Every word Zach spoke was delivered with such coldness that it left my insides feeling like ice. All the pleasure in knowing he wanted me was gone. There was no doubt in my mind he meant every word he said. With Davis, there’d been an illusion of contentment, and that had been enough for a while. With a guy like Rafe, there'd be some harmless but mutually beneficial fun. With Zach… I knew he'd slay me. In my gut, I knew I could take anything he dished out physically. But to have him regard me that coolly, to be able to walk away from me so easily…
I shook my head because I knew that was the part I wasn't equipped to deal with.
Zach's hold on my throat disappeared, but only so his hand could slide down to rest in the center of my chest. He almost looked disappointed, but I couldn't understand why. He wanted my body and nothing more. I was a conquest, one of probably many. He could find ten of me in any club who would be more than willing to give him what he wanted, who would thrive on it. I hadn't even answered him, so why did he look so… rejected?
It was a feeling I was all too familiar with. The idea that he could be afflicted with the same insecurities chipped away at the ice inside of me. "Zach—”
"Don't, Lucky," Zach whispered. His eyes were on the hand he had over my heart. "If you care about me like you claimed to two years ago, then don't do this."
I snapped my mouth shut because I had been about to do it. I had been about to throw caution to the wind and tell him that it didn't matter. That I'd take him no matter how I could get him. His plea for me to be the one to say no meant there was shit going on inside of him that I couldn’t even begin to understand. I had a million questions, desperate ones that I hoped would somehow help me make sense of him. But I didn't utter even one of them.
Instead, I did the hardest thing I'd ever had to do and reached up to cover his hand with mine. But I didn't link our fingers like I craved, or pull his hand up to my mouth for a kiss. Instead, I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and gently removed his hand from my chest. "I should go," I somehow managed to croak out. It made me feel like a failure, like I was letting him down, but he just looked relieved.
He didn't try to stop me as I shrugged my shirt on and he didn't move when I brushed past him to grab my phone off the bed. My feet felt like they had lead weights on them as I slipped on my shoes and made my way to the door. I searched for something to say to him, but there were no words. I wanted to stay, and I wanted to go. So I settled for what he wanted and walked through the door, not looking back.
Even though that was all I really wanted to do.
Chapter 9
Zach
I’d been at the training center in Glacier National Park for five days. Five days of trying not to think of Lucky heading to his summer job in Yellowstone. With any luck, I wouldn’t see the kid again for a long while. When I was done training Tag’s airborne search and rescue recruits, I’d squeeze in a quick Colorado visit before Lucky had a chance to take a break from his own summer job, and then I’d be on my way… somewhere… after that.
The fact I didn’t yet know what I wanted to do now that I was worthless as a soldier was a sore subject and the very last thing I wanted to think about when I was already in a deep enough pit of self-loathing after turning Lucky away.
It was for the best. He had a bright future ahead of him regardless of which direction he chose, and his leaving Davis behind for the summer hopefully meant whatever stalking behavior had been going on would stay behind in Missoula or travel back to Denver with the richie-rich himself. Either way, I’d forced myself to accept that Yellowstone would be a fairly benign place for Lucky to spend the summer, especially since he’d been there before and presumably had friends already. Although Jake had indicated Lucky was a trail guide for tourists, I couldn’t imagine that was true if he had medical training. Worst-case scenario, he was actually working as a paramedic in the park doing nothing more than treating tourists for heat exhaustion, heart attacks, and minor scrapes and sprains. Either way, he’d be safer there than in Missoula.