Concern puckered the corners of her mouth. The rarely seen divot in the middle of her chin appeared. She saved it exclusively for times of true turmoil.
He drank, lifting his face to the tufty clouds gone neon bright in the late afternoon, and closed his eyes as the water hit his parched throat. The water tasted clean. It felt cool. Cold enough, he almost couldn’t stand it. He drank, drank, drank, making his Adam’s apple work in fast reps.
When he came up for air, his lungs shoveled air in and out and he couldn’t fight the loose smile on his face or the worry hanging around her mouth. He knelt down next to Riot, poured enough water into the cap to fill it and offered it to him. The dog lapped lightly at the cool drink, his thin, pointed tail stuck in a happy windshield-wiper motion.
“How long?” she asked as Nick came to his feet.
“How long what?” he countered, handing the thermos back to her.
She took it. “How long have you two been out of water?”
He ignored the pounding behind his temples. “We’re good now.”
“Nick,” she said pointedly.
He made a noise in the back of his throat. “Since this morning.”
She cursed under her breath. “You have a radio. You could’ve signaled a park ranger.”
“It was only a few miles back to the truck,” he told her. “We have extra water there. We would’ve been okay.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asked, incisive.
“Sassy,” he said, trying to broaden his smile into a lie he couldn’t even fool himself with. He’d always found lying to her difficult. They’d known each other since grade school. Since before that fateful spring when his father had passed.
They’d bonded over the fact that they were both only children, they were both wild about buffalo wings and they both dreaded Mr. Sarcowski’s algebra class. They’d had to study with the same tutor after school. They were both invited to all the same birthday parties, since she was a Colton and he’d been good friends with Ryan.
The house he grew up in had been down the street from hers. They’d spent their summers helping out her father in his veterinary practice until she went off to New York for art school.
The separation had felt strange. How do you live without someone you saw every day for years on end? Whom you’d learned to lean on—who leaned on you in return during the hard days. She’d gone a long way toward helping him overcome those years after his father’s passing, the worst years of his life. She’d been there for his mother, too. She’d gotten her whole family involved in regular check-ins. They’d brought him and his mother into the Colton fold, making Nick and Margot feel like they belonged to the clan, too.
After art school, Sassy had returned to the Coltons and Nick in Dark Canyon. He often wondered why she’d left the New York art scene she’d once thought so exciting and intriguing. What kept her coming back to Dark Canyon?
He’d felt incomplete while she was away…though he’d needed a break from her, because he’d been lying to her about the very real feelings he’d been hiding for her beyond their friendship.
He’d needed the separation to get his head on straight. To erase all that. So he could feel normal around her again.
When she’d returned, he’d been able to convince himself that the mission had been a success. They’d gone back to being friends…justfriends, with no underlying weirdness on his part.
He reached out and gripped her shoulder, leveling with her. “We would’ve made it back to the truck. If I thought for a moment we wouldn’t have, I’d have radioed for help.” The idea that he would have risked putting his mother through more heartbreak…or left Sassy in that position… It hadn’t been all that long ago since her aunt Kate had died. And with everything happening around their hometown, including Ava Colton’s kidnapping, she didn’t need more turbulence in her life.
He’d stopped pushing his odds right around the time he’d come to understand that his mother wouldn’t be able to take care of herself much longer. These yearly hikes weren’t about pitting himself against nature or risking his life. It was about reconnecting with his dad.
He eyed her pack, desperate to shift her worries away from him. “Are there any wings in there?”
She scoffed at him, but the grin that took over the lower half of her face made it sound like she was holding back a laugh. Barbecued wings had been another long-standing birthday tradition. One of their own. “You wish.”
He picked up his pack once again and slung it around his shoulders. “Do we still have that reservation at the Sauce Spot?”
“You know it.”
“Don’t want to miss that.” He felt sapped, but the promise of wings and Sassy’s company galvanized him.
She planted a hand against his chest and gave him a good-natured shove. “Afteryou shower. You smell like Riot.”
Riot let out a chorus of barks at the sound of his name, pleased at the attention. He trotted off, leading the way as Nick’s and Sassy’s laughter chased him.
Chapter 3
