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My heart stilled in my chest for a moment. “Do you want me to change it back? Be more natural?”
I knew Lucas wasn’t Nathan. He was the furthest thing from it. But I couldn’t get the echoes of Nathan’s words out of my head. The more natural the better.
Lucas frowned, but I knew it wasn’t directed at me. That was the kind of expression he made when something occurred to him about my past. Slowly, he pulled over to the side of the road. We were on a highway, and we hadn’t seen a car for miles. “I want to look at you when I say this,” he said in explanation. “And I’d rather us not crash when we’re doing this to save your life.”
I smiled at that, but my heart was still pounding. “Okay?”
Putting the truck in park, he scooted closer to me—as close as Aspen would allow—and reached out. He took my face in his hands. “I’ve told you this before, but it bears repeating. Ev, I think you are beautiful. All of you, even the parts that might make you uncomfortable. And that has nothing to do with what color your hair is. You could dye your hair pumpkin orange, and you would still be beautiful.”
My gaze slid away from him, this moment suddenly too real and too vulnerable. I didn’t want to cry, but tears pricked my eyes anyway.
“If I ever told you that you needed to dye your hair a certain color, or that you needed to be ‘more natural,’ the guys would take me out behind the lodge and kick my ass. And they would be right to do it. All I care about is that you’re happy. If that means being a brunette for the rest of your life? I would never stop that. You want to dye your hair something different every week? You can do that too.”
I took a shuddering breath. “Okay.”
“And I’ll tell you that you’re beautiful as many times as you need to hear it.” He leaned over Aspen’s body to brush my lips with his. “Because I know what it’s like not to believe things.”
We pulled back onto the road, and my hand remained in his. “What didn’t you believe?”
“That it wasn’t my fault.” He was speaking about the teammate he’d lost. “Some days I still don’t believe it. So I know that it takes time not to fall into thought patterns that have been there for years. It’s the way our minds work.”
There wasn’t any judgment in his voice, just fact. He’d been through his own trauma and lived. I was trying. We were quite a pair.
We spent the rest of the drive in comfortable silence as the mountains and trees whirred by. Before long, we were off the main roads, driving on a nearly hidden road. The only way that you’d know this was here was if you were already aware of it or if you were combing the mountains for something like it.
“This property is something we keep for training if we take an outside job,” Lucas said, “or if one of us has a need to get away, not unlike what we’re doing. Grant came up here yesterday to make sure that everything is secure. We keep the same kind of perimeter up here as we do at the ranch, and it’s not on any records connected to Resting Warrior. We paid for it in cash.”
I nodded. He hadn’t told me where we were going before out of an abundance of caution, but I understood why he was telling me now. “Nathan won’t be able to find it.”
“If he does, then,” Lucas shook his head, “I would be very surprised.”
And Lucas wasn’t a man who was surprised often.
We drove between two high walls of rock, so close it looked like the truck might not fit before we slithered through. And certainly, it was a one-way trip.
The gate that met us wasn’t unlike the one at the ranch. High, tall, imposing, and obviously electrified. There wasn’t enough room for us to get out to open the gate, but we didn’t need to. Lucas pulled out his phone and opened an app I didn’t recognize, and after he entered a long code, the gate rolled aside for us and shut as soon as we were past.
And beyond the gate... it was like we were in another world. Pine woods stretched out on either side in this little, hidden valley, and straight down the road in front of us was a lake. It was perfectly smooth, reflecting the mountains back at me. We were away from everyone and everything, and I loved it.
“This is beautiful.”
“It is,” he said.
We pulled up to the lake, the trees falling away from the rocky shore, and Lucas grinned. “I’m going to get our tent all set up. But first—” He cut the engine and jumped out of the cab, Aspen scrambling to follow. “I’m going for a swim.”
I didn’t have a chance to get out the door before he was stripping off his shirt and tossing it on the ground. His jeans hit the rocky shore and soon enough he was naked, splashing into the clear water of the lake. Ripples moved outward from him, marring the entire surface.
It was one hell of a view. Lucas was perfect. Sculpted muscle over more sculpted muscle painted with water and afternoon sunlight. Aspen ran along the shore, happy and splashing. The fact that he wasn’t still sitting beside me—he knew that it was safe.
I made my way out of the truck and down to the shore. “How’s the water?”
“Cold,” he admitted with a grin. “But refreshing. Want to join me?”
“Umm...” I hesitated. Part of me wanted to be in that water with him and just be free. The other part of me was choking on the idea of my scars in daylight. I knew that Lucas didn’t care about them. That he saw past them. But having him see them in intimate darkness or the shower was very different from under an open sky in the middle of the day.
Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Do I need to carry you in here?”
“I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” I said lamely. “I don’t even have a bathing suit.”
