Daredevil’s Run

Chapter 6

Alex slept badly that night. She woke up several times, once in time to watch the almost full moon rise above the rim of the canyon and flood the river gorge with silvery light, and the stars go into hiding. She watched the river carry the moon’s broken reflection along on its rippling current without ever taking it away. She saw the pines in black silhouette, and the smooth granite boulders huddled along the riverbanks like herds of great slumbering beasts.

Except for the chuckle of the river and the whisper of the breeze in the pines, the world was silent.

Across the camp she could see Cory and Sam, their sleeping bags close together, touching. And Matt’s, on the other side, some distance from her own.

I can’t hear him breathe. He always used to snore. I wonder if he’s awake, too.

She fought the urge to call to him, whisper to him in the darkness. If she did, would he answer? What would she do if he did? Would she go to him? And if she did…then what?

Images…feelings…Before she knew it, they came tumbling in. She didn’t want them but couldn’t stop them, couldn’t make them go away. So she closed her eyes and surrendered, let herself drown in the sweet, aching memory of how it had been…with Mattie, making love.

He was so sensual, for a man. He loved to be touched, not just there, but everywhere. And I loved touching him, with my lips and tongue and fingers and breasts. I loved the way his skin felt…smelled…tasted. I could spend hours just…touching him.

And he loved to touch me, too. He never seemed to be in a hurry to get inside me, as if that were the only thing that mattered. No…he would kiss me and kiss me…everywhere. Not as if that was something he had to do to get where he wanted to be, but as if this…the kissing…was all that mattered.

Oh, Mattie. I wonder…would it still be like that now?

What would it be like now? Even if you can’t move, can you still feel?

We used to laugh a lot when we made love. I wonder, Mattie…would we…could we…still laugh?

The smell of coffee woke her up. She sat bolt upright in the morning chill and saw that it was early, just breaking day, and the pale ghost of the moon was slipping below the mountains on the far side of the river. And that Matt was already up and in his chair, with the stove going and coffee made.

Her sudden movement must have alerted him. He turned and saw her sitting up in her sleeping bag and made a little beckoning head-jerk, as if to say, Hey, get up and get your lazy self over here. A tremor ran through her, and she saw herself rising, going over to him and putting her arms around his neck and breathing in the warm, sleepy-man smell of him.

And so, contrarily, she took her time disentangling herself from her sleeping bag, stretched…shivered in the shorts and tank she’d slept in as she slipped on her shoes, and finger-combed her hair that had come loose from its braid. Then, and only then, did she get up and make her way across to the fire and the warmth where Matt waited to pass her a mug of coffee.

She smiled at him as she took it and murmured, “Thank you.” Then, watching him reach to take a package of bacon out of the cooler, “You don’t have to do that.”

The smile he gave her back was crooked. “Figured you could use a little extra sleep, after the day you had yesterday.”

She feigned outrage in a squeaky whisper. “Me! You’re the one that went for a swim.”

He handed her a stainless steel bowl, a whisk and a carton of eggs. “Okay, then, make yourself useful. First morning out-omelets, right?”

“Surprised you remember that.” She set her coffee on the grill’s prep shelf, and as she leaned past him to take the milk from the cooler, inadvertently brushed against his arm.

Her heart jolted and her skin shivered at the touch. Had she done it on purpose? Surely not. But she hadn’t tried very hard to avoid touching him, either.

“Some things you don’t forget.” His voice was a husky drawl, so close she could feel his breath on her temple. She turned her head to look at him, and her braid tumbled over her shoulder to dangle between them. He didn’t have to move his hand much in order to grasp it.

An involuntary breath escaped her, not quite a gasp. She glanced down at his hand in its fingerless glove, holding her braid, his thumb stroking across the bumps and crevices, then lifted her eyes to his. They were so close, gazing back into hers. So close. If he tugged on her braid, even a little, and if she obeyed that summons…It would take no more than that.

Their eyes held. Time stopped.

A twig snapped in the quiet. Voices murmured across the camp. Alex straightened up, breathing again, as her braid slithered through Matt’s loosened grasp.

“Our guests are awake,” she said in a croaking voice, and only realized she’d said our when it was too late to take it back.

