by Lara Archer
“You know what?” said Amber, putting her fists on her hips. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. And if we’re gossiping about whatever it was, we’re playing right into the tabloids’ hands. So let’s forget about it, and let Ruby get on with her life.”
“You got it,” he said. And he offered her a fist bump. “Good job rousting them out of here. That went like clockwork.”
Amber banged her fist to his, and gave him a cheeky smile. “Former marine sergeants aren’t the only ones who know how to deal with jackasses.”
“Clearly. You’ve been working with me for years.”
“Shut up, Nick,” she said impatiently, and this time she used her fist to punch him in the arm. “You may, in fact, be a jackass, but it’s not for the reasons you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She heaved a deep sigh. “Nothing. Why don’t we both just—just go get some rest?”
“Right,” he said, still wondering exactly what she meant about his particular brand of jackassery. He didn’t really want to think it through, though, so he let it drop. “Seriously, though, kiddo, you done good today.”
“You, too. You really are heroic, you know. It was impressive.” Her hand swung up a little way like she was about to touch his arm again or something, but it stopped in midair and turned into an awkward wave goodbye. “Yeah—well—I’ll see you in a bit. I guess I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes and try to wring out my boots.”
He looked down and remembered how mud-encrusted they both were. “Right,” he said. “Shower time.”
She nodded, then went off to her cabin with her head bowed and her hands stuffed in her pockets.
The lift he’d felt at seeing her back in take-charge Amber mode faded instantly, replaced by a chill sense of foreboding and a hard lump in his throat. Damn it—despite all the moments when they felt like normal friends again today, a wall had gone up between them, and he didn’t know how to climb over it or how to knock it down. And maybe it was better if he didn’t even try.
She didn’t show up in the dining cabin for dinner, and he wasn’t quite sure if he was disappointed or relieved. Maybe a little of both. Instead, he ate with Ranger Morrissey and Ranger Naomi—who, despite what Onyx had called her, actually wore a name tag that said Ranger Kaufman—and listened to their hair-raising war stories, Vietnam for him, Afghanistan for her. Then he dragged himself off to bed, feeling the exhaustion of the storm and the drama with Ruby and the climb up and down the mountain hit him all at once like someone had dumped a load of wet concrete on his head.
But once he got between the sheets, still he tossed and turned. The bed felt empty.
Goddamn it. Why did it seem like Amber was supposed to be here beside him? And why did his racing heartbeat calm only when he imagined her under the blankets beside him, breathing softly, her hair trailing onto his pillow?
It was ridiculous. But he couldn’t clear his mind of her. She was in the room with him like a ghost, ephemeral and taunting, reminding him how he’d failed her, how he’d hurt her. How he wasn’t good enough for her. The night was dark and silent a long time before he finally fell asleep.
He did sleep, though, eventually, and when he did, he slept heavy and dreamless, like the dead. The next thing he knew, morning was brightening the windows again, sending white streaks of dust-mote-filled light down towards the bed.
The sun wasn’t nearly as high as when he woke up yesterday. This was the soft, golden light of very early morning, a morning that would soon be beautiful and bright, judging from the swath of sky he could see through a gap in his cabin curtains, already the sort of brilliantly fresh-washed blue that only happened after storms.
And then he realized what it was that had actually woken him—someone was knocking at his door.
More specifically, Amber was knocking at his door.
He still wasn’t used to her knocking, but no one else would dare wake him up this early.
He groaned as he rolled over and got his feet on the floor, pained more by the thought of not knowing what in hell to say to her than at the soreness in his muscles after yesterday’s ordeal. He pulled on a pair of jeans he’d left draped over the desk chair, and dug a clean t-shirt out of his bag. Barefoot, he opened the door.
Amber stood there, looking like she’d just rolled out of bed as well. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she wore an old plaid flannel shirt with a zip-up sweatshirt over top and a pair of red flannel pajama bottoms. She looked pretty wrecked, about the same as he felt—deep smudges under her eyes, her skin unusually pallid, her eyes lacking their usual sparkle.
That was the hardest thing to see, her eyes looking hooded and dull. It pressed like a weight on his diaphragm.
“Hey,” he said, trying to sound as normal as possible. “You—want to come in?”
He wanted her to, he realized. Even sad, even reluctant, he wanted Amber in his room, near him. For the first time since he’d gotten under the blankets alone last night, he didn’t feel the ache of a void. He just felt better with her here. Even if she did nothing more than breathe beside him. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to get back into bed with her, to have her lay down next to him—just lay down, not anything more.
He had a sudden impulse to ask her to, but he tamped it down. Instead, he just altered his question a little: “Why don’t you come in?”
She shook her head, though, vigorously enough to make a few curls spring loose from her bun. They softened the sad look on her face, at least. “No,” she said. “Not really a good idea. Look, I’m sorry to even wake you. I just wanted you to know Jake and Ruby radioed in this morning. They’re fine, but they’re going to sleep a little longer before they hike back down. Sounds like it was a bit of a rough night for her.”
