Page 79 of Ford

“I’ll be fine, Rocky. Besides, I think you two need to work this out. Seven days is going to be a loooong time to pout.” She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

Silence, and when he looked over at RJ, her eyes glistened.

“Sorry.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “No, you’re right. Maybe I should have run, but I couldn’t just…I couldn’t leave you there.”

“I don’t need you to protect me…Ruby.”

She looked at him. “I haven’t let anyone call me Ruby since I was a kid.”

He frowned. “Why not? It’s your name, right?”

“It’s the name of someone who is weak and scared and needs to be protected.”

Oh. Huh.

She looked out the window. “I’m not scared.”

“I know.”

“Or weak.”

“Agreed.”

She left out the last one, which meant she was at least practical.

But she sighed, and he hated that he’d let his pride make him stupid. “Maybe you did…contribute.”

Her gaze shot his direction, then back to the window. “I may have panicked.”

“I was getting the snot kicked out of me.”

“You were making creepy drowning noises.”

His mouth tightened.

She drew up her knees to her chest and leaned back, looking at him now. “When I was twelve, I nearly drowned in a river with my brother. I panicked because the current caught me, and he had to rescue me, but we ended up downriver quite a ways, and after the current pushed us into a cave, we took refuge in it. Only, we went in too far and ended up trapped for three days. Nearly died from hypothermia.”

He tried to imagine her, skinny, wet, scared. “Which brother?”

“The SEAL. My twin. He wanted to swim out for help, but I was…I was too scared. I made him stay with me. Nearly cost him his life.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. “Are you trying to prove you don’t need to be rescued?”

“No. I know I need to be rescued. I just want to do it myself. And I don’t want anyone to die while doing it. Most of all, I don’t want my fear to hold someone back from doing what they know they have to.” She met his eyes. “I am sorry that I didn’t run. I was afraid that you were going to die.”

Oh. And her honesty simply reached in and grabbed him, wrapped fingers around his heart. Tugged.

No. It was one thing to kiss her, to let her nourish a strange need inside him. Completely another to like her.

He could not give in to the nudge to let himself care. “Next time I tell you to run, please run.”

She nodded, looked away, but brought her hand up to her cheek.

He quashed the urge to catch it, move it away, brush his thumb over the wetness. From there, it wasn’t hard to see her turning to face him, to see himself cupping her face, drawing it to his.

Wasn’t hard to imagine kissing her again, tasting her lips on his, finding himself right back to the place he’d been only two nights ago, hungry, yet letting go of the dark knots inside.