He deserved to know. Especially after he’d climbed . . . wait. “Why did Denali betray you? Because your dad died on the mountain?”
“You remember that?”
She leaned back, still under his jacket. Pressed her hand to his chest. “Yeah.”
A beat pulsed between them.
She had to at least tell him something of the truth. “I remember everything about Afghanistan. And, I wish I’d been there in Germany when you woke up.”
He blinked at that. Swallowed. Looked away.
Her voice thickened. “I was . . . well, I was already in trouble, or I would have been there, Ry. Really.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Not long enough by the twitching on his face. His voice dropped. “You know, after I got home from Germany, I did some rehab time in Walter Reed, and then I . . . I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I came back to Alaska.”
“The shadow of Denali.”
He looked at her, and one side of his mouth tweaked up. “Yeah. Always there, always watching. And I did exactly what my dad did after my mother and brother died.”
She frowned.
“I fell apart.”
Oh. Uh—
“After their deaths, my dad just . . . he lost it. Started drinking. Lost his job on the mountain. Lost himself for a long time. And then, when I turned eighteen, I asked him to teach me to climb Denali. That changed him. We spent the summer climbing it—I actually went up three times. I went away to Anchorage, to the university, and he pulled himself together. Got a job as a guide with an expedition team. When I came back, I spent the summer on the mountain, volunteering at Basin Camp, on the Denali volunteer rescue team. He took up groups.”
“Is that . . .” She drew in her breath.
“Yeah. That’s the summer Denali changed him. Healed him.” He drew in a breath. “And then Denali betrayed him. And me.”
His jaw hardened. “I was so angry when I got back from Afghanistan. At my leg. At the mountain and what it took from me. At the CIA for sending us into an ambush—all of it. Honestly, I’m still angry most of the time. And I didn’t know what to do with it until about a year ago when Logan Thorne showed up.”
Logan—wait. “What? He was one of the two guys who went missing, right?”
He nodded. “We thought for sure no one could have lived through the bombing, but as we were being choppered out, Ham spotted a group of Taliban hiking out with Royal and Thorne.”
She closed her eyes, praying she didn’t betray her relief. They were alive.
“Yeah, I guess Ham and Chief McCord and a handful of SEALs went in and got them, later, but I was in Germany, getting a new knee, and I never knew what happened until Thorne showed up last summer, shot.”
“He’s alive.” She opened her eyes, fighting to keep from crying again, but his words had unwrapped a fist around her heart. Alive.
She hadn’t killed them. But oh, the torture they must have gone through—
“How was he?”
Orion blew out a breath. “Actually, Thorne has a whopper of a story. Black ops, CIA, and a host of other players who have tried to keep Operation Bulldog and his and Royal’s rescue under the hood. And, Royal’s still missing, so in my gut I think his story is true. If it is then Royal could be in big trouble, on the run and in over his head.”
She knew where he was going with this, and it wasn’t going to be good. “You want to find Royal.”
He frowned at her. “How—”
“Because I know you, Ry. You’re a rescuer. You’re the guy who runs toward the bullets to get your friends out of trouble.”
His chest rose. Fell. His heart thumped hard under her hand. He met her eyes, something fierce in them.
Oh my.
“I should have kissed you that night.” His voice dropped, a near whisper, and with it, his gaze, onto her lips. Back to her eyes. “In Afghanistan, before I rolled out. You were so beautiful—still are. And I wanted to kiss you.” He blew out a breath. “I wish I didn’t always have to think about everything. Tear it apart, analyze it. I wish I could just—react and believe and trust and know that—”
“That the mountain won’t betray you with a sudden avalanche?” She didn’t know why she said that, but her voice fell to a whisper and she understood. Oh, she understood.
“Or a fall into a crevasse with the woman I’ve been aching to find?”
Her breath caught.
“Jacie Calhoun, I’ve really missed you.”
She swallowed. “I missed you too,” she said quietly, ignoring the screaming in her head, her brain tapping hard on the door of her heart. Run! “I wish you’d kissed me, too.”
His smile was slow, a hint of fire lit his eyes, and he grabbed her zipper at her neck, using it to tug her toward him. She let herself be moved, and he wound his hand behind her neck.
Then he kissed her. Softly at first, and her heart stopped, savoring the taste of him, salty, a little parched, his lips gentle on her mouth. He stayed there a moment, chaste, sweet, and she closed her eyes.
She pictured him unlocking yet another door inside him, walking through, or perhaps letting her in. He was holding his breath too, because he let her go, leaned his forehead to hers, and his breath shuddered out. He swallowed, licked his lips. “Not enough,” he whispered.
She met those green eyes. Nodded.
Not enough. She could never, really, get enough of this amazing man.
He kissed her again. This time, in his touch emerged the man she’d seen climb aboard the chopper, the fierce warrior, the rescuer who’d scaled the mountain to find her. He kissed her with a hunger that he might have been fighting for three years, a desperation, even a beauty in it for all the pieces of his heart he was giving over.
Orion. He wrapped his other arm around her, holding her to himself and she let it all crash over her. He was an avalanche, a cascade of chaos and white, gathering speed. Deep inside she knew if she didn’t slow them down, her heart might hurtle off the top never to be recovered.
But she couldn’t stop. She grabbed the lapel of his jacket and pulled him closer, surrendering. He was strength and power and fierceness and . . .
Safety.
She wanted to weep with the strange swell of emotions he unleashed in her as he held her cocooned in his jacket, a tiny fortress of hope and courage and . . .
Oh. No.
She trembled even as she pushed away from him. “Orion. I—”
“Jenny, I’ve been wanting to do that for three years.” His gaze found hers and held it fast. “I can’t believe it took me this long to find you.”
Oh. “Me too, PJ. Me too.” She leaned in and pressed her head to his chest, needing his heartbeat.
Because as soon as they got off this mountain, she’d have to keep running.
But this time, she’d leave behind her heart.
The locomotive thunder of the wind against the tent woke Aria.
Or it could have been the coughing that wracked her body. She’d been struggling with the sense of weight in her chest for hours, holding back her coughs.
She wasn’t so stupid to not recognize the early onset of AMS.
She felt the fine hairs on her neck burning as she opened her eyes. Jake sat up on his sleeping bag, one arm folded over his body, the other in a fist over his mouth, as if in thought. His gaze was pinned on Sasha, but tracked over to her as she unzipped her bag and sat up.