Page 11 of Rugged Mountain Man
“Yes,” she said. “He’s very pale though. Please hurry.”
When Raff hung up, Mika returned the phone back into the glove compartment. She shifted in her seat to fully face me, twisting her fingers together.
“See? You’re a natural,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Handled it like a pro.”
Mika slid my coat off her shoulders and draped it over me, tucking it beneath my chin.
“You should save your strength,” she said.
“Then talk to me,” I replied. “Keep me awake.”
She opened her mouth then closed it again, surprised.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
Mika grappled to come up with a topic. I don’t know what convinced me to do it—maybe it was the shock settling into my system—but I reached out and brushed my thumb along the bruise marking her cheekbone. She didn’t flinch away from my touch this time.
Fuck, I could drown in those eyes when she stared at me like that.
“Don’t ever regret getting away from him, all right?” I said.
Mika nodded.
“The only regret I have is loving him in the first place. I should have known he could never love me back.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
She shrugged and pulled her knees up to her chest.
“Because I’ve watched everyone else fall in love, but I was always invisible. Nobody wanted me.”
“That can’t be true,” I said, trying to wrap my head around that.
“You don’t believe me?” Mika challenged with a sideways glance.
I could hear the mistrust in her voice, like she was prepared to shut down and retreat into her shell if I rejected this glimpse into her world. She needed someone to be on her side right now. And the only person she was opening up to was me.
“I meant that the right person will love you without even trying,” I countered.
She huffed and shook her head.
“Is that why you hide in a secluded cabin all alone in the woods? Because the right person loved you?”
Ouch. Brutally honest, but she had a point.
“Look at us, Cormac,” Mika went on. “We’re broken, damaged, because of the people who were supposed to love us. I don’t know about you, but I’m not really ready to put myself through that again.”
I’d been saying the same thing for the past ten years, ever since I signed the divorce papers. My life had been so thoroughly intertwined with Jaida, and it felt like half of my soul had been ripped away, leaving me walking wounded, as if I was missing a limb.
Meanwhile, she remarried to a husband who provided for her better than I ever could. She had a family, too—something she never wanted when she was with me.
Hearing Mika put into words what I’d been feeling for the past decade should have been cathartic.
Instead, I found myself fighting against it. Protests sat on the tip of my tongue, prepared to argue that no, love was still possible, despite the hell we’d been through.
