The last thing I should be doing is going out after him.
This is one of those just let him go kind of moments. Ones I’ve learned are necessary when it comes to Connor McBride over the years. For both our sakes and sanities.
We need space from each other, time to let tempers cool.
Deep down, I know this, but I still pull the door open and step outside.
A flash of lightning splits the sky and illuminates the clearing, along with Connor stalking across it toward the path that will take him toward the river.
“Connor!”
His name gets swallowed by a boom of thunder close enough to make me jump, yet he doesn’t seem at all affected by the storm that’s rolling onto McBride Mountain.
But he was definitely affected back there.
I’ve never seen him so out of control, even in the last several months, when he has seemed to have been unravelling, he’s always managed to conceal the worst of it, to bring himself up here before he truly fell apart. But the way he woke up from that nightmare, the way he trembled, that terrified, horrified, lost look in his dark eyes, and what he just said…not to mention what he just did.
I can’t let him walk away when he’s like this. Not after what he inferred back there—that there were times he thought about never coming back—permanently. Not after what he said to me about the night he broke my heart which he seems to truly believe.
Despite the rain falling steadily now, I reach back and snag my boots, slip them on without even tying them, and race out after him. They squelch in the mud outside the cabin, and I wince as my t-shirt and jeans that I fell asleep in are almost instantly soaked.
Something tells me I’ll regret this later, but I take off after him, running as fast as I can on the uneven and unfamiliar ground in the boots that are too loose, in the dark that’s only illuminated by the flashes of lightning that occur every few minutes.
By the time I reach the entrance to the path, he’s already on it, several yards into the thick, high trees. The canopy arching above us blocks out the flashes of light, leaving him to flee in the dark.
“Where the hell are you going?”
This time, my voice reaches him.
He freezes mid step, his back and shoulders tensing before he turns his head and looks over his shoulder at me. “What do you care?”
“Jesus Christ, Connor.” I approach him slowly, like he’s a wounded wild animal that might lash out and bite if I get too close, even though all I’m trying to do is free him from the trap he put himself in. “We’re not going to talk about what just happened in there?”
Even in the darkness, I can see his jaw clench and his biceps bulge as he tightens his fists at his sides. “I don’t know what the fuck just happened, Raven.”
Water cascades down his suntanned skin, over his heaving bare chest and rippling abs. Every part of him is so tense that he vibrates the same way the ground under us does with each roll of thunder.
Another explodes somewhere close enough to make me wince, and I glance back to what I can see of the clearing through the trees at the end of the path. “We need to get back inside.”
Connor inclines his head toward the cabin. “You should. I’m fine.”
“You’re definitely not fine, Connor.”
The echo of our earlier words when I woke him from the nightmare only seems to anger him more.
His low growl of warning couldn’t be more clear. “I don’t need you to remind me of that, Raven.”
I throw up my hands, the helplessness of my situation and his role in it overwhelming me. “Then stop pretending you are. And stop pretending that you didn’t just kiss me.”
He winces as if acknowledging that fact hurts him physically.
Maybe he wanted to pretend it didn’t happen.
Maybe he hoped he would come back tomorrow and I would pretend it hadn’t.
Maybe he’s so far gone that he doesn’t even think it was real, just another nightmare that came after the first.
But he’s spent too much time hiding from his demons, including the one that he’s staring at now. He won’t walk away from me again without us having it out about this, without facing what we didn’t all those years ago.
