AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I know.” Her smile was tender, and her kiss soft when she touched her mouth to his. “I feel the same way about you. One day you’ll feel safe enough to tell me about your own pain, and when you do, it will shatter a part of me, knowing how badly you were hurt, but it will also heal a part of me because I’ll have every piece of you there is.”
Her words were everything he needed to hear, and Surf knew that when he did share his dark past, he too would heal. Not only would he let go of the power it still had to hurt him, but Lila would still be right there beside him. Knowing everything, his deepest shame, she wouldn’t leave him.
They were two souls joined forever.
Reaching into his pack, he pulled out the blanket, then without releasing his hold on Lila, he laid them both down. Turning so they were lying on their sides, he moved to the other side of Lila, so he was between her and the entrance to the cave. Spooning her, he covered them both with the blanket, then touched one last kiss to her neck.
“I love you, my fierce, strong, sweet mama bear,” he whispered, the first time he had told her he loved her out loud even though they had danced around it, admitting it without outright admitting it.
Lila pressed back against him. “I love you too, my knight in shining armor, papa bear.”
Everything.
This woman was everything.
* * * * *
November 19th
10:50 A.M.
Another hour another mile.
Another step, another inch closer to safety.
To home.
To the life she wanted with her sexy knight in shining armor.
Lila was utterly exhausted. There was no other way to describe it. Not only did pain shoot through her ankle each time her foot hit the ground, but her hand and arm were red, blistered, and aching from using the crutch.
Both her feet also had blistered, her muscles were overused, overtired, and borderline cramping, and she was chilled to the bone, but she wasn’t giving up.
She would do this. She would walk side by side with Christian until her body physically gave out on her. Even then she would crawl on her hands and knees if she had to. If it came to it, she would lie on her stomach and drag herself through the forest.
Whatever it took, she was getting home.
Because apparently, the universe liked to taunt her, Lila placed her bad foot on the ground, and it immediately rolled on something, a root, a rock, she didn’t know, but it rolled, pain spiked through it, shooting up her leg and into her hip, and she went down hard.
“Lila?” Christian dropped to his knees at her side.
“Rolled it,” she gritted out, clamping her teeth together so she didn’t cry. The last thing she wanted was for Christian to feel like he had to carry her again. He’d exhaust himself, and it was so much harder for him to protect them if they happened to stumble upon Ross and Zara with her slung over his shoulder. Not impossible though. Nothing seemed to be impossible for her knight in shining armor, papa bear.
“Let me see.”
When he reached for her foot, she pushed his hands away. There was a sense of urgency in her this morning. She didn’t know why, but when she’d woken, she’d just felt this need to hurry up and get going, put as much distance between them and the last place Christian had seen evidence of the Duffy’s men. “We need to keep walking.”
“Won’t take me long to check it out.”
“But there’s nothing we can do about it so we may as well just get going again.”
Lila tried to push to her feet, but Christian easily held her down as though sensing she was balancing precariously on that ledge between holding everything together and falling apart completely.
“Come here, baby.”
“We have to go,” she protested, trying to push him away as he folded her into an embrace.
“Shh, it’s okay. We’re making progress right on my schedule, we can take a minute or two.”
