Something Wilder(39)
“Nic. Shut up.”
Wait. What?
Leo nearly had to smother himself with his pillow. If he could take out his eyeballs and roll them over to where the two women were sitting to watch Lily’s expression while she said this… he would voluntarily be blind for the rest of eternity.
He barely made out her whispered “I’m not staring at him.”
“Are you for real?” Nicole said, decidedly less quiet. “You’re a worse liar than I am.”
“I’m not!”
“Well, he sure is. That boy stares at you with the horniest eyes.”
Heat crawled up his neck. He was positive Nicole was correct.
“Okay, now: Imagine if it’s real,” Nicole said, redirecting. “Imagine finding even a little bit of cash. Even if you think there’s, like, a five percent chance that Duke found it, Dub, even a fraction of the Butch Cassidy money is enough to buy your land back. It could change our lives, girl. Isn’t this fate? Right when your land goes up for sale, this chance lands in your lap?”
Leo stared at the tent ceiling, reeling. Wilder Ranch was for sale?
Several long seconds passed, and then: “I know.”
“That’s all you’ve ever wanted, hon.”
This time, the “I know” was quieter.
Leo settled back onto his pillow. His heart twisted so painfully in his chest that he couldn’t manage a deep breath.
That’s all you’ve ever wanted, hon.
All he’d ever truly wanted was her.
He felt uncorked, like he’d been shoved into a tiny space and was bubbling over, too large for his old skin. He’d been ripped from his reality, torn from the monotony and routine and loneliness of his life in New York, and despite everything that had happened yesterday—despite the fact that he had no idea what the next few days would bring—there was no way in hell he was ready to go back.
* * *
He wasn’t surprised to see he was the first guest up, but he also wouldn’t be surprised to hear that everyone else was lying on their backs like he’d just been, staring at the roof of their tent, trying to figure out how to feel. His thoughts were a rubber-band-ball tangle, but he had to find Lily.
She was standing at the fateful spot at the edge of the canyon, staring out, holding a tin cup of coffee. Her dark hair wasn’t braided; it hung soft and straight between her shoulder blades. Her frame was slight, wiry, and maybe it was the conversation he’d just overheard, but to Leo there was a vulnerable bend to her spine that made him ache to pull her into his arms. Afraid of startling her, he cleared his throat a few feet away and watched her jerk to awareness, the tiniest hitch of her shoulders.
“Hey.” He came to stand beside her, fighting the urge to move even closer.
“Hey.”
“At the risk of asking a stupid question,” he said, “how are you?”
She let out a dry laugh, bringing her steaming mug to her lips. “Fucking dizzy, that’s how.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, smiling warily out at the vista. “I’d say the same.”
“This is not a situation I ever expected to have to face,” she admitted.
“I’m sure.”
“Not just the Terry part.” She tilted her face to the sky. “Which is tragic, of course, but I meant what I said about people dying out here.”
“What other part do you mean?” he joked.
She laughed, a surprised, sharp single syllable, but her smile quickly faded. “It’s weird, you know? Because on the one hand, of course he found Cassidy’s money. It makes sense. He was the Duke Wilder, after all. If anyone found it, he did. And on the other hand, to think he found it and didn’t tell me is so terrible it’s hard to comprehend.”
“I absolutely get that.” Leo squinted into his mug as he tried to put his next question into words. But in the end, it was pretty simple. “When did he pass?”
“About seven years ago.”
He let out a low whistle. “Wow. It’s been a while, then.”
She took a sip, nodding. “He had a stroke.” He felt her attention on the side of his face and turned to meet her steady gaze. “A few weeks after you left,” she said. “A few weeks after the ranch sold.”
Leo’s heart landed in his stomach with a heavy thud. All of it at once, and she’d only been nineteen. It was too much.
“It took the hospital a while to get ahold of me,” she said, “because I wasn’t at the ranch and didn’t have a phone.” She laughed humorlessly, a sharp exhale. “He couldn’t walk or talk. I brought him back to our cabin in town and the only thing he could say from that day on was ‘Lily.’ ‘Lily’ for water, ‘Lily’ to adjust his pillows. ‘Lily’ to change the channel. We’d have a nurse come in a few days a week to help so I could work; otherwise I probably would have killed him.” She laughed so he’d know she was mostly kidding. “I guess a bright side to him selling the ranch when he did is that we had money for the medical bills. He lasted just under three years.” Lily looked over at him and attempted a smile, almost like she heard in her own voice how flat and dissociated she sounded, like she was reciting back his diner order rather than opening up about the wasting away of her father.