He turned to face her and realized that now it was his turn to read the sympathy in her eyes and he found he liked it no better than she had. Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, he shook his head wearily. “I let them down. They were depending on me to show them the safe route down the mountain and I wasn’t there.”
“Colt, I’m so sorry but—”
He shook his head. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. I know it was. If I’d been there, they wouldn’t have died because I could have steered them to a safer run.”
“Or,” Penny argued, “you would have died with them.”
“Maybe.” He’d thought of that, too, and sometimes wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off. He pulled his hands free of his pockets and scrubbed both hands over his face. She was still watching him and the urge to hold her was so strong it rocked him. But if he touched her, then he’d lose himself in the flash of heat and passion that threatened to consume everything in its path. And it wouldn’t change a damn thing.
“It was an accident, Colt,” she said firmly. “Not a reason for you to run from me or your kids.”
“Weren’t you listening?” He shook his head. “I’m not running. It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s whoever depends on me. I let my folks down and they died. I won’t do that to my kids. Or you. I won’t live with even more of the kind of guilt that chews on a man when he fails.”
Penny lifted both hands and shoved them through her hair in an impatient gesture. “So, basically,” she said tightly, “instead of failing, you just don’t try at all.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like.”
“Yeah, I do,” she said, voice breaking until she swallowed hard and took a breath. “You know, over this last week or so, I’ve watched you with the twins. Seen how good you are with them. How much they love you.”
His heart clenched hard in his chest.
“And I tried to figure out why, when you have so much in your life, you insist on flying off around the globe chasing death in those ridiculous extreme sports.” She scrubbed her hands along her upper arms as if trying to create warmth that just wouldn’t come. “Now I know. Are you trying to make it up to your parents by dying? Is that it? Do you think you’ve been on borrowed time or something? That you should have been the one to die on that mountain?”
“I didn’t say that,” he argued.
“You might as well have.” Penny glared at him and Colt felt his hackles rise. Damn it, he’d expected her to get it. To finally understand why nothing could work between them. Instead, she was staring at him like he was crazy.
“Let me get this straight,” she finally said, tipping her head back to meet his eyes. “You want me to lean on you and at the same time you tell me you don’t want anyone to depend on you. That about cover it?”
He scrubbed one hand across his jaw, then the back of his neck. It sounded...stupid when she said it like that. Irritated and getting angrier and more defensive by the moment, Colt said, “You’re deliberately twisting my words around.”
“No, I’m not,” she countered and stepped closer, tapping his chest with her forefinger. “I’m pointing out that what you’re telling me doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does to me,” he managed to grind out. “I’m the reason my parents died. If I’d been there—”
She cut him off. “You’ll never know what might have happened if you had been there, Colt. But the point is, you didn’t cause the avalanche. It was an accident. A tragic, horrible accident. But you didn’t do it. You weren’t even there.”
“That’s the point,” he snapped. “I promised them I would be and I wasn’t.”
“And I bet your mother’s last thoughts were, ‘Thank God Colt isn’t here.’”
He jerked his head back as if she’d slapped him.
“It’s what I would have thought,” she continued, her voice softer now. “What I would have been grateful for. That my child was safe. How can you believe your parents would have thought differently?”
He spun away from her, his mind racing, heart pounding. He’d lived with the guilt for so long that it was a part of him. A dark shadow that crouched inside his heart always ready to take a stab at him.
“It must have been hideous, Colt,” she said, threading her arms around his waist, pressing herself against his back. “But it doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t your fault.”
Con had said the same thing for years. So had his other brothers. His cousins. But, “No matter what you say, it doesn’t change the fact that I wasn’t there when they needed me.”
He turned in her arms, looked down into her eyes and vowed, “I won’t risk it again. Won’t let you or the twins depend on me because it’d kill me if something happened to any of you.”
“And if something happens anyway? Then what?” Tears glistened in her eyes and the light from the fire made the dampness there gleam with a red-hot glow.
Slowly, she stepped back from him and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her worn, faded jeans, as if trying to keep from reaching out to him again. “Don’t you see? Nobody gets a guarantee in life, Colt. All we have is every day and the people we choose to spend our lives with—for however long that is. You’re not to blame for what happened to your parents, Colt. But maybe it’s easier for you to tell yourself you are.”
“Easy?” Voice tight and hard, he said, “You think anything about this is easy?”
“It’s always easier to walk away than to stay and make it work.”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me,” she said, mouth twisting as she fought trembling lips. “But you were wrong. You didn’t escape that avalanche, Colt. Something in you died that day up on the mountain.”
Outrage swelled up inside him. Hell, he’d expected her to get it. To understand and see that he was doing this for her and the twins. To protect them the one sure way he knew how. But she was standing there glaring at him through eyes that had gone as cold and dark as a forest at midnight. “Penny, damn it, don’t you see—”
“Are you supposed to pay penance for the rest of your life, Colt? For something that wasn’t your fault?” Penny shook her head, met his gaze and held it. “Is that the price you have to pay to satisfy the ghosts in your heart? You’re not allowed to be happy? Not allowed to be loved?”