All of that was still there, but it was largely overshadowed by her visceral reaction to going on that thrill ride with him, sitting alone in the cab of her truck. It had felt . . . intimate, and wild. Like he was talking directly to her, taking her—specifically her—along with him. Which she knew, intellectually, wasn’t the case. He was taking millions of others along with him. But the magic of Wyatt Reed was that he made that reality fall completely away. It was just her. And him. Thrashing through a jungle, leaping off a cliff, navigating a river that was all boulders and thrashing white water. She started off wondering things about how they worked the camera angles, but those questions were soon forgotten. He was right there turning to look at her, talking directly to her, as if she was next to him.
Her pulse still jumped when she relived the journey in her head. And at the very same moment, in real life, he really was right next to her, walking with her, talking to her. Talk about surreal.
Add to that all the rest of it. The man who’d just taken her on a thrill ride down the Amazon was also the guy she’d once confided her deepest secrets to. The guy who’d turned to her in an effort to get out from under the bloody fist of his father. The same guy who had laid his heart right at her feet.
The same guy she’d told that she loved him, too . . . like a brother. Also, the same guy she’d simply never thought of in that way. Until she’d crushed his heart, and he’d walked away, from her, from rodeo life, all of it . . . and then she couldn’t think of him any other way. Her own heart broken, because she’d just let go of the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“What was the fluke?” she asked, somewhat abruptly, needing to get her mind off thoughts of them, together. “How could you accidentally launch a whole planet of you?”
They approached the dock and he tilted his head toward it, a questioning look on his face. She nodded, and they walked to the end and sat, each leaning back on one of the pilings, facing one another. She took her cowboy hat off so she could lean her head back, and set it on the dock, tucking the brim under her thigh so the breeze wouldn’t blow it into the water. Then immediately missed the privacy that brim provided, allowing her to look at him without being obvious. He was hard not to look at. He’s just so damn handsome, she thought, and shifted her gaze out to the water while he talked. As privacy went, it wasn’t perfect, but at least this way he couldn’t read every thought that was going through her mind as he had so effortlessly done, once upon a time.
“The fluke,” he began. “Well, as I told you before, when I first got away from Zachariah, I couldn’t seem to flee far enough to feel safe. It was a mind game he’d played with me, and I knew that, but I couldn’t sleep, or even think clearly. So, the first thing I figured out was how to go about getting a passport. Then I worked odd jobs until I had enough money saved to get on a plane and fly away.”
“To where?”
He shrugged. “It didn’t matter. Just not here. I bought the ticket that would take me the farthest away.”
“Which got you to . . . ?”
“I actually never made it to that first destination. I flew out of New York, and the layover was in Iceland.” The memory made him smile. “Iceland. I was so awestruck. I wandered out of the Reykjavík airport . . . and never went back to catch the other leg of the flight. I hitched a ride into town. It was summer there, so the sun never went down. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, or even imagined. Honestly, I felt like I was on another planet.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding as comprehension began to dawn.
“I started writing down everything I was seeing and what I thought about it. I stayed with a family there and they helped me get a work visa. I worked on a fishing boat, like a trawler, and one of the men who was on the crew with me was from Greenland. Greenland,” he said, his expression marveling, as if he was still hearing it for the first time.
That was his magic, Chey thought, right there. With everything he’d seen and done since, that memory still captivated him as utterly as it had the first time. His easy, understated confidence contrasted with a real sense of earnestness, as if he wanted you to see what he was seeing, feel what he was feeling, because it was just so thrilling, he couldn’t keep it to himself.
“It was the first time I felt truly free,” he told her. “I could be whoever I wanted to be. Working that trawler was the hardest, most grueling thing I’ve ever done. It terrified me daily, but I was doing it. Over the course of that summer, it changed me. I was surrounded by people who liked me, championed me, wanted me to succeed. And, I’m not saying I had none of that before in my life,” he was quick to add. “But it was the first time I could revel in it, without having to look over my shoulder, or worry. About anything. About anyone. I know they accepted me partly because I was this kind of freak of nature to them, this skinny kid from the States who’d essentially run away to join the circus. I was a novelty at first, something to look at and point at. They marveled at my stupidity for actually choosing to do what they had no choice but to do. I had a tough work ethic they respected, though, and eventually, I became stronger, more confident; then their acceptance was earned in all the ways that truly mattered.”
“You showed them,” Chey said dryly.
He grinned. “I did.” His expression sobered, but his eyes were still full of light, and his voice had that understated energy that made her want to sit forward when he spoke. “It was amazing to me, what I could accomplish, what I wanted to accomplish, when I didn’t have to spend so much of my emotional energy navigating the minefield that was Zachariah’s temper. I didn’t have to plan my day around trying not to get hit.”
“Oh, Wyatt—” she said softly, and it didn’t escape her that he didn’t refer to his father as “dad” because Zachariah had never, not ever been that.
“I’m not saying that for pity or empathy. You were there, you know what that time was like for me. You were my rock, my escape, my place to vent.” He smiled again, and his gaze was filled with affection. “It took an entire fishing village in Iceland to replace you.”
She smiled with him, even as her heart broke for him all over again.
“I only bring that up as a way to explain how profound that time felt for me. I could have worked on ten trawlers, doing twice the work. I truly did feel like Superman. It was life altering, in the truest sense of the word.”
“I’m glad you got away,” she told him. “Far enough away that you could allow yourself to be free. It sounds like a rebirth.”
He nodded. “That’s the perfect word for it.”
“Then what did you do? After Iceland?”
“When the season ended, Femo—Johan Filemonsen was his full name, but we called him Femo because that’s what his little granddaughter called him—he was going back to Nuuk. The capital city of Greenland. I asked him if I could go with him. I had a hunger then, to see more. Do more. Knowing I had a passport and just had to earn enough money for a ticket was intoxication. I could literally see anything, go anywhere. I just wanted to see this place he’d talked about, experience it. He said he could get me a job there. I planned to go back to Iceland the following summer and work the trawler again, so I had a safety net of sorts. And off we went.”