Page 66 of Second Chance Saloon

Jackie inhaled sharply. Did she want to talk? She wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe that was how her life would be from now on—never sure about anything ever again.

The static from the radio came through, dispersing the heaviness of the moment.

“Ruta de los Cenotes,” Mitch read out from the blue sign at the side of the road. “How far are we driving from here?”

She exhaled with relief. This—talking about anything but her jumbled feelings—she could do. “We’re going to Cenote Siete Bocas, it’s about fifteen kilometers down here. When we see a sign for 15.5 km, we need to turn right onto a dirt road.” Jackie switched off the crackling, music-less radio. “There are seven cenotes in one there, but you can’t go into two without equipment. One’s open-air but the rest are in caves.”

“Do they get busy?”

“They can be, though early morning is usually the quietest. December is also not as popular.” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “We should avoid the biggest crowds, given we’ll be getting there as it opens.”

Mitch scratched his left thigh over his light linen trousers. “I feel like I’m going to be eaten alive by insects.”

She laughed. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules. No sunscreen and no insect repellents. They ask to jump in a shower before going into the water as well.”

“No, I get the reasons. I’m only saying that the jungle insects must rejoice in them.” He balled his hand into a fist, rubbing it along the material in slow, circular motions. “I’m sure something got me already.”

Jackie wished she had no peripheral vision right now. She always had a thing for hands, especially Mitch’s hands. She could sit and watch them for hours on end when he used to maneuver his fingers over a Rubik’s cube, or sketch at the backs of his notebooks. And seeing his hands at work with Lina and Gus … Well, her thing for his hands was alive and well.

Steering wheel. Watching out for the 15.5 km sign. Dirt road. Cenote. That was her focus, not his hands. Even though her body seemed to remember how his hands moved all over it and inside it …

She gulped. “You’ll survive. I have some cooling gel for bites and stings in my room if you need it later.”

“Always prepared.” He smiled. “Remember when you carried a first-aid kit pretty much everywhere? You said you had to be responsible, as a future doctor.”

Her vision fogged with unshed tears. She shook her head, keeping the gates on those memories firmly locked. “That was a long time ago.”

She wasn’t going to tell him that she had a whole suitcase-sized first-aid kit in the back of the car, in case anyone ever needed it.

“I take it you never went to medical school?”

“Hard to do when you drop out of college, don’t you think?” Jackie bit off, glancing at him.

He tilted his head, the jungle around them bringing out the emerald in his eyes. “I thought you might’ve come back and finished at some point.”

“No. Never seen the point.”

“Lyla’s an OB-GYN, you know. She did her residency in New York, like you’d always talked about. She’s still there.”

Skin tightened over her face, and she looked straight ahead again. “You keep in touch with Lyla?”

His lingering gaze stoked the fire burning every single nerve ending in her body. “We chat every now and then.”

“What does every now and then mean?”

Silence stretched between them like ice over a fast river.

Jackie had a feeling she knew the answer before Mitch even opened his mouth.

“They were at my wedding, both Nick and her. So was their son, Brian.”

Air evaporated from her lungs, turning them into a desert. Her throat bobbed up and down, breath unable to settle down in her chest.

“Brian turned three in August. He’s very into trains,” Mitch continued in a soft voice. “It’s funny, Lyla never liked Eve. She had this whole thing in her head that we’d meet again one day, and that if I married anyone else, I’d always regret it.”

Jackie blinked back tears. “She always read too many romances.”

He let out a low laugh. “She reads a lot of romantasy now, too. Fated mates and all that.”