It was a picture-perfect day. As if, Alex thought, the river were trying to make up to them for its surliness the day before. The rapids were hair-raising enough to get everybody’s adrenaline pumping, but they all came through them without mishap. And in the quiet water between, there was time for picture-taking and storytelling, to surprise a doe and her fawn drinking in the shallows, and to catch an even more rare glimpse of a bobcat bounding away across the rocky hillside.

As the guides usually did during the quiet times on the river, Alex gave talks on the river’s history, geology, flora and fauna, although she felt self-conscious doing so now, with Matt there. He’d always been the better storyteller.

She said as much at one point, after forgetting a key point in the lecture she’d been giving on the role the Kern River Valley had played in the gold rush. Cory had smiled and said, “It runs in the family.”

“Really? How’s that?” Matt had seemed surprised.

“Dad loved to tell stories,” Cory had explained. “Used to make them up himself. That was before you were born, though. Before Vietnam.”

And it had hit Alex then, with a chilly sense of shock and shame, that this river run wasn’t even about her and Matt and whatever may or may not have been between them. She’d been so caught up in her own issues and emotions-how could she have forgotten what it must be like for him? Not just coming back to the river, and the life he’d once loved so much, but trying to get to know a brother he hadn’t known existed, a whole family history he didn’t know anything about.

Yeah, you’re one selfish bitch, Alex. The least you could do is quit thinking of your own issues and try not to make things any harder for him.

They took out for the noon break-a sumptuous spread of cold cuts, fruit and veggie plates, breads and cold drinks-nonalcoholic, since they still had more rapids to run that afternoon. Another of the cardinal rules of river rafting, right up there with “Watch for Rattlers” and “Leave No Trace,” was “Don’t Drink and Boat!”

After lunch, Sam volunteered to help Alex with the cleanup, while Matt and Cory went up the river-presumably to take care of personal and private needs. Alex was glad to have the help, and the company, since she wasn’t all that comfortable with the course her own thoughts had been taking lately. Not after her lightbulb moment on the river.

And besides, she genuinely liked Sam. Not being one who got close to very many people, and being an only child besides, Alex didn’t exactly know what having a sister would be like. But if she did have a sister, it would be okay with her if she was something like Samantha Pearson.

Which-combined with her chastened mood-was probably why, when Sam asked her how it felt, being around Matt again, she didn’t try as she normally would to evade the question. But she couldn’t answer it, either, thanks to the unexpected knot of emotion that came from nowhere to clog up her throat and make it impossible to do more than shake her head and give a meaningless little ripple of laughter.

“I do know how it is,” Sam said gently. “From personal experience.”

Alex cleared her throat, buying herself the time she needed to tuck her emotions safely away. “Yeah, you said that before. What…I mean, how do you know? From…what…”

Sam laughed. “What personal experiences, you mean? Okay, well, in a nutshell, Cory and I met when I was really young. He was a friend of my dad’s, and thought he was too old for me. Or, maybe that I was too young for him-because I was. Too young to settle down, anyway. Too young to know what I wanted. He was patient for a long time, willing to wait for me to do all the stuff I wanted to do, that I thought I wouldn’t be able to do once we-well, long story. Anyway, the upshot of it is, he got tired of waiting and we broke up. And then Cory got married to somebody else.”

Alex made a shocked sound. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. The marriage didn’t last, but I was devastated.”

“I can imagine!”

Sam’s smile was wry. “Stupid me. I always thought he’d be there for me, forever. And then one day he wasn’t.”

Yeah, thought Alex, I know how that is.

“I didn’t think I could ever forgive him for that. But then…a few years later, we met again under…let’s just say, difficult circumstances. Again-long story, but we came close enough to losing each other forever that it kind of put things into perspective for both of us. In the end, it wasn’t easy, but we just…had to forgive each other.”

She paused, then added, “And for Cory there was the other thing-this issue about his family.”

“Yeah,” said Alex, “he told me about that.”

“Well, he’d been keeping all that inside, and it was really hard for him to open up to me. Once he did-” She shrugged and Alex saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. “But what made it possible for us to get through all that was…” she brushed at her eyes and gave a small, self-conscious laugh, the kind of thing Alex could see herself doing if she got caught with her emotions showing “…we really really wanted to make it work. You have to have that. Otherwise, I think…it’s just too darn hard.”

Alex murmured, “Yeah…” Those emotions she preferred to hide were percolating dangerously.

Sam turned to give her a piercing look, weighing a plastic bag full of cut-up veggies in her hand. “So I guess my question would be…do you? Want to make it work with Matt?”

