Page 108 of One Last Chance

He caught up to her, grabbed her hand, then tugged her over to exactly where he’d been eyeing and dodging—the space between the tent and the ranger’s station, a nice, secluded space that meant trouble, probably.

But, “What was that about?”

“That’s about the fact that, yes, I want to stay here. That being here is . . . magical. And perfect, and I can see why Kennedy stayed and . . .” She shook her head. “But this isn’t real life. This isn’t my life. Even if . . .” She closed her eyes.

He had leaned against the building and now pulled her closer, his hands on her waist. “Even if?—”

She opened her eyes, and they looked almost tortured. “I’d like to stay.”

A beat. And he saw the word in her expression. “But.”

“But I . . . I am too curious for my own good. And your own good. Because that usually gets people I love hurt.”

He frowned. She put her hands on his chest. “My sister had a reason to run from . . . well, me, and Minnesota and . . .” She swallowed. “I caused her trauma. I caused her drug abuse. And maybe I even caused her death.”

He had nothing.

“That woman I discovered in the alley when I was a kid—she wasn’t the first victim. There’d been rumors of another girl who went missing in our neighborhood, and I got it in my head that maybe I could find the killer. So I started to sit in my dad’s car at night and watch the neighborhood. I’d pack sandwiches and pretend I was, you know, some cool female detective, like Veronica Mars.”

“Did you find the killer?”

“He found me. Sort of. He found my sister. Maybe he knew I was there—I don’t know. But she knew what I was doing, and it drove her crazy with worry, so she’d come out and sit in the car with me and . . . one night she left to go to the bathroom and didn’t come back. So I got worried. And then I heard screaming, and then . . . He’d grabbed her, dragged her back into the alleyway behind our house.”

“Oh my?—”

“I called 911 and then picked up a tire iron and tried to stop him, and I was thirteen and he was in his thirties, and both Kennedy and I were hurt. But we weren’t taken or raped or killed, and when the cops showed up, they caught him.”

He wanted to shake away the images flashing through his head.

“So you see, her trauma, her drug use, her . . . everything. That’s on me. And you’d think I’d learn, but I . . . I can’t stop. I was made to hunt . . . river monsters, I guess. And in the end, the people with me get hurt. That’s why I don’t have a partner.”

He touched her face. “You do now.”

“You said that in the hospital.”

“I meant it in the hospital. And I mean it now.”

“Yeah, but . . . Axel . . .”

And shoot, here he was, at it again, but, “I said I was searching. But maybe you are too.”

“Searching for what?” she said softly.

His gaze roamed her face, landed on her beautiful green eyes, widened. “For something that makes it all worth it.” Then he lowered his mouth to hers.

She slid her arms up around his neck, her mouth opening, sweetly surrendering to his, and it only stoked a sudden and urgent fire inside him.

The kind of fire that woke from a place deeper than his body, from his heart.

Even, his soul.

Searching, yes, for happiness. For a partner. For someone he could rescue, over and over, and who might let him.

So she got into trouble. He’d be okay getting her out of it, no matter what it cost him, as long as it meant holding on to her.

He tucked her in close to him, angled his head, and heard her emit a tiny sigh.Oh, wow. A rumble shuddered through him, and he caught his fingers in her silky auburn hair, wanted to wrap himself around her as the twilight settled over them. With the music serenading them, the scents of the festival, and then?—

Fireworks. A thousand sprinkles of exploding light arching above them.

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