Page 7

CHAPTER 7

Rusty

Even the densest Colombian jungle had offered some form of light: stars, moonlight, the ember glow of a cigarette. The darkness in this lava tube was different. Absolute. It pressed against Rusty’s eyes like a physical weight, making his other senses strain for input.

He figured it had been three, maybe four hours since his phone died, but time had gone liquid, measured only by Sienna’s faltering steps and the dogs’ steady panting. He kept his hand pressed to her shoulder, guiding her next to him. Every few minutes, her fingers would drift to the back of her head, and she would take a sharp inhale and wince.

Her head wound gnawed at him, and he hoped like hell it wasn’t the reason she was starting to stumble. It could be from hunger or dehydration. Or the darkness could be throwing her off-balance. Or maybe it was because they had no fucking clue if this tunnel led anywhere except deeper into the earth’s crust.

Charging into this tunnel like some untrained civilian was a rookie mistake.

He’d known better, done better, in shitholes across three continents. But he’d seen Sienna in danger, and his training had gone straight out the window when she was unconscious and injured. Now they were trapped with two dogs and exactly jack shit for resources.

“Rusty?” Her voice was thin, stretched. “Are we umm . . . do you think we’ll get out?”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Absolutely. Come morning, we’ll catch some light filtering in somewhere. Plus, Soda’s got one hell of a nose on her. She’ll catch a whiff of fresh air and lead us right to it.”

They weren’t lies. Both could be true. Then again, morning meant nothing down here, but he would be damned if he would let her hear doubt in his voice. Not when her life was in his hands.

Sienna was not your average woman. And nothing like Hannah. Thank Christ.

Soda’s claws clicked somewhere ahead in the darkness, and he tracked the sound, using it to orient himself. At least the dogs were still moving forward. That had to mean something.

Had to.

Sienna’s yawn broke the silence. Then another.

Maybe we should take a break?

She stumbled again, and he moved closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“No need to say sorry. You’re doing great.”

Her foot caught, and she pitched forward with a gasp. He snagged her arm, swinging her into his chest before she hit the ground face-first. She collided with him, and his arms locked around her automatically. “I’ve got you.”

Her whole body seemed to sag. “Sorry.” Her palm pressed against his chest as she stepped back, steadying herself.

“We’re stopping.” He left no room for argument in his tone. She already had a head injury. A broken ankle down here would be a death sentence. “Soda, heel,” he called, as he swept debris away with his boot and guided Sienna to where the curved wall met the floor.

The cold stone bit into his back as they settled, and Soda pressed against his side. Her usual comfort was distorted by the angry knots in his stomach, growling for attention. Christ, he was starving, but Sienna had to be worse after running that marathon before all this went sideways. And it wouldn’t be long before Soda started letting him know exactly how she felt about missing dinner.

Pickle’s nails clicked across stone, followed by a soft whump as he landed in Sienna’s lap.

“Hey, fella.” Her hands found the dog in the dark, moving in that steady rhythm that he liked to use on Soda when he was trying to comfort himself as much as his dog. “We’ll get you home to Aunty Dee. I promise.”

Rusty clamped his jaw. He should be the one making promises like that, but promises were bullshit. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. These days, he dealt in cold, hard truths or nothing at all.

“Hey, Rusty . . . what did you mean by you’ve been in worse situations than this?”

He bit back a groan. He should have steered the conversation anywhere other than talking about himself. Last thing he needed was her figuring out they had history. Not yet anyway. But he had a feeling she would keep prodding if he dodged her question.

Releasing a sigh, he said, “I had a mission in Colombia that was . . . that didn’t end well.”

“Oh, jeez. What happened? Did you lose someone?”

“Yeah. Two men. Two good men.”

“God, Rusty, I’m sorry.”

He let the silence answer. No apology could touch what that clusterfuck had cost him: his career, his men, everything.

Before she dug deeper, he said, “So have you moved in with your aunt?”

He knew damn well she hadn’t. He would have noticed a woman like her living across the street.

“No. I arrived two days ago. I’m looking after Aunty Dee’s place and this crazy dog for four weeks while she’s in Europe.”

“Huh, lucky for some.” He smiled, thinking of Sienna lazing in a red bikini while swinging in Dee’s massive hammock that stretched across her back deck.

“Yeah. Real lucky.” The weight in her sarcasm dropped like a stone.

Shit. “I meant Dee’s house. It’s a nice place to stay.”

“Oh, you know Aunty Dee’s place?”

Double shit.

“Everyone knows Dee,” he said carefully. At least that wasn’t a lie.

“Sounds right.” She laughed softly. “My aunt’s as crazy as her dog.”

“Do you visit her often?” The question had been burning since he first saw her charge out of the cop station. He wanted to see a lot more of her once this mess was over.

“I try to visit yearly, though I haven’t for three years. But . . .” A tiny sound spilled from her lips that was so sad he wanted to pull her closer.

“But what?”

“Aunty Dee basically forced me here this time.”

“Why’s that?”

A sound caught in her throat, raw and dark. “Life’s been pretty crappy for the last couple of months and . . .”

“And what?”

“Aunty Dee thought coming here would help me get over my grief.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did one of your parents pass away?”

“No. My best friend . . .” She forced out a breath like she was trying not to vomit. “Paige . . . she killed herself.”

