Page 65 of Tempting Promises
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I just...I need to breathe for a second.”
“So we’re back to enemies?” I ask, tossing the jacket in my pack. “Just so I know how this goes?”
“The cabin is over, Rowan. We have to go back to what we were so no one suspects anything. Not to mention, we said this was what it was back there.”
Her voice has gentled a bit, but it pisses me off. “Then the answer is yes.”
While she’s right, we said exactly that, I sort of liked the semi-truce we had. Even though Charlotte is complicated, and a Sullivan. If she has even a smidge of her sister in her, I’d rather walk away now, and we never think of it, but she’s not Aurora. She’s not even close to her.
“What did you want me to say?” Charlotte asks, her hand resting on her chest.
“Whatever you wanted, babe.”
She nods once. “Okay. Good, then we’re both in agreement, we don’t talk about it, we never admit to it, we don’t think about it, and we never do it again.”
As if she didn’t enjoy every fucking minute of it. Whatever. I give her my best smirk, the one that I know will piss her off. “Not unlesswe end up back in the cabin again. If we do, then you can fuck me until you can’t walk again.”
She scoffs. “Right. Unless that.”
Let’s be real, neither of us is ever coming back here.
I grab Charlotte’s pack, adjusting a few things to balance the weight more. “If you can get at least part of the way, it’ll help when I have to carry you. Not that I can’t manage it completely, but we’re both tired and haven’t eaten much. I’ll carry your pack to make it easier.”
She looks to the bag and then to me. “I can do it. I don’t want to make things harder for you.”
“I know you can, but you need to work on not breaking the other ankle and getting as close as we can to Sawyer. You’ll carry the tracking device, and I’ll go behind you to catch you if you fall.”
For a second, the mask slips, and I see the girl I spent five days with in this shitty cabin. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”
“Let’s go while the weather is in our favor. It’s going to be slippery, so use the poles,” I say, needing to create my own distance.
Charlotte’s poles snapped when she fell, so I gave her mine and I’ll use two sticks.
The trees are spaced so that we can use them almost like a ladder, getting to one, pulling ourselves up, using the pole or stick to leverage up.
“Fuck!” Charlotte yells as she starts to slip.
I put my hand on her ass, pushing her up. “Pull!” She does, and she gets to a tree, panting and leaning as I follow her footsteps. “You’re doing amazing, Charlotte. So good. Keep it up. I’m right here.”
Her head moves to the side, our gazes meeting. “It’s like ten times harder than ever.”
“It’s still so slick. We probably should’ve waited another day.”
“We can’t, we don’t have food.”
That is definitely the driving force on this. The other option is to have Sawyer bring supplies and I hike up to get them. Without thepack, and Charlotte’s bum ankle, I probably could’ve been halfway by now.
“What if you head back and I go meet Sawyer to get food?”
Her eyes widen and she looks panicked. “No. I’ll do this. I have to do this.”
I’m not about to argue with her. The idea doesn’t exactly appeal to me either. “Then let’s go.”
She lets out a deep sigh and starts to climb. Several more times I have to push her up, and then the trees thin out and we’ve lost the one advantage we had. I sit Charlotte down under one of the trees, and we drink some water. She’s completely beat. Her face is red, and her breathing is accelerated.
“Take off your other jacket,” I tell her, worried she’s sweating too much and will start to freeze.
Instead of asking questions or arguing, she does it. She fans herself and gets control of her breathing. “It’s so much harder going up.”