Oh Lord. Do I? Now Alex resorted to that painful little laugh as she muttered, “It’s complicated.”

“Always is, hon.”

Oh yeah. Especially right now. “He’s got a lot going on,” she said carefully.

“About his family, you mean.” Sam snorted-something else Alex wasn’t above doing herself now and then. “There’s always gonna be family issues. Now me-my dad disappeared from my life when I was ten.”

“Hah,” said Alex, “mine split before I was born.”

“Yeah, well, mine turned up alive and well when I was eighteen.”

“Okay, you win,” Alex said, laughing. “You definitely take the blue ribbon for father issues.” But she was remembering Booker T’s words: You never got to be any lovin’ daddy’s little girl.

Sam was smiling. “Not really. My dad and I get along great, now. Turns out it wasn’t his fault he was gone so long. He’d been shot down in the Middle East and was in an Iraqi prison all that time. Nobody knew he was there until Cory got himself kidnapped. He was this famous journalist, see, so they sent Special Forces to rescue him. And, whoops, they found my dad with him. That’s how I met Cory.”

“Wow.” It was the only thing Alex could think of to say. What did you say to someone with a story like that? Filled with a vast, inexplicable sadness, she became very busy arranging plastic bags full of food in the cooler.

“So,” Sam said casually as she passed the bags to her, “your mom never remarried? After your dad left?”

“Never married. Period. Nope, I think she’d about had her fill of getting her heart broken. She raised me all by herself, which couldn’t have been easy. I wasn’t exactly an easy kid. But…my mom was a tough cookie.”

“Was? So…she’s gone now?”

Alex nodded, staring down at her hands, guarding that private pain carefully. “She died-cancer. The same year I met Matt.”

The silence that fell was only in the small space between them. Beyond it, the river sang its usual song, scrub jays screeched in the manzanita and a hawk whistled high in a cloudless sky. And from somewhere out of sight came the rich harmonies of two brothers’ laughter.

Listening to it, Sam said softly and with a catch in her voice, “It’s meant so much to him-finding Matt. Both of his brothers. I can’t even-”

“Yeah,” said Alex, and cleared her throat. “I can imagine. Too bad he didn’t find him before-” She stopped, appalled, but Sam finished it for her and didn’t seem to find it terrible.

“Before his accident, you mean. Yeah. You know, I think Pearse believes if he’d been around it wouldn’t have happened.”

Alex smiled crookedly. “He’s not the only one who’s played the ‘what if’ game.” She shrugged. “It happened. Can’t be undone.” It is what it is, Alex.

There was a pause. Then Sam said, “You and Matt were close, though, right? Before he got hurt?”

“Close?” The question surprised her, not the asking of it, but because she realized she didn’t know the answer. Close. Were we close, Mattie? We were together a lot…worked together…played together…slept together…talked…quarreled…laughed…made love. But were we close? I don’t even know what that means. She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Yeah, I guess. If you mean, were we sleeping together.” Then, as realization collided with guilt, she threw Sam a look and added defensively, “Look, it’s not like I abandoned him, okay? I visited him as often as I could while he was in rehab. He’s the one who abandoned me.”

Sam said quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that,” but Alex held up a hand as if to stop a flood of accusing words.

She said in a choking voice, “You don’t know what it was like, okay? I was there. I saw him fall. I thought he’d died, I really did.” She paced a few steps, then back, arms wrapped around the pain inside her, pain she’d thought she’d put behind her. Hoped I had.

“But he didn’t.”

“No. No-but in a way, he did. Or…something did.”

“Your feelings for him?”

“No. No.” She stared at the other woman as shock lanced through her, then sank back onto a boulder and brushed a furious hand across her nose. “No, but…the life I’d always thought we’d have together,” she said thickly. “I never thought that would end.”

Sam leaned against the rock beside her and looked at her along one shoulder. “Did it have to?”

Because her eyes were filling with tears, Alex did the only thing she could: looked away, looked at the sky, the mountains, the river. “I don’t know.” Her voice ripped raggedly through her throat. “I know I was so mad at him I could have killed him myself.” She gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Does that make sense? I mean, it’s not like he wanted to get hurt, right? So then, I was mad at myself for thinking that. Oh hell, I was just…so angry. I wanted to scream at someone. Hit somebody.” She shook her head and her voice betrayed her by becoming an airless squeak. “I missed him so much I thought I’d die. And when he told me he wasn’t coming back, that he’d decided to stay down there in L.A. and it would be better if we-” She clamped a hand over her mouth and drew a shuddering breath.

