Her eyes stung. She knew that look. You didn’t get that look out of your head, even with a stranger. With someone you knew, with yourbrother... “I would have gone for help, too. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Sheesh, you’d think that after all this time she’d have found something more helpful to say thanI’m sorry.
“I think that’s all the denim.” He ran his fingers around her calf and grabbed a packet of antiseptic wipes. “This is gonna hurt.”
She released his shoulder. “It’s fine.”
“Thank you for being the first person ever not to say, ‘It wasn’t your fault, there was nothing you could have done, you couldn’t have known...’”
“I figure you already know all that.”
He started wiping, his touch so gentle she could barely feel it, though she could feel the sting, all right. “My parents made such a point of not blaming me that I knew they were struggling not to themselves. They were so determined that it shouldn’t destroy us as a family, but something like that—it can’t help but screw everything up. So I did the adult thing and ran away.”
“Oh, believe me, I get that.”
“Thing is, because I’ve upended my daily life, it seems possible that Zack’s back in San Antonio, doing his thing. It’s not like I’m walking past his old office every morning, or sitting at the bar where we used to hang, or driving past his apartment. It’s mostly when I go home that...” He shook his head. “And I don’t go home, so...”
Her chest twisted. If she lost Tane...
“So, yeah, you asked before if I was pissed? I don’t know if it’s that anymore, but the regret sure follows you around.” He grabbed another wipe. “Are you angry, about your parents?”
“Hell, yeah. Whenever I think of it—which is a lot—I get this knot of rage right here.” She thumped her chest.
They fell silent. The pain dulled to a stinging throb, which had to be progress. She pulled her right arm across her chest and then her left, but the ache remained.
“To risk stating the obvious and saying what everybody says,” she ventured, “you know you shouldn’t be angry at yourself for your decision, right?”
“In theory, sure. But it’s not something I can rationalize. Not an hour of a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d stayed. Of course, I wish that fucking branch had never happened, but that wasn’t the direct result of a choice I made.” He tossed a wipe in a growing pile. “What did they go to prison for—your folks?”
Tia bit her cheek. How could she clam up after his admission? “They used to own a big retail chain. High profile, you know? Always sponsoring this and mentoring that and sitting on boards and getting awards and going to black tie functions. All over the social pages. Media darlings.”
He opened a tube of antiseptic cream and started dabbing her wounds. “I’m guessing you didn’t live around here.”
“No, I grew up in the city, in Auckland.” She massaged the muscles at the top of her back. “My dad didn’t want anything to do with mykoro, with his working-class roots. He got out of Wairoimata as soon as he was old enough and only grudgingly came back to argue with Koro every Christmas. He sent my brother and me to private schools, hired tutors, sent us for music lessons and golf lessons. They were grooming us to take over the business.”
“You, too, huh? But you enlisted?”
He fixed a dressing to her shin and grabbed another. “My great rebellion. I always had this uncomfortable feeling about their business. I guess I picked up on the undercurrents in their conversations, their body language, but I was too naive to know what it meant.”
“Which was?”
“They were committing massive fraud and tax evasion. Usual story—the company was failing but they kept lying to shareholders to prop it up, lying to the tax department, hoping they could work their way out of it. But it just got worse until... Two years ago I was on transport duty in Iraq when Tane sent word. They’d been arrested—him, too. It was one of the biggest fraud cases in New Zealand.”
“Tane?” he said, carefully matching her pronunciation.Tah-nay.
“My brother. He very narrowly avoided jail. He’d been working with them a few years, but they’d kept him in the dark and he managed to prove it. The whole thing broke him, though.”
“Ah, man, that’s tough.”
“Sucks to be us, eh?”
He met her gaze, shielding the light, and grinned. “Sure does.”
She chewed her bottom lip and his gaze dropped to it, making her décolletage warm. If she leaned in a little and he leaned in a little... Her breath shallowed out. His jaw twitched and he looked away. As he grabbed another dressing, she allowed herself a full inhalation. Turned out she was a sucker for a sexy man listening to her pity party.
She eased back onto her elbows, buying some distance. “So this solo kayaking thing. Is it a tribute to your brother?”
“Exactly that,” he said, resuming his task. “Once a year, every year since—except when I enlisted and hadn’t earned the leave. Before he died, we narrowed down a list of the wildest runs in the world and made a pact to kayak them. We’d only just started when...”
“So you’re finishing it for him.”
