Page 35 of Bursting With Love
“Savannah.” Jack reached for her, and she swatted his arm away.
“Then I meet you, and you’re this asshole with a chip on his shoulder, but I’m drawn to you like a magnet. And now I find out that I’ve done it again. I’ve latched on to some worthless, angry, insecure mountain man.”
Jack reached for her again as she turned away. “I’m not worthless or insecure.”
She wrenched her arm away. “Fine. Sorry. But this isn’t about you. This is about me. I fell right back into being the enabler in some crazy relationship that can never work. I’m so done with this.” Her lower lip trembled, and tears tumbled down her cheeks.
Jack reached up and brushed the tears away with the pad of his thumb, and just feeling her soft skin reminded him that she didn’t deserve the anger he was pummeling her with.
“Don’t you see?” he said through gritted teeth. Then he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke again, he’d reined in his anger. “Before all of this shit happened to me, I was normal. I wasn’t an angry bastard. I wasn’t a fucking mountain man. I was a loving husband and a hardworking man.”
“Too bad you can’t live in the past, Jack.”
Her icy stare nearly bowled him over. “Savannah, I want this. Us. I want to see what’s there. I just don’t know how to get from here to there.”
Savannah threw her shoulders back, as she had the first day he’d met her, when she’d stood up for Pratt right after they’d landed. “I want this too. But I can’t be that woman anymore. I can’t fix you, and I can’t be your battering block while you figure it out.” She turned and began walking back toward the camp.
“Savannah,” he called after her. Five long, fast strides later, he was beside her and walking fast to keep up with her determined pace. “Savannah, tomorrow’s our last day here. Please don’t leave things like this. I’m sorry. I tried to warn you and I tried to stay away from you, but I couldn’t, and I don’t know why. Damn it, Savannah. I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She turned to face him with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Too late.”
Chapter Fifteen
MONDAY MORNING, SAVANNAH lay in her tent with puffy eyes, nursing her broken heart. She’d cried for most of the night and had beaten herself up over how much she already cared for Jack. What she felt couldn’t be real—it had to be an emotional reaction from the combination of being hurt by Connor and then allowing herself to fall for Jack. No one felt that strongly about another person after just a few days. Maybe she needed to talk to Danica, her cousin Blake’s wife. Danica had been a therapist prior to falling in love with Blake, who had been a new client at the time. Maybe she could help Savannah weed through whatever was making her fall for the wrong guys.
Savannah couldn’t even look at Jack as they disassembled their tents and inspected the campsite to ensure that they’d left nothing behind. She was too pissed at herself. She had seen the warning signs, had even contemplated them, and she still let herself get caught up with him.
“Is everyone about ready?” Jack called across the site.
Hearing Jack’s voice sound deflated, as if he were having a hard time making it through the morning too, tugged at her heart.
He continued. “As soon as Pratt and Lou are back, we’ll roll out of here.” Lou and Pratt had gone down by the stream to rinse out the pots from breakfast.
Jack picked up the sticks from their makeshift shelter—the one Savannah had fantasized about sharing with him—and carried them into the woods. She forced herself not to look at him. She didn’t want to see his midnight-blue eyes or the stubble on his cheeks that felt so good beneath her palms. Instead, she grabbed her bags and took one last look around the campsite that she knew she’d never forget. She’d opened her heart to Jack in ways she never had before, and she got hurt. As angry as that made her, it made her stronger, which was what she’d come to the mountains for in the first place. At least it wasn’t a failure.
“Aiden?” Elizabeth called into the woods. “Aiden?”
Savannah scanned the empty site. Her heart leaped into her throat. Aiden! She saw panic in Elizabeth’s eyes and went to her. “When did you last see him?”
Josie took off running toward the stream and called over her shoulder, “I’ll go see if he’s with Pratt and Lou.”
“I don’t know.” Elizabeth’s voice trembled. “Twenty minutes? I was busy packing.”