Bluntly, without the gentleness and sympathy Alex was sure would have been her undoing, Sam said, “Did you tell him how you felt?”

Alex shook her head, not yet willing to risk actual speech.

“Why not?”

Alex shot her a hot, angry look. “I don’t know-pride, maybe?”

“How about fear?”

“Fear!” Alex opened her mouth to deny it, then hesitated. “I don’t know. I know I really hate needing anyone. It makes me feel…”

“Vulnerable?” Sam was smiling.

“Weak,” Alex countered firmly.

“How about…human?”

Alex gave a bark of laughter-pure self-defense. After a moment she cut her eyes at the other woman over one shoulder. “Okay, don’t think I don’t know what you guys are up to.”

Unrepentant, Sam grinned. “Is it working?”

For a moment longer Alex tried to keep up the banter, smile back. Keep it light. But her emotions were too close to the surface. Before she could stop it a wave of frightening longing swept over her. Horrified, she felt her face crumple, its expressions no longer hers to control. Appalled at her own vulnerability, she looked down at her shoes and whispered, “Do you really think it could?”

“Why not? If the feelings are still there…”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s the big question, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Sam seemed surprised. “For you, or for him?”

Alex couldn’t answer. Safety doors came clanging down inside her head, shutting out the question, cutting off the voice she could still hear echoing faintly in her memory. Do you love me, Alex?

But Sam was waiting, and so after a moment she shrugged and said testily, “How would I know how he feels?”

Unperturbed, Sam said in pushy Southern, “Well, sweetie pie, don’t you think you should find out?”

“Yeah, how?” Alex demanded, pushing back. “Seduce him?”

“Well, why not?”

Alex glared at her for a long moment while the self-sufficient loner inside her arm-wrestled with the pathetic weakling that secretly longed to confide in this woman. Giving up the battle, she drew a shaky breath. “Yeah, and what happens then? I mean, how do I know…” She halted and glared at the distant trees.

“Ah,” said Sam, nodding. “You mean…”

“Yeah. I mean, how embarrassing would it be if…” She stopped again. Coughed. Made some sort of vague gesture. Then laughed and put a hand up to cover her eyes. “I looked it up-would you believe it? On the Internet. At first.” She jerked her hand away and threw Sam a defiant look. “Well, hell, neither one of us seemed to be able to bring up the subject during rehab, and I was curious. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Sam. “And?”

Alex hitched a shoulder and watched the toe of her shoe dig at the hard-packed dirt. “It seems to pretty much depend on the person-the location of the injury, stuff like that,” she said with studied diffidence. “Basically, it’s mostly doable, with patience and-and I quote-‘an understanding partner.’”

“So…?”

“That’s just it,” Alex said carefully, hoping the anguish she felt inside wouldn’t come through in her voice. Confiding was one thing; stripping naked was another. “I don’t know if I’m the understanding type.”

And Sam said-gently, this time, “Oh, hon’. If you care enough, you will be.”

“I just wanted to hug her,” Sam told her husband. “I wanted to, so bad.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, Alex Penny isn’t exactly the hugging type.”

It was evening, past sundown but not yet dusk, and Sam was feeling a wee bit grumpy. Dinner had been another amazing feast-she didn’t know how they managed it under such primitive conditions, she really didn’t. At the moment, she felt entirely too full and too tired out from the day’s adventures to move, much less go rambling through the rocks in yet another ploy designed by Cory to leave his brother alone with Alex. A ploy she was beginning to think might be a lost cause.

She’d said as much to Cory, who’d then asked why she felt that way. So she’d related most of her conversation with Alex, which, she admitted, had left her feeling sad.

“I think she loves him, I truly do, Pearse. But she’s got some serious abandonment issues. I don’t know if-”

“‘Abandonment issues’?” Cory smiled and slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her snug against him. “That’s something we know a thing or two about. And we managed to get together in spite of them.”

For a moment Sam allowed her head to nestle in the comfortable hollow of her husband’s shoulder. Just for a moment. Straightening, she said, “Yeah, but we didn’t have the disability thing to deal with, either. I mean, think about it. They have to figure everything out all over again. Like, back to square one, really.”

