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that mattered. It was the answer. "Any of them ever do it?"
"Maybe one. Dr. Gray ..." She said the name softly, as if it meant something. "She seemed to think I needed to be safe."
You could be safe with me. The thought came at him from nowhere, blindsiding him. He tried to push it away, tried not to believe in it, but it was too late.
"You're safe now," he said quietly.
She turned to him quickly, her eyes wide. Their gazes met for a second, and he saw a flaring of hope, then a crushing bleakness. She laughed; it was a forced, harsh sound. "Yeah, I've heard that one before. There is no safety in life."
He looked at her a long time, wondering what to say. Somehow, his thoughts bled into words and slipped from his mouth. "You scare me, Lainie."
She frowned. "How?"
He shook his head. He'd spoken without thinking, and now he felt slightly disoriented. Putting emotions into words had never been easy for him, but he knew that he had to try. He didn't want this moment to pass into nothingness, into the murky realm of what-might-have-beens. "I ... lost my heart once to a woman very much like you. But she didn't have your strength."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"I'm not sure."
For a breathless second, she didn't respond, just sat there, motionless, staring at him. Then suddenly she jerked to her feet. "What a weird conversation. Let's get going, Killian. It's almost first light."
The connection between them was gone, severed cleanly. He watched her walk away, her body held stiff and rigid, her chin high. She strode to the camp kit and
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started burrowing through the supplies for bacon and beans.
As he watched her, listening to the rattle and clank of her nervous hands riffling through the goods, he knew what his broken heart had to do with her.
He wanted her to know he was capable of that kind of emotion.
"Christ," he cursed softly. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that caring about Lainie would be the biggest mistake of his life.
And somehow, without even knowing when, he'd already made it.
Killian squatted by the small stream, staring unsee-ingly at his own reflection. He held the last breakfast plate, half-washed and forgotten. With a sigh, he eased back to a sit and let the plate clatter onto the rock beside him.
He stacked the bent tin dishes and carried them back to the campfire, repacking them before he turned to Lainie.
She sat huddled in a ball by the fire, looking at her feet, her arms drawn taut around her shins. She was terrified but trying to be brave, like a pathetically trapped animal, waiting, wondering if it should gnaw its foot off to be free.
&nbs
p; He winced at the thought, feeling sick inside and knowing it was his fault. He'd bound, tied, and gagged her, humiliated and beaten her. No wonder she was afraid of him.
He'd hurt her; that, he knew. But lots of people had hurt her. He could see it in her sometimes, that residual haunting in the eyes that told him more about her than he wanted to know.
What he saw in her eyes broke his heart.
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Suddenly everything he'd tried to be for the last fifteen years started slipping away, dissolving in the dirt at his feet. He couldn't cling to the shell he'd built around his soul anymore. It hadn't protected him anyway. All his hard, cold detachment hadn't saved him from this moment. From this woman.
He moved toward her, kneeled in the dirt beside her. "Lainie?"
