Cam reached for me, letting his hands linger on my waist once my feet hit the steel bottom of the car. “I think there’s a real gold unicorn pin down here somewhere,” he told her, looking straight at me.

“Really?”

“Yep. Your aunt lost it when we were kids.” His hands flexed on my waist again before he let me go and climbed over into the driver’s car.

“You lost a unicorn pin?” Her eyebrows rose in accusation.

“I did. I got lost down here when I was your age, actually.” God, she was so young. So small. Had I really been her age?

“You did?”

Cam fired up the engine, and I buckled in. “She did.”

“I was exploring with your mom and Xander, and I got separated somehow. I don’t remember a lot of that part, but I slipped and fell down one of those shafts.” I motioned toward the older tunnel as Cam drove us around the circular track that would bring us back to daylight.

“Were you scared?”

“Terrified. But Cam found me. It felt like I’d been gone for days, but really it was only a few hours.”

She nodded slowly, thinking over what I’d said. “And you left your pin?”

“It got ripped off my shirt when I fell, I think.”

We were quiet as the train sped up, and I breathed a heck of a lot easier once the sun hit my face.

“How about I keep your helmet on my desk so you have it whenever you want to visit?” Cam offered.

Rose debated for a moment but eventually agreed. “I can come back, right?”

“Whenever you want,” he promised. “I mean, as long as you’re with an adult.” He shot me a sorry look.

“Deal.” She handed it over. I did the same, then walked toward the Jeep with her as Cam took the hard hats back to his office.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing down the hill to the charred, overgrown remains of the bunkhouse.

“That was the bunkhouse,” I told her. “It’s where the unmarried miners slept.”

“It doesn’t look like the other buildings,” she noted. “Even the roofless ones.”

“It burned down.”

“When?”

“When we were teenagers,” Cam replied, coming up behind us. “We had a really big party one night, and it caught fire. Guess what?”

“What?” she asked him with big eyes.

“I carried your aunt out of that, too.” He nodded seriously, tucking me into his side.

She looked from us to the ruins and back with a shake of her head.

“What?” I questioned.

She sighed and headed toward the Jeep. “You guys get in a lot of trouble. Mom would have grounded me if I’d been in the middle of any of that.”

I didn’t bother telling her that her mom had been at the fire, too.