“Figure ‘everything’ out? You mean, the sex thing, don’t you?” She heard the smile in his voice even before she felt the warmth of his lips against her hair. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Those things have a way of working themselves out. Where there’s a will…”

“Assuming there is a will.”

“Hmm,” Cory murmured. And after a moment, “I guess you didn’t notice the way she was looking at him.”

She craned to look at him. “Yeah? How?”

He grinned. “Like a hungry wolf.”

“When? Today?”

“This afternoon. When we were going through the rapids.”

“Oh, well. I might have been a little busy right then. You know…trying to keep from getting pitched into the river? Again…”

He laughed and pulled her back against him. “Well, let’s just say she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Watching him wield that paddle…”

“Hmm…well, I have to admit, Pearse, your brother does have an amazin’ body. Those shoulders…” Her voice dwindled to nothing as her husband’s fingers worked their magic over her shoulders. She chuckled low in her throat and slipped her arms around his waist. “Darn it, I really do wish we hadn’t had to leave those tents behind.”

“Hmm…why’s that?”

“Because, honey-bunch…Alex and Matt aren’t the only ones who could do with a little privacy.”

He laughed softly and let her go. Then he bent down and gathered up his bedroll and tucked it under his arm, smiled at her and held out his hand. Her heart skittered like a teenager’s as she took it. Smiling back at him, she walked beside him into the deepening dusk.

Matt watched his brother go off hand in hand with his wife, and only realized he was smiling when Alex looked over at him and said bluntly, “You know what they’re trying to do, right?”

His grin slipped away. “They’re not exactly being subtle.”

He worked in silence for a moment, once again occupying himself by clearing away the remains of dinner and setting up for breakfast, while questions chased themselves in circles in his mind. He paused, then threw them at her all at once, so he wouldn’t lose his nerve. “Is it so terrible an idea, Alex? Being with me? Do you find me that repulsive?”

Oddly, she didn’t seem surprised he’d asked. She went sort of still for a moment, then shook her head, not looking at him. “What scares me is that I don’t.”

His heart began a slow, heavy thumping he could almost hear. “I’m not sure I know what to say to that.” He paused, and the smile found its way back. “Fact is, you always were a puzzle to me.”

“I’m not that complicated,” she muttered, keeping her face turned away from him.

He gave a wheel a shove, edging closer to her. “Yeah, you are. Plus, you don’t let on how you feel. And I’ve never been much good at reading minds.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he added wryly, “The only time I ever knew how you felt is when I was touching you.”

She threw him an arrogant look he remembered well. “Ha-you only thought you knew.”

“Maybe.” But then she shivered. He saw it…felt it. And entered a zone of certainty and confidence he hadn’t felt in a long time. “You cold?” he asked softly, knowing she wasn’t.

Hugging herself, she glared at him in annoyance and shook her head. He touched the wheels again and brought himself closer, close enough to reach out and take her hand. It felt so familiar to him, and yet…not. It seemed smaller than he remembered. More vulnerable. Maybe because she wasn’t resisting?

He turned her hand over, and with his other hand gently uncurled her fingers to expose her palm. Ran a fingertip over the bumps and ridges of calluses…then the softer, smoother hollow in its center. Her fingers curled involuntarily, and he looked up at her. Her cheeks looked moist and flushed, though her chin still had that defiant tilt.

“Okay,” she demanded in a raspy voice that made a shiver crawl over his own skin, “what am I thinking now, smart-ass?”

“Oh, too easy.” He laughed, and lifted her hand slowly to his mouth. He brushed the warm damp palm with his lips, smiling at her with his eyes as he murmured, “You’re thinking, ‘What is this guy doing? Promising something he can’t deliver?’” He saw and felt her flinch. Laughing, he tightened his hold on her hand to keep her from pulling it away. “Oops, right on the money, huh?” She didn’t reply, and he swiveled his chair just enough and tugged her toward him.

“Wait-what are you doing?” The fear in her voice as he guided her into his lap made his chest clench.

“Relax, darlin’, I just want to show you something.” He moved her hand to his shoulder…watched her eyes while he took her other hand and placed it against his chest. He held his breath and felt his heart thumping against her hand. After a moment he let the breath out and said softly, “There…you see? Muscle and bone. I haven’t changed that much. I still-” He paused, and the pressure in his chest reminded him he’d forgotten to take another breath. He hitched about half of one in and finished it. “I still like to be touched.”