His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels) (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Cary tried to tell himself that Alex was a grown up. If he wanted to storm off into the woods in the dark by himself, that was his prerogative. His problem.

It was better without him here, anyway. He hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise while Linda and Alex were huddled together in a confab while Alex was explaining the finer points of chocolate-to-marshmallow ratio and Linda was gazing at him like he held the secrets to cold fusion.

It was too much.

He could take Alex being distant, cold. He could even take Alex on the warpath, sneering and issuing vulgar threats. But he could not take Alex flirting with Linda Liu like he was Don Fucking Juan. Watching the man he loved—the
gay
man he loved—all but making a pass at a woman, either for shits and giggles or because he saw it as a tactic in his fucking, never-ending “war,” had grown old pretty fast.

And, hey, maybe he could take even that if they hadn’t been in the goddamned woods. It wasn’t like Alex wanted him, so what did Cary care? But the campsite setting was freaking him out a little, taking him back to Camp Blue Lake, and not in a happy-nostalgia kind of way. He kept having to remind himself that he was thirty-five years old. He had, by anyone’s measure, a wildly successful career. He was no longer a fifteen-year-old closet case looking to the actions of others to know how he should feel, how he should act.

So Alex could go fuck himself—that was the basic conclusion he’d come to.

Still. He’d been gone an awfully long time. Two hours and twenty minutes, to be precise. Not that he’d been keeping track. He looked at his watch in the dying embers of the fire. Only eleven p.m., but eleven p.m. in the woods was different than eleven p.m. in the city. It was pitch black, and the forest was alive with the sound of night—cicadas and owls but also unidentified sounds that were probably nothing. But still. And, away from the fire, it was cold. And getting colder.

He stood. “I’m going after him.” He’d spent the past hour and a half assuring Linda and Don that Alex was fine, that there was no reason to worry. That Alex could beat a black bear in a standoff, no problem.

But the truth was Cary didn’t know. Alex hadn’t actually been that great at outdoors stuff. He could tie knots, but that was about it. Cary had always had to help him when they did outdoor survival tests—slip him extra matches, secretly help brace his shelter, that sort of thing. His money was still on Alex over the hypothetical black bear if only because Alex could outthink anything, but… It was that “but” that was starting to scare him the more time went by. “I’m sure he’s fine. You two hit the hay, and we’ll all see each other in the morning.” He started putting together a pack. Hell, if he was going to give in to his paranoid imaginings, he was going to be prepared to actually encounter his paranoid imaginings. And when he didn’t, when he had hauled himself and his shit into the dark forest only to find Alex sitting by the river skinning a bear, he was going to lose his fucking mind.

Either way, he wasn’t looking forward to his task.

After reassuring Linda and Don again and making sure they were set up in their respective tents for bed, he set off. He walked quickly despite the dark, propelled forward by his growing fear, one that had him methodically stopping every fifty or so yards to shine the flashlight around the inky woods, looking for any sign of Alex. It was fucking freezing out here despite it being mid-June. He’d forgotten that part, how even on warm summer days, the northern Ontario wilderness saw the night-time temperatures plunge. He zipped up his coat, trying to remember if Alex had been wearing one when he’d set off.

After forty or so minutes, he came to a fork in the trail system. A huge tree marked it, and a color-coded sign was nailed to it showing hikers their options. “Shit,” he said aloud, his voice echoing through the night. Short of a trail of breadcrumbs, he had no way of knowing which way Alex had gone. He shone the light on his wristwatch. Nearly three hours since Alex had left the camp. Something was wrong. No matter what was going on with them, no matter the situation with Liu, Alex wouldn’t just disappear for three hours.

He stopped for a moment, listening to the sound of his heavy breathing as he tipped his head back and tried to see some stars. It was impossible; the foliage was too thick this deep in the woods. What the fuck was he going to do if something terrible had happened? He was so angry at Alex for putting him in this position.

But no. That wasn’t true. Or it wasn’t all of the truth. As angry as he was at Alex, he was angrier at himself. Because Alex hadn’t just disappeared into the woods; Cary had let him leave. And, worse, he’d let him leave without telling him the truth. Just like he had let Alex leave the wedding without telling him the truth. He’d been trying to preserve his own dignity, to protect his heart. But that was the coward’s way out. Didn’t Alex deserve to know the whole truth? To know
exactly
what it was he was leaving behind?

