Something Wilder(41)

“I’d need to have complete control,” she said, searching his eyes. “I’d carry the gun. I’d be the only one holding the maps. I don’t trust anyone except Nicole.” She paused. “And you.” Another pause. “I think.”

At this, his ribs formed a Faraday cage around a crackling electric heart.

She stared at him for several long seconds.

“Okay, then,” she said quietly.

“Okay, then,” he echoed. “Do we need to figure out the riddle?”

“We can think about it while we head toward the Maze,” she said. “I’m not sure we have time to decipher it—sometimes his riddles took me weeks to untangle.” Lily looked up at him. “But if there’s a tree, I know it would be near the river, and I know some of his favorite spots down there. And we definitely know it’s in the Maze. We’ll need to drive there. I’m not willing to risk the horses, and we’d need to go by foot at some point anyway.”

Goose bumps spread along his arms. “Okay.”

“There’s a guy I know who can help us, a little town not too far from here. But I meant what I said about the hike being dangerous,” she warned him.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, and she let out a long, slow breath.

“Fuck it,” she whispered. “Let’s do it.”

An explosion detonated in his blood. His fingers itched to reach down and twist with hers. Leo wanted to punctuate this agreement with a shout aimed at the sky, his mouth on hers, his hands on her skin. It’d always been this way: his heart on his sleeve for anyone to see. He felt utterly lovesick again.

“This feels like a second chance.” She tilted her coffee cup to her lips, draining it. “At the very least, failing to find anything here won’t make my life any worse.”

This had to be enough for now. Because bubbling in his veins was the realization that if this was real, she could have everything she ever wanted, and maybe he could, too.





Chapter Fourteen


“IS IT BAD that I don’t really feel bad?” Bradley adjusted Bullwinkle’s reins in his gloved hands, and Leo wondered how he’d react if he saw himself right now. His jaw was covered in whiskers, sunglasses smudged and a canteen at his hip. He looked, frankly, the worse for wear.

Leo certainly felt different. In some ways it seemed no time had passed between when he’d climbed off a horse for the last time in Laramie and when he’d mounted Ace at their first campsite here. In others, it felt like he had been asleep for the entire decade, not using any of his senses, any of these muscles.

“I feel bad.” Walter straightened in his saddle. “I didn’t like Terry, but I didn’t want him to die.”

Bradley took off his baseball cap and used it to scratch the back of his unruly hair. “I’m sorry he died, but I’m done feeling guilty.”

Leo glanced at his friend, muting his surprise. Bradley had apologized again, and everyone agreed that emotions were justifiably high, but Nicole’d told him she’d gut him if he tried anything like that again. She’d have to get in line behind Leo.

They rode in silence as the horses continued navigating the descent into the canyon. The six and a half miles of switchbacks were relatively wide, but the edge was still sharp enough that they stuck to the inside of the trail, acutely aware that only five of them rode this morning instead of six.

Lily assured them that the horses had done this before, and that to them it was sort of a game. She was right. They nickered and called to each other almost all the way down and around the mountain, ears forward, tails up. Calypso seemed to be the most enthusiastic. Leo wasn’t sure whether it was because she didn’t have the weight of a rider to carry or because she was specifically happy to be rid of Terry, but Lily and Nicole each yelled at her to take it down a notch at least twice before they’d reached the sandy washout below.

The trip had obviously gone off script, so after a break where the guys handled lunch and Lily and Nicole took care of the horses, it was another three hours at least before they stopped just at the edge of the town where they would meet Lily’s friend Lucky.

She’d used the word town generously.

“This is it?” Leo asked when they finally came to a stop at the vague beginnings of a dirt road. It was nothing more than two dusty walkways set parallel to each other and a few small, rickety buildings.

“Looks like Redneck Radiator Springs,” Bradley mumbled.

Leo glanced around. “That’s an insult to rednecks.”

Deflating, Walter admitted, “When you said ‘town,’ I was hoping we could get massages.”

“You could get off your horse,” Nicole said, “and I’ll step on your neck for free.”

Walter blushed hotly and Bradley stared blankly at them. “This is the most bizarre flirting I’ve ever witnessed.”

“Welcome to Ely. Population… I don’t know. Two?” Lily ignored the commotion behind her and pointed to a tan double-wide with a tin awning on the front. “That’s the ranger station. If we’re going through with this, then we’ll want to steer clear.” At Leo’s continued wide-eyed appraisal of the town, she added, “Reset your expectations, city boy.”

“As with the ‘bus depot,’?” Bradley recollected. “Or what you’re calling ‘toilet paper’ out here.”