt. Her smaller frame would need the warmth more than his would.
She pulled the hood of the sweatshirt up over her head. “At least it’s not yellow,” she murmured.
Zane had forgotten about that. Caroline’s attacker had worn a yellow hoodie. In her pain from the attack, and the way the man had blitzed her, hitting her before she could truly react, she had mistaken a yellow hoodie for blond hair. It had caused the police to arrest the wrong man at first—someone with long, bright blond hair.
Zane wasn’t sure exactly what to say. “Are you okay?”
Caroline nodded. “Yeah, believe me, if it will keep me warm, I don’t give a damn what color the hoodie is.”
“Good. Because that storm is looking uglier every minute.” They both looked out at the dark clouds rolling in.
They split the water in the water bottle between the two of them, then Zane set it on the outside of the ledge, where it would catch some rain. He braced it with some of the little rocks around.
Then they slid back as far as they could, about two feet from the outer edge. They lay down nearly on top of one another and cocooned themselves as much as possible in the rain poncho.
And waited for the storm to hit.
Chapter Nine
Hours later, rain pouring all around them in the inky blackness of the night, Caroline lay in Zane’s arms.
Somewhere she’d never thought she’d be again.
She wanted to enjoy it, she really did. But huge waves of agony kept pouring over her. Every way she shifted to try to get comfortable on the wet, hard ground of the crevasse just made some other pain worse.
It was everything she could do not to cry. And Caroline was not a crier.
“What if I lie on my back and you ease onto my side. Will that help any?” Zane asked.
“That’s just going to cause you to get more wet and cold.”
“I’m feeling a little too hot anyway, so why don’t we try it?”
She tried to give a small laugh, but it just came out as a puff of air. There was no way Zane was feeling too hot. The weather had dipped another fifteen degrees since nightfall and even in the partial shelter of their overhang they were both still getting wet.
But Zane still moved onto his back, careful to keep the poncho around both their heads and torsos to keep them as dry as possible. Caroline was able to shift some of her weight onto his chest and almost moaned out loud at how good it felt to be more comfortable.
When Zane’s arm reached around her and forced her head down on his chest, taking even more of her weight, she couldn’t stop the moan.
“That’s right. Never let it be said that I don’t know how to show the ladies a good time.”
Now Caroline did chuckle. He sounded as physically miserable as she felt. “If this is a date, you’ve definitely got the excitement factor down pat. I’m waiting for a lion to jump up here and attack us, just to finish this day off.”
“That’s not scheduled for another hour, so you can relax.” He shifted a little so more of her weight rested against him. “Are you doing all right? I know your shoulder has to hurt.”
“I’d give a lot of money for some ibuprofen right now,” she admitted, but didn’t want to complain anymore. “How about you?”
“Not comfortable, but considering what we went through? Very grateful we’re both alive. I’m sorry your hiking trip was ruined.”
“I’m even more sorry that you were right and it ended up being dangerous.” She made a sour face.
Zane laughed and pulled her closer. “If it helps, I don’t consider myself to be right. I think having one of federal law enforcement’s most wanted criminals personally targeting you counts as extenuating circumstances. Otherwise I think your trip would’ve been perfectly safe.”
“Definitely added some factors I didn’t plan for. And by the way, thank you. If you hadn’t come out here, I would’ve been dead a couple times over.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. I think it’s possible that Freihof and his partners followed me. Or that I at least tipped them off as to where you were. It’s interesting that you didn’t have any trouble at all until after I got here.”
“Maybe.”
“I can promise you that we’re going to catch this guy once we make it back to civilization.”
Caroline wondered if Zane knew how much like law enforcement he sounded. Not that she doubted him.
“I believe you. Although it sounds like you might have to get Captain Harris to reinstate you, super cop.” She snuggled a little closer. “You always make me feel safe, Zane.”
She probably shouldn’t admit such a thing; it would make him uncomfortable given how he’d kept himself away from her for so long. It must be the exhaustion or pain getting to her. But it was still the truth.
She couldn’t see his face but heard the derision in his laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
“About Harris reinstating you? He would be beside himself with ex—”
“No. About feeling safe with me. Don’t joke about that, Caroline. It’s not funny.”
She shifted her head up slightly, wishing she could see him in the darkness. She might as well tell him the truth; it wasn’t like he could be around her any less than he’d been the last year and a half.
“I’ve always felt safest around you.”
“Maybe before you were attacked.”
