Like she was the night she slept out here—alone and on the run without an end in sight and with no one to have her back.
She gives me a reproachful look that requires no explanation.
A tiny laugh slips out, and I slide my hand over hers and squeeze it. “Okay, so you’re still stressed out and worrying, but you’re going to see it with completely different eyes now. That’s something.”
That night was filled with uncertainty, panic, fear, and darkness that she only kept at bay with a damn flashlight. Then she lost Gizmo and spent the next morning frantically looking for him and running around accusing people of stealing him.
My hope is that all those feelings can be placed squarely in the past.
If not today, then soon.
She offers me a soft smile that tells me she isn’t so sure, and we ride in silence until we make it to the small parking lot that’s really nothing more than packed dirt where people have parked for so long that no grass grows anymore.
On such a hot summer afternoon, the place should be packed with swimmers trying to cool off in the crystal-blue water of the swimming hole at the base of the falls, but the building clouds and threatening thunderstorm have kept everyone away today. Which means we have the place completely to ourselves.
That might be a good thing given how jumpy Lucky is after her conversation with Sheriff Briggs earlier this week and the awful one this morning.
She needs the space and time to reorganize her thoughts, to see the world the way I do—starting here.
I park and help her climb out. Giz jumps after us and immediately races toward the water’s edge, sniffing around, ignoring us in favor of all the exciting smells nature has to offer.
Lucky remains tense as I grab the backpacks, hoisting the larger, heavier one onto my back and giving the other to her. She slips it on, and I take her hand as we pick our way over uneven ground down to the swimming hole.
The mountain cliff towers above us almost two hundred feet, so high that we have to crane our necks to see the top of it. Water from the same river that meanders across McBride Mountain cascades down the sheer face, crashing into the pool below. A few stray rays of late afternoon sunlight filter through the building clouds, causing a prism of rainbows to flash in the wet spray.
Lucky’s lips curl up into the first real smile I’ve seen in a long time. “Wow…”
I squeeze her hand. “I told you.”
She stares at it for several minutes, her eyes getting glossy with tears that—for once—aren’t sad. “It really is beautiful.”
“It is…”
But I’m not looking at the waterfall anymore.
Seeing Lucky here, in this place where we used to come so often growing up, that is so important to our lives and those of everyone in McBride Mountain, feels like another puzzle piece clicking into place.
These are the moments I’ve been trying to savor and concentrate on. The good ones. Rather than getting lost in the bad memories and the nightmares created by the unsettling truths I’ve learned about myself, I want to create new ones with her.
This woman who learned about the darkness that runs through my veins and wasn’t deterred…
This woman who has never flinched when it’s come to staring down my demons, even as she runs from her own…
This woman who has held my heart from the first moment we met has the ability to destroy me with a single look and unravel me with a simple touch.
And the way she looks at me when she glances over her shoulder makes me weak in the knees.
Her gaze that was so clouded by her internal storm only a few hours ago has cleared, replaced by a warm crystal blue that makes me want to dive into it and break free from the tempting waters.
All I want in this moment is to latch onto it and keep it alive—to keep her in this place where she can forget about the fact that there are still things beyond McBride Mountain that can hurt us.
I tug on her hand, urging her to follow me around the pool to the left, toward the thickest part of the forest. “I have something to show you.”
Her gaze narrows on the trees. “Where are we going?”
After warning her about what lives on the mountain, her slight agitation as we near the darkness created by the canopy isn’t completely unwarranted.
“You’ll see.”
