I let go and stepped back and turned toward the slope, blinking after the darkness of the overhang, trying to ignore the slight throbbing still going on between my legs.
“Stay left of the shale shelf. The grass line has better footing.”
“You know this ridge?”
“I’ve been up here exactly once before.” I tested a rock with my boot before putting my weight on it. “It was a hundred degrees, and I was hiding from Duchess because she was in a mood.”
“You hid from a horse on a ridgeline on the other side of the property?”
“You haven’t met Duchess in a mood.” I grabbed a scrub branch to steady myself on a loose patch. “She holds grudges. She once refused to let the farrier near her for three weeks because he sneezed during a trim.”
“That seems excessive.”
“That seems like Duchess.”
The walk down was slow and miserable. Everything the flood had touched was slick and unstable. Mud over rock, loose shale, debris deposited in piles that hadn’t existed two hours ago. My boots slid on every third step, the cold had settled deep into my wet clothes, and my thighs burned in a much less pleasant way from the angle of our descent.
Logan helped me twice. Once when mud gave way under my boot and I started sliding, his hand closing around my arm and pulling me back to solid ground. Once when I misjudged a wet rock and my ankle turned, and he caught my elbow with a grip that was firm without being tight.
Both times, he let go as soon as I found my footing. He offered a hand the way you’d offer one to anyone on bad ground, and he took it back when it wasn’t needed anymore.
Carter would have kept his grip. Would have steered me down the hill with his hand locked on my arm, deciding where Istepped, calling it protective. It took me three years of marriage to learn the difference between protection and control, and another three once the marriage was done to stop flinching from a man’s hand near my arm.
I stopped ten feet away and my stomach dropped.
The truck sat at the bottom, coated in brown silt, the waterline halfway up the doors. I could see exactly where the water had reached, and I couldn’t tell if it had been enough to kill the engine or not. It looked like something that had been dredged from a riverbed. The windows were intact. The cab looked dry. Maybe.
I got in. The cab was damp. Mud covered the floor mats, and the seat was wet under my legs. I gripped the key and put it in the ignition.
“Please,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. God. The universe. The truck itself. “Please start.”
I turned the key.
The engine cranked. Coughed once, hard enough that my hand tightened on the key.
Then it caught. Turned over. Ran.
I closed my eyes and gripped the steering wheel with both hands and pressed my forehead against my knuckles and just breathed. The engine hummed under me, alive, running, the most beautiful sound I’d heard in months.
At least one thing hadn’t broken today. Which was good since I definitely would not be part of the “hadn’t broken” list.
A laugh came out of me, shaky and thin and too loud in the small cab. I lifted my head and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand.
Logan was in the passenger seat. He’d gotten in while my eyes were closed, and the cab that had always felt like plenty of space suddenly didn’t. I could feel the warmth coming off him from eighteen inches away. My body was still humming withthe ghost of what had happened in the overhang, and being this close to him in an enclosed space with his thigh right there made my skin prickle with something I wasn’t ready to name.
“The truck lives,” he said.
“Yes, thank God.” I sniffed once and put it in gear, grateful to have something to do with my hands that wasn’t thinking about his. “Don’t look at me. I’m having a deeply emotional reunion with my vehicle, and it’s private.”
He chuckled. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I pulled out of the low ground and onto the dirt road back to Pawsitive. The road was a mess, rutted and half washed in places, but passable. I drove slowly and carefully, and I was grateful for the task of it. Hands on the wheel. Eyes on the ruts.
I shifted gears and my knuckle brushed the edge of his knee, and heat shot up my arm and into my face so fast I nearly swerved. I pulled my hand back to the wheel and stared at the road.
Logan sat quiet beside me, watching the road through the windshield, giving me space even in a truck cab. He didn’t push me to talk. He didn’t fill the silence. He was just there.
The road curved through the trees, and the light was going gray and gold before evening. My mind wouldn’t stop, but it wasn’t doing what I expected. I thought it would replay the breakdown, the secrets, the things I’d said that I couldn’t take back. And it did, distantly, the way you’re aware of a bruise without pressing on it.