“Oh Jesus, Sienna.”

“The night before she, um . . . we’d been celebrating her breakup from her douche bag boyfriend. The next morning, I found her . . . in, um . . .”

“Ahh, fuck. You found her?” Rusty’s chest ached. He knew that hurt. The shock. The disbelief. The feel of a limp body, and the ghastly sight of blue lips that would never smile again. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Did you know why?”

“No.” Her voice splintered. “And that’s worse than finding her body in the bathtub. Worse than her skin being so cold when I touched her wrist and hoped . . .” She shuddered. “Hoped for a pulse I knew wouldn’t be there.”

Fuck. He knew that tone, that raw guilt that ate you alive after someone checked out. He pulled her against him, trying to cushion her trembling.

Soda shifted, nudging closer to him like she knew their topic touched a raw nerve.

“I should’ve known.” The words tumbled between ragged breaths. “Paige and I shared everything. Every secret, every heartbreak since we were kids. How did I miss how sad she was? She must’ve been screaming inside, and I just . . . I just didn’t hear it.”

His chest clenched as Hannah’s face flashed behind his eyes. That last fight—him raging at her until his throat was raw, while she just stood there, folding inward like a dying flower. He’d seen her guilt overwhelm her then. It was written in every line of her body. But he’d been too angry to care about the consequences. Too righteous. Too fucking blind to her remorse.

The note she left was simple. Final. I can’t live with what I’ve done.

Knowing why hadn’t made it easier. Knowing had just given his guilt sharper teeth.

He should tell Sienna something about how guilt lied. Guilt just twisted you up inside until everything you could have done became everything you should have done. How it changed your memories until all you could see were the signs you missed, the moments you failed her, and the lies she told. How it made you forget all the good times together.

But the words snagged like broken glass in his throat. Instead, he pulled her closer, feeling her tears soak through his shirt to his skin. His own ghosts rattled their cage, but he forced them back.

Not now. Not tonight.

Some nights, that was all he could do—white-knuckle his way through the darkness and pray the memories would just fuck off and leave him in peace.

“Try to sleep,” he murmured, drawing her closer.

She curled into him with that familiar trust, just like that wild summer when they’d been young, stupid, and fearless. When they’d stayed up all night on the beach, planning adventures they would never take—backpacking through Nepal, motorcycling across Vietnam, finding as many beach parties as they could.

Back when their biggest worry had been missing the sunset.

As her breathing softened and she drifted into that space between awake and sleep, he found himself grateful for those memories of her. The ones still pure, untouched by guilt, grief, or betrayal. The ones that reminded him that even in the darkest moments, light could still exist if he opened his mind to it.

Maybe they could still chase those dreams someday. Maybe?—

Fuck. Who was he kidding? He was the one who’d destroyed what they had. One drunken night, and he’d blown it all to hell.

He’d replayed that night in his mind hundreds of times, wishing it had a different ending.

Earlier in the evening, he’d taken Sienna to the Ocean Tide Festival, but his gaze had snagged on Hannah as she’d danced beneath the festoon lights, and when her laughter had carried over the music, something had clicked in him. Or broken. Maybe both. As he’d made moves on Hannah, he’d fed himself bullshit excuses—that Sienna was leaving anyway, that it was just a summer fling, that she would go back to her real life, and they would never see each other again. That Hannah was here, permanent, solid, real, and making eyes at him.

But later that night, when Sienna caught him with Hannah at O’Malley’s—Hannah pressed against the pool table and his hands where they shouldn’t have been—something bright and trusting had dimmed in Sienna’s eyes like watching a fire choke on its own ashes. She’d stood in the doorway, car keys dangling from trembling fingers and that damn stuffed bear he’d won her at the festival clutched against her chest like armor.

Her scream had cut through the bar’s usual chaos. No words, just pure pain released in an ear-splitting shriek. Raw enough to silence every conversation, drown the music and freeze the whole damn world for one terrible moment.

The bear had slipped from her fingers, landing face-up on the sticky floor, those cheap glass eyes reflecting the overhead lights like accusations frozen in time. Empty. Hollow. Just like the look she’d given him before striding out the door.

She’d walked away from the gauntlet of stares, leaving him with judgmental whispers and knowing smirks that stripped away the reputation he’d worn like armor. The righteous man. The honorable one. The good guy. Each snicker and sideways glance had peeled back another layer of his carefully constructed facade until all that remained was the truth: he was just another asshole who’d let his dick do his thinking.

Hannah had become his penance, first his fiancée, then the match that lit his temper, then his guilt. Now she was his ghost, constantly lurking in his subconscious, rearing to strike when he wasn’t concentrating.

Meanwhile, Sienna had crystallized into something harder to bear: his what-if, his might-have-been, his road deliberately torched. The one that got away.

He’d thought that was the end of their story.

But now, here she was, no longer that bright-eyed teenager with dreams bigger than the horizon. Life had carved new lines around her eyes and weighted her shoulders with fresh torment. The woman in his arms wasn’t seeking a summer romance. She was seeking shelter from a storm he couldn’t protect her from.

As he tightened his arms around her, equal parts shield and shackle, questions burned in his throat like battery acid.

Would she forgive him for his stupid actions all those years ago?

Could he forgive himself?