Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 95436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Leo had to count his breaths. He was all tightness and longing; there was no space for words. Finally, he was able to tell her: “Missing you was physically debilitating.”
She turned, meeting his eyes.
Leo stared at her a beat longer and then looked down, studying his hands, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles. “I had to get to a place mentally where I didn’t want anything. I had to sort of,” he said, exhaling slowly, “turn everything off. But I’m here now. With you. I don’t mean— I mean, you matter to me. Even if we don’t know each other anymore. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”
She turned toward the ledge again. “My whole life I’ve assumed Duke was full of shit,” she said. “And now, it feels like my only chance to get my ranch back relies on the assumption that he was not, in fact, full of shit.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked her. “The ranch?”
She inhaled slowly, tapping an absent rhythm out on her coffee cup. “I want that, yeah. I want my ranch, and a family, and to not worry that I might not have money to feed my horses and pay Nicole. I want what I want, for a change. What about you?” she asked him. “What do you want?”
When he smiled, he was sure she had no idea what was supposed to be funny—but his answer was almost the direct opposite of hers. “I want my life turned upside down.”
She turned to look at him again. “What’s that mean?”
“I’m in if you are.”
Lily’s hazel eyes took on a golden glimmer in the rising sun. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I might follow you anywhere, he thought.
“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.