Page 11

He ran until his breath hit that edge of burn, until his shirt stuck to his back, until his thoughts got quiet enough to blur. The nightmare still clung to his skin, but the wind pulled at it, piece by piece. The ache in his knee sharpened, then smoothed. His body knew how to keep going even when everything else inside him didn’t.
He couldn’t remember what happened in that op. Not all of it. Just flashes. Pieces. The parts the doctors told him were dream logic. Trauma filling in the blanks. But he remembered the sound. The break in Kento’s voice. The silence that followed.
He ran harder. Faster. Until there was no room left for memory. Only motion. Only sweat. Only the burn in his lungs and the pounding in his feet.
Changing gears away from the nightmare for the distraction, he thought he would meet her today. Grace Harlan. The analyst who got buried with the blame. He didn’t know what she looked like now. But would she see too much?
Nash rounded the bend at a dead sprint, lungs burning, shirt and sweatshirt soaked through, the hotel just starting to reappear through the trees when it happened.
He saw motion too late, a flash of dark leggings, a bright shock of yellow cutting across the winter-drab trail, and the glint of sunlit fire off impossible red hair. A shapely figure where there shouldn’t have been one.
His body reacted before his brain caught up. He twisted mid-stride, reached out, caught her as they collided, momentum slamming through him like a breacher charge. The only thought was to shield her. They went down hard, crashing through brittle grass and into a patch of sunflower stalks he’d seen only moments ago on the trail.
Dirt. Leaves. The sharp crackle of old stems. Elbow to ribs. The brush of skin too soft for this hard, cold ground. A hiss of breath. Then stillness.
She wasn’t struggling. She was just...there. Solid. Warm. A flash of color against the gray.
The first thing he registered was her softness, the curve of hip to thigh, the give of her ribs under his forearm, the heat of her body pressed against him, stubborn and alive in a world that had already given up.
For one surreal second, they just lay there, these stalks resilient beneath them, quietly withstanding their weight, the dry air around them holding its breath.
Birds kept chirping. Wind rustled through the trees. The ground shifted beneath him, and he wasn’t sure if it was those damn stalks or him.
Then she spoke, voice dry and perfectly level. “I wasn’t expecting a mountain to drop on me this morning.”
He blinked. Then laughed, short, sharp, breathless. God, she had a sense of humor.
Why the hell did that feel more dangerous than the impact? He pushed up on one arm and looked down at her. That was when it hit him.
The eyes got him first, green, dark jade rim around sage, sharp and unreadable. A kind of composed force that assessed, not softened. Watched him with an intensity like he was a puzzle needing to be solved.
Her face was elegant in a way that didn’t try. High cheekbones. Full mouth. The top lip gently bowed, the bottom one plump, kissable in a way he wasn’t supposed to notice. Butdid.
Her skin was warm with a pink undertone, the faint scar near her jaw nearly invisible unless you were looking for it. He was. For some reason, he was. She wasn’t wearing makeup.
Didn’t need it.
Her red and riotous hair didn’t belong with the stillness of her face. Loose and wild and reckless, a curtain of flame against her calm. A quiet, composed beauty that didn’t ask for attention but held it anyway. A paradox. A complication. A riddle he wasn’t ready for, but he couldn’t stop reacting. He shifted off her slowly and offered a hand. “You all right?” His voice came out rougher than expected.
She took it. Cool fingers. Firm grip. A spark jumped the moment their skin met. She stood, brushed off her pants like he hadn’t just steamrolled her. He followed suit, dragging his gaze away from the way her shirt had ridden up to expose a narrow strip of pale, freckled skin.Ya Allah. He scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“Sorry,” he said. “Wasn’t looking for company.”
“Clearly.” She looked him over once, chest to shoulders, to where his gray sweatshirt clung damp and unforgiving. Most of the time, he didn’t care how women looked at him. This wasn’t most of the time.
“You run like you’re chasing something,” she said.
He shrugged. “Or trying not to get caught.”
Her breath, steady and even, while her eyes watched him like a trigger she hadn’t decided to pull.
“You don’t look like a man easily caught.” She clamped that enticing bottom lip in white teeth and assessed him, then her mouth tilted, not quite a smile. Just a shift. An acknowledgment. He felt it in his spine. Something in him prickled. Tightened. It wasn’t attraction. Not just. It was ahit, gut-deep and inconvenient.
He didn’t know who she was. Didn’t care. At least heshouldn’thave. But her eyes… her mouth… the way she’d looked at him like shesaw something?—
He tamped it down hard. No. He wasn’t here for breath-stealing redheads or curiosity or whatever the hell made his skin tingle. He was here because somehow his teammates were dead, left behind, and they deserved the truth.
Back at the hotel, the shower was too small and ran hot for exactly three minutes before sputtering into something colder and meaner. Nash didn’t mind. The sting helped chase away the last edges of the dream still clinging to his ribs. He scrubbed hard, leaned his head against the wall for a beat longer than necessary. Damn, she had been so soft. He closed his eyes, the tile cool against his cheek, his body heating, stirring. He turned the cold back on, then stepped out dripping and half-blind from the freeze.