His uncle had been wrong. Sometimes being soft, being the one to yield,
was
the way to win.

“Alex!” he shouted at the tree canopy, though he knew it was futile, “Alexander!”

“Cary?” The return shout was close, and relief flooded Cary’s system, making tears prickle at the corners of his eyes and his legs go all shaky.

“Which way did you go at the fork?” he yelled, forcing his voice through the lump in his throat.

“Left,” Alex shouted, and sure enough, when Cary started down the left trail, he was greeted by a light in the distance. He swung his own up to meet it. “Hang on! I’m coming for you!”

Jesus fucking Christ, those last twenty yards just about killed him. He had to force himself to go slowly. It was dark, and it would be too easy to fall. Finally, he reached Alex, who was sitting on the ground, his back against a tree, left leg propped up on a boulder.

“I tripped.”

Cary shone his light at Alex, searching his face for…what? Whatever he’d been hoping to find wasn’t there. Alex’s face was its usual emotionless mask.

“I fucked up my ankle. I can’t put any pressure on my left leg.”

Cary allowed himself a flash of anger. “This is why taking off in unfamiliar forests in the middle of the night is a goddamned stupid idea. You’re smarter than that. What were you planning to do?”

Alex shrugged. “There’s no cell service here, so I was going to wait.”

“For what?”

…

God
damn
. Why did Cary Bell have to be so fucking irresistible all the time? Even when he was angry, he made Alexander want to rip his clothes off. Alexander had been flooded with relief when he heard Cary’s voice calling his name, but now he was flooded with something else. Lust. It was probably some kind of primal response to being out of danger. He didn’t like it but there was no denying it.

Alexander sighed. “I was waiting for my knight in shining armor, I guess.” He let his flashlight move up and down Cary’s body. “Or my knight in plaid flannel.”

The humor worked to diffuse the tension. Cary let his pack fall to the forest floor. Crouching, he angled his light so it illuminated Alexander’s leg. Alexander had already taken off his boot and Cary carefully rolled up his jeans so he could get a look. Alexander’s ankle hurt like hell, but the slight brush of Cary’s hands against his skin as he rolled down Alexander’s sock completely obscured the pain.

“Hey, now, I don’t know what kind of guy you think I am, but I don’t get naked on the first hike.”

“Will you shut up?” Cary snapped, examining the swollen flesh.

“Sorry,” Alexander said. Cary was right—he was being an idiot. “Humor is my defense mechanism.”

Cary kept his hand on Alexander’s ankle, though there was no reason to. “Defense against what?”

Alexander hesitated only a moment before saying, “Fear.” He hated being seen as weak, but telling the truth seemed…important just then. “The rational part of me knew someone would come for me tomorrow, but I wasn’t looking forward to spending the night here.”

Alexander felt the loss when Cary’s hand left his ankle so that he could check his watch. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s nearly one a.m. I brought supplies. I think the best course of action is to stay here until daybreak, and then I’ll hike out until I get cell reception and call for help.”

Cary lifted his flashlight up so both their faces were bathed in its ambient glow. Alexander nodded his agreement. When Cary didn’t say anything, just kept regarding Alexander with an almost quizzical expression, Alexander added, “Thank you for coming after me.”

Cary didn’t respond, just got up and started unloading his pack. Silently, he handed Alexander a bottle of water and a granola bar. “I only have my sleeping bag, but let’s get you into it.” He looked around. “Do you want to try to sleep propped up against the tree like that, or do you want to find a flatter surface?”

“Just unzip it, and throw it over both of us.” When Cary paused, uncertain, Alexander added. “It’s cold as hell out here.” It was the rational thing to do. It was only going to get colder in the hours before the sun came up.

After a slight pause, Cary nodded and moved to obey. Settling himself next to Alexander, who moved over a bit to give him some space to lean his back against the large tree behind them, Cary settled the unzipped bag over them both. “You’re shivering.”

He was. He hadn’t realized. “I’m fine,” Alexander said, even as Cary got back up and moved around tucking the edges of the sleeping bag snugly around Alexander’s body on the other side.

“I’m turning this off to conserve its battery,” Cary said, sliding back in next to Alexander and tucking the edges of the sleeping bag on his side under his legs, making them both into a big, cold Gore-Tex burrito.

