“They definitely give their teacher a run for her money. I’m sorry you had to see that.” She stared off at the island. “It’s been a rough few months…losing Ryan, and everything with Maisie…”
“How are her treatments?” I asked, stepping my toe into waters I had no right to.
Her head snapped toward me. “You know.”
“Ryan.” Mac and I had talked about it at length, so it wasn’t exactly a lie.
She shook her head in exasperation and started walking back to the truck.
“Ella,” I called after her, quickly catching up. After almost two weeks of running six miles in the morning, I was finally adjusted to the altitude. Not that we hadn’t been dropped into similar elevations in Afghanistan, but I’d been at sea level for two months before getting out here.
“You know what?” she fired back, spinning to face me.
“Whoa!” I gripped her shoulders to keep from smacking into her, then abruptly dropped my hands. That was twice I’d touched her since I’d been here, and the contact was too much and not enough.
“I hate that you know things about me. I hate that you probably knew Colt was my son, that you know about Maisie’s diagnosis. You’re a stranger who is privy to intimate details about my life because of my brother, and that’s not fair.”
“I can’t change that. I’m not sure I would even if I could, because that’s the reason I’m here.”
“The reason you’re here is buried out on that island!”
In so many ways.
“We can go round and round. But I’m not leaving. So I will make you this offer. You can ask me any questions you want”—I held up my finger when she opened her mouth, knowing she’d ask about Mac’s death again—“that I’m allowed to answer, and I’ll tell you anything I can about me. You’re right. It’s not fair that I know so much. It’s incredibly creepy for me to know about your kids, your life…you. But Mac loved you, and he talked about you all the time. You, them, this place was the home he so badly wanted to come back to, and when he talked about you, it was like he had this tiny moment of reprieve from the hell we were living. So, I’m incredibly sorry that your privacy has been violated. You have no clue how sorry I am, but I can’t go back in time and ask him not to overshare, and if I had that magical time button, I’d use it for something far better, like saving his life. Because he should be here. Not me. But I’m the one he sent, and I’m staying.” I clenched my jaw. What was it about this woman that killed whatever semblance of a filter I had? Whether it was reading her letters, or staring into her eyes, she had a power over me that was worse than a bottle of tequila for loosening my tongue. She made me want to tell her everything, and that was dangerous to both of us.
“If Ryan wanted so badly to be here, he could have gotten out when he was up for reenlistment. But he didn’t. Because guys like Ryan—like you—don’t stay home, don’t put down roots, don’t stay, period. I can accept that I’m your…mission, or whatever, for the time being, but don’t act like you’re not temporary.”
I fought every instinct in my body that screamed to declare differently, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me, and I’m not sure I would have, either. It was only a matter of time before she realized who I really was and what I’d done. And my feelings for her wouldn’t buffer that fallout. A nuclear shelter couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly after a few moments of silence passed between us. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through, if you were really that close to Ryan. And you must have been to uproot your entire life to come here.”
“I thought I didn’t have roots,” I teased.
A tiny smile ghosted across her face, but it was sad. “Like I said, I’m sorry. But imagine if I showed up in…wherever it was you guys were, and I knew everything about you, and you didn’t know the first thing about me. Unsettling, right?”
A raw, grating pain scraped across me, because she did know everything about me. In a way. I’d left out the physical details of my life while I basically pulled my soul out of my body and put it on paper for her. She might not have known what I was, but she knew who I was, more than anyone else on the planet. I’d let her in and then shut myself out, and I missed her with a ferocity that was terrifying.
“Yeah, I can see how that would be a ten on the weird scale.”
“Thank you. And really, it’s an eleven.” She headed back up the path to her Tahoe, where Colt had the back hatch open and was waiting with his quad.
This apparently wasn’t the first time he’d been grounded from it if he was that aware of the routine.
“I got it, Colt,” I told him. Then I lifted it into the back of the SUV, thankful there was a rubber lining in the back. When I turned around, Ella was staring at me, her mouth slightly agape. Well, staring at my arms. I made a mental note to get a gym membership. I liked that look.
“Anything else?” I asked, shutting the hatch.
She shook her head quickly. “Nope. Nothing. Thanks for…you know…”
“Not being a psycho kidnapper?”
“Something like that.” A blush stole across her cheeks.
“I was serious about the background check. If you would feel more comfortable—”
“No, of course not. I don’t make a habit of background checking my guests, and I’m not going to start now.”
“You should,” I muttered. If I had been a psycho kidnapper, Colt would be dead. Actually, these woods were secluded enough that she could harbor a serial killer and never know.
She rolled her eyes at me and climbed up into the driver’s seat.
“Hey, Mr. Gentry?” Colt called from the back seat.
Ella rolled down the window, and I leaned in to see him strapped into a tall, thin car seat that sat beside an empty one.
“What’s up?”
“I’ve decided that, since you’re Uncle Ryan’s brother, that makes you family.” He said it with the seriousness of an adult.
“Have you?” My voice softened. The kid didn’t know what he was offering, or how much it meant to me, because he’d always had a family. It was simply a given. “Well, thank you.”
I met Ella’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and she let out a small sigh of defeat.
“And you’re not crazy,” he added. “So I guess you can stay.”
I smiled so wide my cheeks hurt. This kid was amazing. “Thank you for your approval, Colt.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a shrug.
I stepped back, and Ella closed her door, then leaned out her open window. “Don’t forget that there are meals in the main house. Ada said that she hasn’t seen you there, and she gets nosy.”
“Noted. I didn’t want to bring Havoc in with Maisie there, too.” I wasn’t an expert on kids with cancer, but I knew enough that she didn’t need me bringing extra dander in.
“Oh, that’s…really thoughtful of you. But you’re okay. After she went neutropenic the first time—that’s when—”
“Her white cells drop to where she’s susceptible to every infection known to man?” I finished.
“Yeah. How did you know that?”
“I read about neuroblastoma. A lot.”
“For Ryan?”
For you.
“Yeah, something like that.”
She ripped her gaze away from mine, like she felt our connection, too. But where I embraced the intensity, she apparently did not. “Right. Well, after that, I moved the kids out of the residence wing and into a cabin that we could keep—”
“Wrapped up like a bubble,” Colt called out from the back seat.
“Pretty much,” Ella admitted with a shrug. “We’re actually your neighbors. If you walk about two hundred yards that way, you’ll find us.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Then I guess you will.”
They drove up the wide path next to my cabin. There must have been a small boat launch here or something to have a path like that cleared.
Havoc sat back on her haunches and cocked her head at me.
“I think that went better, don’t you?” I asked. Her tail thumped in agreement. “Yeah. Now let’s go find a job before Colt takes away our grown-up card.”
Three hours later I was officially the newest part-time member of Telluride Mountain Rescue. Scratch that. Havoc was. She was all the talent, anyway.
Chapter Eight
Ella
Letter #9