She shrugged painfully. “The attack changed how I saw and thought about pretty much everything. Changed my very DNA, I think, sometimes. But around you is where I have always felt safest.”
She could feel tension flood his body. “God damn it, Caroline, you were raped and nearly beaten to death because of me.”
Tension flooded her. “What are you talking about? I was attacked because Trumpold was a psychopath.”
“Trumpold overheard our conversation, Caro. He knew you had invited me over that night. Knew you would expect me to be knocking on your door when I got off my shift. But I decided not to go.”
His voice dropped lower.
“We’d been arguing about something that day. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was. You were winning, as usual, so I thought I would get the upper hand by not showing up that night.”
“Zane, don’t—”
His voice rose much louder than needed to be heard over the storm. “You cannot tell me that you didn’t open your door to that sicko because you thought it was me knocking.”
<
br /> She heard the agony in his words and would give anything to be able to tell him that. If only to give him the peace of mind he obviously so desperately searched for. But she couldn’t. No matter what she and Zane were or weren’t to each other, no matter how tumultuous their relationship, they’d always been honest.
“Yes, I opened the door because I thought it was you,” she said softly.
She felt his arm drop from her completely. Felt him almost deflate. Wither.
“How can you say that you feel safe around me after that?” he finally asked. “The night you needed me most I was too busy plotting how to get the upper hand in our relationship.”
They lay there for long minutes, silence surrounding them as completely as the storm.
Caroline thought Zane had distanced himself after the attack because he couldn’t stomach what had happened to her. That he thought she was too delicate to go back to what their relationship had always been: passionate and sometimes almost violent in its intensity. And maybe that was still true. But she realized now that guilt was the bigger part of what had driven him away all these months.
“Zane, it was Dr. Trumpold. He blitzed his way through the door as soon as it was cracked open. He hit me immediately in the face, and I never saw it was actually him.”
“I know.” The words were ripped out of Zane’s chest. “And you cracked the door in the first place because you thought it was me.”
“Maybe.” She had to make him understand. To help Zane realize why it had never occurred to her to even partially blame him for what had happened. “Zane, I knew Dr. Trumpold. Worked with him almost every day. Yes, I opened the door thinking it was you. But I would’ve opened the door to him anyway.” She spaced out each word to make sure he understood.
It hurt to say them, to even think about that man. She hated that a knock on her door still caused her to blanch and that her first instinct everywhere she went now was to look for danger.
Zane didn’t say anything and she didn’t really expect him to. He had to process this at his own rate. She didn’t blame him; she never had. But she couldn’t force him to accept that. They lay there in silence, but eventually Zane’s arms found their way back around her, moving in gentle circles on her waist.
“We were fighting that day over which was better, A&M or Austin,” she finally said. “I’d insulted your precious Longhorns.” She knew that because as she’d come out of the coma, before she’d remembered anything about her attack or felt any of the pain, she’d thought of another point in her argument in the superiority of the Aggies over the Longhorns.
They’d never finished that argument.
She heard Zane curse softly. “I should’ve known it was about a stupid football team.”
“If it hadn’t been that, it would’ve been one of the other hundred topics you and I bickered about on a daily basis. We fought, we made up. We were rough. It’s just how we always operated, Zane. It’s what worked for us.”
Right up until it didn’t. Until he stopped fighting. She felt him nod from where she still lay against his chest.
“Our relationship was always so volatile,” he whispered softly.
Yes, their passion for each other had been almost violent in its intensity sometimes. She’d loved that they hadn’t always made it to the bedroom because they couldn’t wait to get at each other. “I remember. Believe me. I remember.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“Who cares if it was good or bad? It was us. And whether people understood it or not, we were good together. Even during our loudest screaming matches.”
“But then everything changed.” The sadness was pronounced in his tone.
“It didn’t have to.”
“You told me to stay away from you.” He shifted slightly under her. “Not that I blamed you for that. Still don’t.”
She sighed. “I didn’t tell you to stay away from me. I told you to stop treating me like I was some sort of delicate doll.”
“God, Caro, I watched your broken body lying on the ground. I sat by your hospital bed for two days while you were in a coma. And I was the lead detective on the case, so I’ve seen all the photos of everything else.”
She sat up, wanting to be close to him but needing a little distance. At least the rain was starting to back down some.
He continued as if she hadn’t moved. “Nobody would’ve blamed you for never wanting to be around another man ever again. Much less be with me. Not only was it partially my fault...”
She wasn’t having any of that. “No. It wasn’t.”