“Ah.” The plummet of disappointment in his gut was stronger than he had any right to feel. “Glad they’re okay,” he said, as jovially as he could manage. “And they might as well sleep. They won’t be up for filming today, anyway. It’s just—lucky Jake found her before she got hurt.”
“And that he has such a crappy car he has to bring camping supplies everywhere he goes.”
“Yeah. Handy habit. Maybe I should start doing that.”
Amber’s lips quirked. “That would certainly make outdoor sex a lot more convenient.”
Ah, and that stung. Any ease that might have been returning between them vanished instantly.
There’s wasn’t much he could say to salvage the conversation after that. “What about Onyx?” he said. “Did she call in, too?”
“No need—Ranger Donnell got her back here an hour ago.”
“Seriously?” That at least was an opening to lighten the tone between them. “They must have been up before the crack of dawn. How did he get Onyx up that early? Set fire to her boot-soles?”
Amber did smile a little at that. “She’s a changed girl, I guess. You should have seen her in the dining cabin getting breakfast. All her lipstick and eyeliner was worn off, and she still willingly appeared in public.”
“Whoa. I’m surprised you recognized her.”
“She looked about five years younger. And she wanted to tell me all about the cool plants Ranger Paul showed her. She even showed me her pocket full of leaves.”
“A pocket full of leaves? Onyx?” He leaned his forearm against the doorframe, bending a little closer to Amber, who didn’t move away. “I don’t get it. She’s like—a seven year old on her first field trip.”
Amber shrugged. “Could be that’s what this is for her. I’ve always kind of assumed she was raised in a bat cave or something. Maybe all this human stuff is new to her.”
“Ah, well, then, that makes two of us.”
“Stop it, Nick.” Her expression screwed up in frustration. “You have to stop saying things like that.”
“Why? They’re true.”
“They’re not—” She broke off then, her mouth going to a hard line. “Never mind.” She st
ared at the ground for a moment, then licked her lips nervously. “Um, listen,” she said, and she reached into her sweatshirt pocket. “I have something for you.”
Her hand withdrew something from her pocket, and she held it up for him, palm upwards. Resting there was a little blue flash drive.
“This is the other reason I came over here,” she said, and nervousness shook her voice. “I couldn’t sleep last night. And somehow I decided to finish this after all.” She shrugged again, fitfully. “I stayed up most of the night editing.”
The moment he realized what it was, he pulled back from it like it was a live electrical line. Whatever was on that flash drive was what she’d made out of the film she’d shot of them on her bed the other night. “Shit,” he said. “Shouldn’t we just burn that at this point? We’re friends, remember—we worked that out?”
She shrugged a little too casually. “I figured you might as well see it first. I sort of hate the idea of making a film no one ever sees, you know? You be the one person who does, okay?”
He stared at it stupidly, not moving to take it.
“You can burn it afterward,” she said, as if that was encouragement. “Don’t worry—I didn’t keep another copy. I won’t be selling it to Donny Lempert or anything.”
Ouch. Though maybe bitter humor was better than no humor at all.
His stomach roiled, but he knew she wasn’t going to take no for an answer on this. And he supposed he owed her the chance to make a statement about what went wrong between them, if that’s what this was. So he took the flash drive out of her palm, gingerly, with just the tips of a finger and thumb, like it might bite him. Immediately, he realized how stupid that was, and closed his fist around it. “Okay. Will do.”
“Today, Nick,” she insisted.
“Today.”
She turned to go then, and on impulse, he caught her by the arm.
“Hey,” he said.
“What?”
He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. “Um, can’t we—talk, maybe? Don’t we need to do that?”
“No,” she said. “We don’t. Not right now. Just—just watch that. And it is only watching, by the way, just visuals. I didn’t have time to sync up the sound.”
Well, that was a relief. At least he wasn’t going to have to listen to himself having the best night of his life.
She turned to go again.
“No—wait,” he found himself saying. “Don’t just walk away now. Please. We need to—we can figure all this out, somehow.”
She offered him a sad smile. “Everything’s okay, Nick,” she said. “Really. We’ll be fine, I promise.”
He didn’t trust the sad, resigned look on her face. “Really?”
“I’ve been thinking about it all night, you know. I couldn’t exactly help thinking about it, not with what I was working on.” She pointed to the flash drive in his hand. Then shrugged. “You’re part of me. A part I need. I can’t lose you.”
He reached out for her shoulders, put his arms around her, drew her close for a moment. She was stiff in his arms. “Don’t worry, kiddo,” he said. “You really can’t lose me, either. I’m right here.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, and she didn’t pull away. For a few heartbeats, they stayed together that way, breathing in sync, and he felt a little of the emptiness inside his chest begin to fill with warmth. But then she straightened and drew back.
“I’d better go,” she said. And he felt the gray, dull void open again.
He didn’t know what to do about it, though. Better he should feel that void than Amber should, which she definitely would, if he let things go any farther between them. Because it was a sure bet that he’d end by breaking her heart.
So he carried the flash drive back inside, and it felt like a chip of ice in his hand. Or like he was carrying something cursed, something fetid and horrible.
