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Chapter Fourteen
Zane
When Sara walks back into camp, I want to sweep her up and make everything better in the same way I did last night, except now I’d let her know I meant every movement. Fuck, just the thought of rubbing against her last night had me hard all day. And knowing the guys were with her, touching her, holding her… the whole thing makes my heart burn. I should’ve been there. It should have been me making her come—relaxing her into submission.
Once the sun goes down, there isn’t much left to do in camp except stoke the fire and eat, which I’m very thankful for. Before Colin and Brad talked me into this shit, I watched a few episodes and nearly every person has issues with finding food. The fact that we’ve had an abundance of fish has been a blessing.
I poke at the blue and orange flames with a stick and pull our dinner closer to the embers, hoping for a smokier taste tonight. It’s only been two days, but I’m already missing seasoning, butter, and maybe some fried potatoes.
“You hungry?” I look up at Sara who's sitting in the shelter with her short legs sticking out. Colin and Brad have gone up to the well and I’m surprised she hasn’t followed behind.
She nods. “Starved.”
One word responses. I wonder if she doesn’t want to talk, or she doesn’t know what to say. I was kind of gruff earlier, maybe I should address it. If I’m going to let my guard down with her, I want to do it right.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I say, making my way toward the shelter to be near her. “I shouldn’t have just barged in like that. I was thinking about Mari and how complicated this whole thing is. I’ve had a hard time moving on sinc—”
“Colin told me about the three of you,” she reaches her small hand out toward me. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be to move on after losing her.”
In the quiets of the night, right before she passed, Mari held my hand across the thin white sheet of a hospital room and made me swear I’d look for someone else to love. I did it, because I didn’t want her to worry, but at the time I had no intentions of holding true to it. Looking back, it’d be the first promise I ever broke to her. I look toward Sara. She’s so young, her whole life still out in front of her. I shouldn’t be attracted to her. I shouldn’t need to touch her so desperately.
“Are you okay?” she asks, brushing her hand down my arm. “I’m sorry. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to know. I just tho—”
“You’re fine,” I say, shaking out of my own thoughts. “I’m glad you know. Mari would’ve liked you.”
Sara smiles, pulls her hand back onto her lap, and begins to twist her fingers back and forth nervously.
“Did I say something wron—”
“No!” she says as she snaps her head back toward me. “Not at all. It’s me. I’m…” She takes in a deep breath before tears burst from her eyes and onto her cheeks and that protective instinct I’ve had for her comes flooding into the foreground.
“What’s wrong?” I sit beside her in the enclosure, my arm wrapped around her small frame as she cries so hard she shakes. “Sara…”
She gazes up at me, wiping tears from her eyes. “I did something awful. I—”
“Brad told us about Kemp. It’s okay. He shouldn’t have—”
“It’s not that, Zane. It’s worse. It’s so much worse. You guys deserve so much better. You’ve all been through so much. You don’t understand what this is. I’m a terrible person.” She’s nearly heaving her words, the air from her lungs catching on itself before she’s able to take a deep breath.
I hold her head against my chest. “Princess, whatever it is, we will figure it out. You aren’t alone.”
“Zane,” she says, looking up at me with wide eyes as though she’s trying to compose herself.
“What is it?” I brush the tears off her cheek with my thumb.
She lets out a sigh. “There’s something I didn’t tell Brad.”
The suspense is killing me. “What’s that?”
“That day that I went to Kemp’s office with the lacy schoolgirl thing, I brought him a gift.” I think I hear her heart pounding as she takes another breath. “When his wife burst in, she confronted me. She wanted to know who I was and how long we’d been seeing each other. I told her, then she saw the present on his desk.” Sara looks away and runs her hand down through her hair as she chews on her bottom lip. “Anyway, she opens the gift, sees what’s inside, and that sets off this whole series of events. And that’s why I’m here. I did a bad thing, and his wife… she wants what I have, then she wants me dead.”
My muscles tighten at her distress, but I still don’t really know what she did, or how to help if she won’t tell me what happened. At this point, I’m not ruling out murder.
“You have to tell me what it was that happened, Sara. What was in the box?”
“Zane,” she says, looking up at me with a quivering lip. “I’m pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” I repeat.
