“Don’t.” She didn’t even glance over her shoulder. “Just don’t.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Chest locked tight. The water sound—wouldn’t stop—crash of metal, broken glass, my plane spinning—
She was fine. Standing right there. But I kept seeing her fall, kept seeing—
Cisco fell. I fell.
“Damnit, Alex,” I hissed.
“Finn,” Luke stepped between us and I jumped back. He looked at me with something akin to pity. Didn’t he see what was happening? “Let’s take a walk.”
“She needs to get away from the water,” I protested, but I could hear how wrong it sounded. How irrational I sounded. What was happening? Alex was—
“She’s fine,” Elowyn said sharply. Where had she come from? “She’s been working with us for two hours. She knows what she’s doing.”
Alex continued filling sandbags like I wasn’t there. Like I didn’t exist.
The noise in my ears shifted, got sharper. Everything snapping into focus—people staring, Mom looking stricken. I looked down at my shaking hands.
What was I… Alex…
“Come on, brother,” Luke’s hand was on my shoulder as he guided me away from the creek.
I let him lead me away, but I kept looking back at Alexworking steadily in the rain, twenty feet from churning water. Still there. Still too close.
Luke drove me back to the lodge while I sat in the passenger seat, shaking—from adrenaline, from the cold rain, from the horrible realization of what I’d just done.
“You want to talk about what just happened?” Luke asked as we pulled up to the lodge.
“I fucked up.”
“Yeah, you did,” he turned off the engine and looked at me. “But that wasn’t just you being an asshole, was it. That was something else.”
Something else. Stress. Trauma response. Irrational and suffocating fear.
“I need to—” I started, then stopped. What? Apologize? Go back and make it worse?
“You need to leave her alone,” Luke said quietly. “And then once you’re feeling like yourself again, you need to figure out how to fix this.”
He was right. My body was vibrating—adrenaline bleeding off, exhaustion overfilling the gaps.
I made it to our room before everything fell apart.
The space was too big and too small at the same time. The housekeeper had been in. The beds were made to perfection. Items had been stacked neatly. Towels replaced. Gone was the ridiculous pillow fort. Alex’s beauty products remained on the vanity next to my hair products. Our toothbrushes shared a glass tumbler as a makeshift holder. In the closet, her clothes were mixed with mine in the hamper, waiting to be washed. All of it—what we’d been building together over the last few weeks. The last few months.
I’d just destroyed it in front of everyone. In front of Alex.
I kicked off my boots and sat on the edge of our bed—the one we’d shared since our arrival—and stared at nothing. The fabric of my clothes against my skin was like the lick of flame, too rough,too hot, and too tight. The sound of the rain against the windows was too loud, too much like the rushing creek, too much like the crack of fire.
The crash hit me like a freight train. Shaking that had nothing to do with cold now, excruciating pressure in my skull, and the horrible certainty that I’d just ruined the best thing in my life because my damaged brain couldn’t process that Alex was competent and safe.
I pulled out my phone and typed a single message:I’m sorry.
Then I deleted it. Typed it again. Deleted it again.
Finally sent it, then turned off the phone, stripped down to my underwear and fell face-first onto the bed.
Chapter 40