He sat down at the little desk and fired up his laptop, his fingers shaking on the keys. He was sick to his stomach at the thought of actually watching the damn thing. Why had Amber insisted on filming the two of them together in the first place, and why did she want him to look at it now? Probably the only thing that could make him feel worse about their situation was having that last encounter turned into some sort of Kardashian sex tape.
He remembered how he’d felt at the time, with the cameras whirring away—he’d felt exposed, laid bare, flayed. Imagine how much worse it would be to watch the results from the outside.
God, he didn’t want to have to see his own animal side on display. The worst part of him, the part that didn’t respond to reason or discipline or decency—or friendship either, apparently.
A few years ago, he’d dated an actress who had mirrors all over her bedroom, including one over the bed. They’d had sex there twice, and he’d hated the mirrored glimpses of the two of them rutting and contorting. Despite her Egyptian cotton sheets and her antique Louis Quatorze bedstead and her carefully manicured body, the images he caught from the corners of his eye looked like cheap porn. All he could think was how absurd it was—this brief madness of the body, the push and pull of instinct. Why did it feel so overwhelmingly urgent to shove one swollen bit of flesh into another? Looking in those mirrors was a little too much like watching mating sea snails on the Nature Channel, and he’d left her house both mornings feeling drained and depressed. After that, he insisted they have sex only in her living room or her kitchen, but the relationship had been over within the week because she was convinced he must not like the look of her ass from behind. Which was ironic, because her ass was the best thing about her.
The idea of seeing himself with Amber in the same way made him want to retch.
A window popped up on his laptop screen, telling him the video file had uploaded. He pressed play, his heart pounding deafeningly, his breathing rough, as if the atmosphere had suddenly gone thin.
No bodies showed at first—just the bed, brightly lit, the sheets unrumpled. It felt strange and shameful to see even that much, and he felt a wash of gratitude again that there would be no sound.
And then there he was, moving into the frame, shirtless and carrying a topless Amber in his arms like she was something he was about to devour. He laid her on the bed, and then he was on top of her so quickly, so eager to have her—no pause for communication, no deliberation, no thought. He wanted to scream to himself, why are you doing this? You know what a mistake it is? Why don’t you stop?
But of course his self on screen didn’t stop. And worse, as he watched, Nick understood exactly why he didn’t. In the split second before his screen self buried his fingers in Amber’s hair, he felt the desire himself to touch it. His fingers practically burned with the need to feel the silk of her curls sliding between them. As his screen self’s hand moved to her breast, his hands itched to do the same, right this instant.
Thankfully, Amber rolled him over quickly onto his back and straddled him. It made it easier now to keep his attention on her—her breasts and back bare, her golden hair loose over her shoulders. Lord, even now he wanted his hands on her, and his mouth.
She was as beautiful on screen as in real life. Her skin glowed like the amber she was named for, as if lit from within. She had such supple strength in her limbs and her back, such a long, elegant throat, such intelligent hands. All of that wonderfully softened by the exquisite curving of her breasts and hips and ass, and the wild spill of her hair. It was a pleasure to watch her bending and arching above him, graceful and passionate and sure of herself. He only wished the camera angle let him see more of her eyes.
If he just kept his focus on her, watching this couldn’t really be ugly.
He did his best as long as he could to mentally block out his own form. But Amber knew what she was doing when she set up the cameras—the way they were angled and the way she’d cut together the footage, he was the visual focus. His body and the look on his face were impossible to completely ignore.
And, no, he didn’t like what he s
aw.
It wasn’t as awful as seeing himself in that actress’s bedroom mirrors, but it was damning enough. He knew what Amber had told him—that he was to stay still, that he was to lay back and let her decide what happened. And he just hadn’t been able to do that. Not even when he didn’t want them to be in the bed at all.
He watched himself seize her hips, and her having to pull away. When she began to unbutton her jeans, he watched himself grab hold of her pants and yank them down impatiently—and, damn it, throw them across the room hard enough to all but topple one of the light stands. He could see the bobbling shadows across their bodies as the stand teetered, and only by a random stroke of luck stayed upright.
And there he was, touching her breasts when she’d told him just to watch, and grabbing her arms and dragging her down on top of him. She had to pull herself out of his grip again and again.
And the worst part of all of this was that, watching it unfold, he was growing hard as ever. The pounding of his pulse changed rhythm, from the cold of fear to the heat of lust, and it was all he could do not to undo his jeans now and take his cock in his hand and stroke it.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, feeling sick with himself. Why was she making him watch this? What did she want him to learn about himself that he didn’t know already?
When he’d first come into the cabin and discovered the lights and cameras around the bed, she’d talked about seeing. About how film was the way they communicated. About how it could reveal truth.
Well, what the hell truth was there here for him to see? He knew what he was already. He’d been telling her about that, warning her about that, since the first time they slept together. She wasn’t a vindictive person. She wasn’t a sadist. Why would she want to confirm the worst of him?
She’d watched all this, carefully—she’d had to, to edit it. If all she saw in it was what he was seeing now, would she even have shown it to him?
There must be something else. Something worthwhile to see.