Alexander was struck then by what an elementally nice guy Cary was. He’d always been a nice guy. A nice guy who made a mistake when he was a kid. Alexander’s arms twitched, and he had to check the impulse to wrap them around Cary. But there was no call for that. They would warm up soon enough.

They passed a few minutes without talking, their breathing the only indications of human life among the sounds of the nocturnal forest all around them.

Cary cleared his throat, startling Alexander from his thoughts. “So, I…realized something while I was hiking out here after you.”

“Yeah? You’ve gone all Walden Pond, have you?” Listen to him. A little scare in the woods and he’d turned into a regular stand-up comic. He had to cut this shit out.

“Nah,” Cary said. “I don’t need years in the woods to reach great insights. I’m a faster learner than that Thoreau guy.”

Alexander laughed in spite of himself. “So what’s the big insight?” Because suddenly, he really needed to know. Alexander didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that it was so dark. It was strange talking like this without being able to see each other. But it was easier, too. In the dark, he could pretend that all the reasons he shouldn’t be here, snuggled under a sleeping bag with Cary, didn’t exist.

“There’s something I haven’t told you, and as I walked along thinking about it, I realized that there’s no good reason I haven’t. There’s just fear, or, I don’t know, pride or some shit. And those are stupid reasons not to do something.”

For the hundredth time today, Alex’s body entered fight-or-flight mode. Except it wasn’t the same as before, when he’d been hiking in with Cary or trying to stave off panic attacks by flirting with Linda. Everything was all mixed up, because his limbs flooded with adrenaline and his heart sped up, but he didn’t want to flee. Or fight.

“The thing is…” Cary said, clearing his throat again because his voice was catching. “The thing is, I love you.”

Alexander gasped, so loud that it sounded like wind in the dark forest.

Then, inexplicably, he heard his mother’s voice.

Just don’t let it stay broken forever.

“Don’t say anything,” Cary said quickly. “Just let me finish.”

Grateful for the reprieve, Alexander slumped back against the tree in shock.

“When you showed up at that wedding, I was like a fucking teenager again, I was so happy to see you.” Alexander felt Cary’s head fall back against the tree, and Cary huffed a loud exhalation like he was frustrated with himself. “And then I watched Marcus and Rose get married, and, God…I don’t know what happened to me because I usually hate that shit. But I wanted that.”

Alexander’s face burned. He was thankful for the darkness—and the cold. “You mean you—”

“No,” Cary said sharply. “I’m not done. Just let me talk.” There was a rustling as Cary tried to turn himself in place. Alexander closed his eyes, even though it was dark, afraid to hear more. “I wanted that with you, Alex. And then Rose told me she’s pregnant, and fuck me if I didn’t suddenly want that, too. With you.” He swallowed audibly. “I realized I’ve been in love with you since camp. That’s why none of my relationships have worked out. Because none of them were…you. I know we’re at war and all that, but no matter what else happens, I…thought you should know.”

Silence stretched between them.

Now that it was apparently his time to speak, Alexander couldn’t. He heaved a shaky breath in. If he spoke, he would cry.

But maybe that would be okay
, a voice somewhere inside him said.

No.

He needed to get it together. To think logically.

He had told Cary earlier that he was using humor to cover his fear. Cary himself had referenced fear too, just now, citing it as a reason he hadn’t told Alexander what was in his heart. That didn’t seem right, though. Cary had walked away from a comfortable life, a guaranteed job, and started his own company. He had more than held his own in the competition for Liu. And he’d spoken those words just now.

“You’re the bravest person I know,” he said. It was true, and he wanted to tell Cary something good before he broke his heart.

Cary laughed, but it had a bitter tone to it. “That’s where you’re wrong. I can’t help thinking that if I really had been brave, back then, life might be very different today.”

“No,” Alexander spoke sharply, but he couldn’t help it. “You made a mistake. We’ve all made mistakes. I’m sorry that I…punished you for it for so long, and…” Jesus, this was too hard. He was shivering now, too, and it wasn’t from the cold. Cary’s arms slid around him, gathering him close. As was always the case, Cary’s touch drained the tension from Alexander’s body. God, it was like a drug, this feeling of not-fighting.