I nodded slightly, swallowing down the lump in my throat. Agent Reyes wasn’t looking at me, but I was at him, taking in every inch of the man who literally jumped off of a cliff for me.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have…
“I didn’t expect the cliff to cave in like that,” I offered, voice cracking.
His jawline curling tight, Reyes flashed his eyes to grab mine, pointed daggers in his pupils. “No, you just expected to hide from me until I went mad looking for you.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth and ducked my eyes, blocking out the blister of his stare.
“You would have given up eventually.”
When enough prickling silence had passed, I peeked back up at him through the thicks of my lashes to find him waiting for me, his gaze snatching mine up and holding it still as he looked between my eyes with stiff contempt.
“You’re unbelievable.”
He cast his hard gaze out over the land, long throngs of trees and thigh high weeds for days and not a single peek of a trail in sight.
“And now we’re stuck who knows fucking where,” he spat.
His profile was so straight and defined, outlined in a perfect silhouette by the sun.
I shook my head as much as I could. “You shouldn’t have followed me down.”
Reyes sliced the brutal cut of his golden stare back to me. “You’d rather I left you alone at the bottom of a fucking cliff? And pretend I don’t know what happened to you when your father asked where you were when I showed up alone to Quantico?”
A half-hearted breath of a laugh pushed between my lips.
“He would’ve gotten over it so fast it would have shocked you.”
“Well I wouldn’t have,” he nearly fucking growled.
My body jerked to sit back with the candor in his words and firing off in his eyes. Something in my chest twisted to a pinch, and I realized in that moment exactly what it was.
Pity. My first read on this man was all wrong. Far, far off, actually.
He was decent. Shrouded by layers of curiosity-nagging darkness and dickheaded boldness, but his core was decent.
And that made me pity him for the task my father had given him.
“So what now?” I asked, staring down at my palms. One was worse than the other, a jagged gash peeling from my pinky finger to the cusp of my wrist.
A frown pulled on my lips as I looked the cut over, wishing we were back near the creek where I could have washed the wound out. That frown ripped apart as large hands appeared around my wrists, popping my mouth open as he tugged my hands toward him.
Agent Reyes scrutinized my hands, drawing my most battered one closer to his face. Then he damn near blew my fucking mind when he blew a gentle breath across it. Specks of loose sand flitted away as Reyes' breath fanned my palm, his lips pursed in an ‘O’ that mesmerized as much as it deepened my pity for the guy.
So fucking decent.
He ran the pad of his thumb over the cut, brushing away rust-brown clots of dirt. “Now, we find a way out or else we’re spending the night in the goddamn woods.”
Damn.His touch was tender, but his tone was anything but.
Before any more could be said, his kind touch swept beneath my legs and steadied around my back as he prepared to stand.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, placing a halting hand on his sternum.
Like it was the most obvious thing in the world, his expression fell flat. “Carrying you.”