Zahra has far less admiration in her expression, her face instead filled with relief as she whispers, “Thank you, Derek,” to the rocks beneath her feet.
Just how bad has Brody been?
Anger still burning in my chest, I send a questioning look to Hunter, who gives me a nod of acknowledgement. He’ll keep an eye on the women and prevent Brody from any further harassment. It’s a much better use of his talents than keeping me from tripping over rocks.
“We should get going,” I mutter, nodding to the group descending to the river. As Morgan and Zahra take each other’s hands and start down the trail, I grab Maverick’s arm to hold him back. When he looks at me, a question in his eyes, I keep my voice calm as I say, “What’s your plan, Mav?”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
I’m making assumptions, but my gut tells me I’m right about this. “When the trip is over, how are you going to pair everyone up?”
From the start of this trip, he’s been pretty even-keeled and only mildly emotive, but now Maverick gapes at me with shock and embarrassment splashed across his face. “How did—”
“I need to know the women will be safe from Brody. Tell me there’s not some crazy contract forcing people together or anything.”
He shakes his head. “No. No, the trip is just a way of putting people together who might click, but that’s all it is. I didn’t…” He huffs out a breath. “I didn’t know Brody was such a tool.”
“That’s the problem with people on the internet.” I sigh, thinking of the million tabloid stories that are constantly circulating about me and my friends. “You never get the full story.” I pat him on the back and start down the trail, Hunter and Maverick behind me.
A moment later, Hunter asks a soft question not meant for me, but I listen anyway. “You made the website?”
Maverick hesitates but says, “Yeah. WanderLove is probably dead, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it needs some tweaking,” Hunter says, making me smile, “but I wouldn’t give up just because you’ve had some hiccups.”
“Hiccups?” Maverick laughs without humor. “I should have stepped in when we first got here. It’s not like Brody’s been subtle with his crap. But no, I had to be a coward and make Derek Riley fix my mistake.”
Though I want to turn around and argue, I keep my mouth shut. I’ve been where he is. It can be hard to step up and protect people around you. Before I met Bonnie, I more often than not kept my head down and did my job instead of stirring the pot. It was Bonnie’s humility and kindness in the face of cruelty that eventually pushed me to speak up and care more about someone else’s happiness than my own perfection.
Maverick just needs someone to give him a similar push.
“You’ll figure things out,” Hunter says. “This was just one attempt.”
Maverick sighs. “Yeah. I’ll learn from this and do better next time.”
“Exactly. Failure is part of life.”
“Nobody’s perfect, right?”
My foot slides on a loose rock, but I regain my balance and keep moving, even though I feel Hunter’s eyes on my back. He knows I’ve been listening, and he’s going to want to talk. But I don’t know if this is a conversation I can have.
Nobody’s perfect.
Maverick is right, and of course nobody’s perfect. It’s the nature of being human, and I’ve never expected anyone to be perfect or even come close. No one except me.
Why is it so easy to believe it when it comes to everyone else, but I can accept nothing less from myself?
I thought I knew the answer once, but like I told Donovan yesterday, something changed. Something in me broke. Bonnie doesn’t know it, but her goodness was the first thing to get me to go to therapy and try to get over my issues, and the tools I honed in those sessions worked for a long time. I stopped meeting with my therapist after I met Liam, when life got too busy to keep up with regular visits, but it wasn’t until the last couple of years that my cracks started to grow beyond what I could patch.
When my life started to slowly crumble around me.
Yes, I should go back to therapy, but this feels too urgent. Whatever I’m doing wrong, I need to fix it before I crash to earth and potentially bring the people I care about down with me.
Maybe it’s for the best that Donovan is avoiding me; the last thing I need is to drag her into my mess when it’s clear she has a mess of her own.
Chapter Nineteen
Donovan
