Serena let out a breath. ‘That’s awful.’
A familiar but painful memory intruded before she could block it out. She’d seen someone die right in front of her too—it was seared onto her brain like a tattoo. Her defences didn’t seem to be so robust here, in such close proximity to this man. She could empathise with Luca’s helplessness and that shocked her...to feel an affinity.
Luca was oblivious to the turmoil being stirred up inside Serena with that horrific memory of her own. He continued. ‘Not as awful as the fact that my father didn’t let it stop him from moving the tribe on to another location, barely allowing the parents time to gather up their son’s body. They were nothing to him—a problem to be got rid of.’
He was pulling down Serena’s socks now, distracting her from his words and the bitterness she could hear in his voice. He sucked in a breath when he saw the angry raw blisters.
‘That’s my fault.’
Serena blinked. Had Luca just said that? And had he sounded ever so slightly apologetic? Together with his obvious concern for others, it made her uncomfortable.
He looked at her, face unreadable. ‘New boots. They weren’t broken in. It’s no wonder you’ve got blisters. You must have been in agony for hours.’
Serena shrugged minutely and looked away, self-conscious under his searing gaze. ‘I’m no martyr, Luca. I just didn’t want to delay you.’
‘The truth is,’ he offered somewhat sheepishly, ‘I hadn’t expected you to last this far. I would have put money on you opting out well before we’d even left Rio.’
Something light erupted inside Serena and for a moment their eyes met and locked. Her insides clenched hard and all she was aware of was how powerful Luca’s muscles felt under her feet. He looked away then, to get something from the medical box, and the moment was broken. But it left Serena shaky.
His hands were big and capable. Masculine. But they were surprisingly gentle as he made sure the blisters were clean and then covered them with thick plasters.
He was pulling her socks back up over the dressings when he said, with an edge to his voice, ‘You’ve said a couple of times that you didn’t do drugs... You forget that I was there. I saw you.’
His blue gaze seemed to sear right through her and his question caught Serena somewhere very raw. For a moment she’d almost been feeling soft towards him, when he was the one who had marched her into the jungle like some kind of recalcitrant prisoner.
Anger and a sense of claustrophobia made her tense. He’d seen only the veneer of a car crash lifestyle which had hidden so much more.
She was bitter. ‘You saw what you wanted to see.’
Serena avoided his eyes and reached for her boots, but Luca got there first. He shook them out and said tersely, ‘You should always check to make sure nothing has crawled inside.’
Serena repressed a shudder at the thought of what that might be and stuck her feet back into the boots, but Luca didn’t move away.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? I saw what I wanted to see.’
Getting angry at his insistence, she glared at him. The firelight cast his face into shadow, making him seem even more dark and brooding.
He arched a brow. ‘I think I have a right to know—you owe me an explanation.’
Serena’s chest was tight with some unnamed emotion. The dark forest around them made her feel as if nothing existed outside of this place.
Hesitantly, she finally said, ‘I wasn’t addicted to Class A drugs...I’ve never taken a recreational drug in my life.’ She tried to block out the doubtful gleam in Luca’s eyes. ‘But I was addicted to prescription medication. And to alcohol. And I’ll never touch either again.’
Luca finally moved back and frowned. Serena felt as if she could breathe again. Until he asked, ‘How did you get addicted to medication?’
Serena’s insides curdled. This came far too close to that dark memory and all the residual guilt and fear that had been a part of her for so long. At best Luca was mildly curious; at worst he hated her. She had no desire to seek his sympathy, but a rogue part of her wanted to knock his assumptions about her a little.
‘I started taking prescribed medication when I was five.’
Luca’s frown deepened. ‘Why? You were a child.’
His clear scepticism made Serena curse herself for being so honest. This man would never understand if she was to tell him the worst of it all. So she feigned a lightness she didn’t feel and fell back on the script that her father had written for her so long ago that she couldn’t remember normal.