He’d been an idiot, that’s how. Sam looked at Ian. “It was an accident. One second we were driving. I was driving. The next we just flew off the road.” He cringed. “It was my fault.”
“It was an accident, Sam,” Sierra said. “Icy roads.”
“No, I was at the wheel, and Willow started singing, and I took my eyes off the road for one lousy second.” He couldn’t tell them he’d actually been joining in. “They could have all died because of me.”
“They didn’t, because of you, Sam,” Sierra said.
He looked away, his mouth tight. “The commune? Why did she take them there? I told her I’d come back. I promised her.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Sierra said.
“No.” His voice emerged harsher than he meant. “That just wasn’t . . . smart. She risked the lives of the kids. What if she hadn’t found the commune—they’d be out there right now, the rain turning to ice and snow, and we would have no way to find them. It was just plain stupid.”
It was then he heard the door click shut, the tiny rasp of metal into the latch, and he looked over.
Willow stared at him, her face stoic and pale. “I just got in. I wanted to see if you were . . . so, you’re alive. Good.”
Her glance went to Sierra’s hand clasped into Sam’s.
“Willow!” Sierra launched herself up from the bed, caught her sister in a full-on embrace. “I was so worried.”
Willow surrendered to the force of her sister’s relief.
Her beautiful, devastated gaze, however, stayed on Sam. Unshed emotion filled those hazel-blue eyes, and he heard his words like acid in his throat.
“It was just plain stupid.”
“Willow . . .” he said, his voice broken.
She tore her gaze off him and onto her sister. “I’m fine, Sierra. Mom fed me her famous pumpkin soup and hot cocoa.”
“Your head! That looks horrible!”
“I’m fine. I’m going down to the ER right now—Dr. Moore is still checking out the kids. I wanted to run up here and tell Sam . . . well anyway, we’re home.”
The smile she flashed him, hollow and distant, could bore a hole through him. “I see everything is back to normal here. I’m happy you got Sam back.”
He closed his eyes. Trapped. Because yeah, he needed to talk to Sierra, but not here, not in front of Ian.
He owed Sierra that much.
“Me too,” Sierra said, her voice a little odd. “But more, I’m glad you’re back. You scared us.”
“I think we’ve all pretty much figured out that me and a trip with the youth group into the mountains doesn’t mix. I’m not going to stick around for strike three.”
Her words made Sam look at her, but she didn’t spare him a glance.
Still. “Willow, this wasn’t your fault,” he said.
She met his gaze then, a darkness in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. Even after two days in the wilderness, after he’d nearly driven them over a cliff, after she’d been swept downriver, after discovering Dawson’s drinking.
No, this darkness had to do with the fact that somehow he’d snuffed out the light she held on to so bravely. The light that told him she believed in him, in herself, in them.
That light that had pretty much kept him going until right now.
“Actually it is, and we both know it.” She turned to Sierra. “I was trying to help these kids see that life wasn’t as dark as they thought it was. That there was always a different perspective.” She gave a harsh laugh. “I guess I did. I showed them that no matter how dark it is, it can always get worse.”
Sam winced.
“I’ll be downstairs, sis. I could probably use a ride home when you’re ready to leave.”
“Willow,” Sierra said.
But she turned around, rushed from the room.
Sierra rounded on him.
“What?” he said.
“No, you tell me what?” Sierra snapped. “What happened out there that my sister looks like you took out her heart and stomped on it?”
He didn’t know what to say. He glanced at Ian.
Not here. Not now.
“Nothing happened.”
Silence, and Sierra looked at him as if she wanted to turn him to ash.
“Listen, okay, I might have . . .” Fallen in love with your sister.
The words moved inside him, took hold.
Oh. No.
Oh. Yes.
Because even as he looked at Sierra, searching for words, he longed to lift himself out of the bed and run—sprint—after Willow. To tell her—
What? Because he’d just called her stupid, practically to her face. How did he come back from that?
“Oh boy,” Sierra said, shaking her head. “Something did happen, didn’t it? And then you blew it. I can’t believe I actually thought you would be good for her.”