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She shoots me a glare and draws her lips together in a line so tight I can barely see them. “Maybe another time.”
“So you’re not going to bother telling us why you ran off?” Dallas looks about as unsurprised as I am. Nothing about this has been easy. Why start now?
“Now you’re getting the idea.”
When he draws a breath like he’s ready to press the subject, she only tightens her jaw. I wonder if she knows how much sheand Mason have in common. How annoyingly similar they can be when they’re feeling stubborn.
“That’s fine,” I assure her with a faint grin. “We have all the time in the world to listen to anything you have to say. We can talk about it in the morning, on the way back to the hotel.”
“You are determined to do this, aren’t you?” she whispers.
“We didn’t come all this way to say hi and move along.” I make it a point to hold her gaze, silently pleading for more than this frigid attitude. Aren’t we better than this? Haven’t we been through enough together?
I sound like a lovesick kid, even to myself. And it’s fairly clear she doesn’t feel the same.
“I’m fucking exhausted,” I announce. “How about we get some sleep before morning?”
“That depends.” Dallas peers into the bedroom before sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and giving Natalie a narrow-eyed look.
“Depends on what?” she asks suspiciously.
“On whether we can trust you to stick around. You’re not going to run off again, are you?”
She eyes the window. “Like you said, the weather is a disaster. I’d be a real idiot to go out on a night like this.”
Maybe I know her too well, or maybe she’s a little rusty when it comes to telling a believable lie. Either way, it’s clear she doesn’t mean a word of what she’s saying.
Dallas and I have a silent conversation over the top of her head. It’s clear what we have to do. I don’t much love the idea of sharing a king size bed with him, but it does look like a comfortable bed, and there seems to be plenty of room. I shrug. He shrugs.
“I’m not tired,” she announces.
“I don’t remember asking if you were.” I’m sick of the kid glove treatment. If she is going to be a hardass, refusing togive an inch, I am not going to baby her. She gives up the fight quickly, shaking her head as she turns toward the bedroom and marches to the bed.
Sharing a bed with Dallas. There’s something I never wanted to experience. Yet here we are, climbing in on either side of the woman we’ve practically moved heaven and earth to find. No matter how I tell myself to stay awake, that we should sleep in shifts to watch over her, there’s no fighting the overwhelming fatigue that soon closes my eyes and wraps darkness around me.
4
DALLAS
It isn’t Griffin’s snoring that wakes me. It’s not Natalie’s presence beside me, either. All night, I couldn’t manage anything beyond light, dreamless sleep. I was too aware of her presence at my side. Wondering whether she was sleeping, or if she was trying to sneak away. She weighed far too heavily on my mind to let me fall into a deep sleep.
Until recently, at least. I must eventually have sunk deeper since somewhere in the past hour or so between darkness and dawn, she crept out of bed without either of us noticing.
I’m not going to jump to conclusions. She could be in the bathroom for all I know. I roll out of bed as gently as possible—though the way Griffin is snoring, I could probably march a brass band through the room, and he wouldn’t stir. I want so much to find her brushing her teeth or washing her face, yet there’s no great surprise involved in finding the bathroom empty. Along with the rest of the cabin.
She left something behind, though. A note waits on the mantle, and I grab for it before returning to the bedroom and kicking Griffin’s leg. “She’s gone.” I thrust the note at him, a folded slip of paper containing a single word.Sorry.
“Motherfucker.” He bolts upright, instantly alert, while I go to the window to look out at the morning. The storm has passed, and I’m thankful for that because a day spent trudging through the woods in the middle of a cold rain isn’t high on the list of activities I’d like to try out.
“Where the hell did she go this time?” It’s a rhetorical question, one to which I have no answer.
All I can do is grunt as we leave the room, grabbing our coats and shoving our feet into our boots. “Let’s hope she didn’t find the car,” I offer.
“I still have the keys,” he points out before groaning. “I’m sure she could hot-wire it.”
I shudder to think of her leaving us here, though I’m sure she figures we could make it back between the two of us and our experience.
Sorry, she says. If only I could imagine she means it.