“But our relationship always bordered on rough anyway. How in the world could I think you would ever want that?”
“So you tried to make it into something it wasn’t.”
“I wanted to be what you needed.” He scrubbed a hand across his face.
“What I needed was someone who didn’t treat me like I was never going to be anything but a recovering rape victim! I thought that person was you. It was everything I held on to in the hospital and all through my physical therapy.”
“Caro—”
All the feelings and frustrations were flooding out of her now, her own violent storm. She couldn’t stop it if she wanted to. “I waited and waited, but you never showed up, Zane. Someone who looked like you did. He held my hand and talked to me. But it was just a pale copy of the original. I needed you. I needed us. So you’re right, when you couldn’t provide that, I didn’t want you around. I wanted you to treat me like I was me.”
Zane sat up with her, pulled her closer. She didn’t resist. “Caroline.”
“But when I told you to go, I never meant for you to stay away forever. I just wanted time to heal. For both of us to heal. Because you needed to just as much as I did.”
“You’re right. I did.” He nodded, still holding her against him.
“But you didn’t heal, Zane. You quit the job you loved, the one you were so good at, where you made a difference, and you never came back. You just vanished. You left me too.”
“I thought being away from you was the best thing I could do. That you wanted me away. It was the only gift I had left to give.”
She wanted to cry. For the past that couldn’t be changed. “That was never what I wanted.”
He pulled her tighter to his chest, laying them both back down. “I see that now. I didn’t handle the situation very well. I know that. My only excuse is that I thought I was doing what you wanted—keeping away from you.”
“Maybe we both didn’t handle the situation very well.” She sighed.
“You had enough to deal with, just getting through every day.”
“I would’ve rather had you there with me.”
“I’m here with you now.”
She could hear his heartbeat under her cheek. He was with her now. Maybe that was enough.
“You can’t treat me like I’m fragile, Zane. Everyone else still does. Like I’m going to crack at any moment. I’m not. I’m strong. That’s part of the reason I was hiking out here. To prove I was okay.”
“Everyone knows you’re strong.”
“Do you? Do you really, Zane?”
“Yes. I’ve always known it. But what I saw you do today? Hold it together as the plane was coming down? Direct me with how to get your shoulder back in joint, then climb up a ravine wall? I don’t think any sane person could doubt you’re strong.”
She wanted him to prove it. Prove that he believed it.
Not with words. She knew he could say the words. Knew he even believed the words.
She needed him to show her—to show both of them—right now that she wasn’t breakable.
The pain in her shoulder didn’t matter, the aches and bruises they both had weren’t relevant. Caroline wanted to feel alive on the inside.
Wanted to feel alive, feel strong and womanly, the way only Zane had ever made her feel.
The storm had slipped by. All they had left was night. Tomorrow the rescue would come.
Tomorrow they’d be going back to real life.
But first she would enjoy Zane the way she had in the past. Before they’d let someone take much more from them than they ever should have given up.
She shrugged the poncho from over her shoulders and threw it to the side. Then she slid up from where she was lying on her side against him so she was straddling his hips. The narrow spacing of the crevasse didn’t give her room to sit straight up, so she was forced to hover over him, her breasts pressed against his chest.
“Whatcha doing?” he murmured, his face only inches from hers.
“You’ve got to prove it.”
“Prove that I want you?” His hands gripped her hips and pulled her down harder against him. “I don’t think there can be any doubt of that.”
“Prove that you really think I’m strong. That you’re not afraid I’ll break at the least little thing.”
“I know you won’t.”
“Prove it, Zane. Prove that you can still get lost in me. That we can get lost in each other.”
His hand reached up and tangled in her hair, bringing her lips down hard against his. His tongue thrust into her mouth and she moaned. Yes. Yes, this was what she wanted.
His teeth nipped at her lips and his arms wrapped more tightly around her.
Their harsh breaths filled the alcove when he broke away after long minutes.
“You want this? Us?” he whispered, pulling her hips more tightly against his.
“Yes. Hard. Now, Zane.”
“Fine. But we do it my way.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Your way? Have things changed so much that your way and my way are no longer the same?”
He pulled her down for a punishing kiss. One that bruised her lips.
One that eased something inside her. Revived places in her that had lain dead for too long. She moaned into the kiss and his groan soon joined hers.
“You still have the smartest mouth, that’s for sure,” he said against her lips. “Here’s my deal. I won’t hold back. And believe me, Caro, that won’t be a problem.”
