"Everybody knows what their family told them." He crouched and ran his thumb along the notch. "Doesn't mean any of it's accurate."
I lowered the camera. "You brought me up here to tell me something."
"I brought you up here to show you something." He stood. "There's a difference. I haven't decided about telling yet."
I let that sit. I tied Rosalee to a pine branch and walked to where he stood, close enough that I could see the dust on his collar and the gold catching in his stubble. He smelled like leather and the same soap I'd been smelling on his towels for three weeks.
The light was unbelievable, but I wasn't going to mention it. He hadn't brought me up here to talk about the light.
"There's history in those records," I said. "Isn't there?"
"There's history in those records that neither family knows about. Or doesn't want to know."
"Are you going to do anything with it?"
He looked at the post. At the valley. At the distance between what people believed and what had actually happened. "Not yet."
I turned back toward the view and lifted my camera again. Not because I wanted the shot. Because my hands needed something to do besides giving in to the overwhelming need to reach for him.
When I’d finished taking photos, I found him sitting on a flat rock at the clearing's edge. I sat down a few feet away but close enough that I could feel where he was without looking.
"Does her mother show up regularly?"
"Often enough that Rory knows not to plan around her. Not often enough that I've stopped letting myself be surprised by it." He picked up a pine needle from the rock and turned it between his fingers. "She'll have her back by one. Probably."
"And if she doesn't?"
"I drive to the lodge."
The clock was ticking. We had five hours until Dana's deadline. Six until the family rodeo clinic. I'd known that walking up. He'd known it before I had.
"I'm the same way," I said.
He looked over. “What do you mean?”
I swallowed hard. “Leaving before anyone has time to expect me to stay. It's easier than the alternative."
"What's the alternative?"
"Staying. And then having someone decide they wished I hadn't."
I didn't like how that sounded once it was out in the open between us. So I picked up the camera again and aimed it at nothing in particular while I waited for him to either ignore my last comment or respond.
He didn't get up, just shifted on the rock until our shoulders were almost touching. "Has someone decided that before?"
That was the kind of question a man asks when he’s trying very hard to figure out what kind of baggage the woman who just entered his life is carrying.
I answered him honestly. "Yes."
"How long ago?"
"Long enough that I’m over it but haven’t forgotten what it felt like.”
The wind shifted. He smelled like leather and sun-warmed pine and something else I'd been pretending not to clock for three weeks. I lowered the camera into my lap.
"Bella."
"Don't."
