Page 32 of Say it Ain’t So

Just like when I met Rylan.

I slid down an embankment until my wheel caught on something and my car started to roll. I threw my hands out to the sides and slammed my eyes closed, not willing to see death hit me in the face. Everything around me shook and rattled, and my head throbbed as I braced for more pain.

Finally, the car came to a crashing halt. My ears rang and my heart raced, and though I struggled to breathe, I was alive. For now, I was alive.

I kept my eyes clamped shut as I tried to make sense of where I was. Everything felt off. The pain in my hand intensified until streaks of lightning seemed to radiate through my wrist, up my arm, and straight to my head. Each time I moved, it only got worse. I tried reaching for the window, for the ceiling, for… anything, but the pain was too much. It wasn’t until something brushed my hair from my face that I realized I was upside down. When I opened my eyes, the panic I could already feel pumping through me ramped up until I thought my heart would burst.

My vehicle was upside down, my windows were shattered, and water was filling the cabin of my car from the ravine I’d landed in. I struggled against my seatbelt, but all my attempts to get loose were pointless without the use of my left hand. I couldn’t undo my belt. I couldn't get free from my seat. I was stuck here, surrounded by broken glass and filthy, dirty water was rising toward my head. I closed my eyes again as the cold water danced around my forehead, and I tried to escape back to the place I’d run from only that morning. Back to the memories of yesterday, of Rylan’s strong arms, of the warm bed at his side.

Back to the time when I’d found someone to love me.

Before I ran away.

11

RYLAN

Two and a Half Years Later

My muscles ached as I pulled myself up one finger hold at a time. I couldn’t focus on anything but climbing the rock wall in front of me—each finger hold, each jut of the wall, the pull and strain of each muscle as I reached upward and raced to the top. I didn’t focus on the last two and a half years. The loss of my wife. The lies she told me or how she stole—then broke—my heart.

There was no Joss Monroe anywhere in North Dakota. Not a single one existed in Minnesota, where she said she lived. After sinking too much money into fruitless searches, I’d begun to wonder if she’d ever been real at all.

What I thought we had certainly wasn’t. That existed only in my dreams.

Dreams that had been smashed to pieces with each dead end.

“Fucking hell, Dennis!” called my buddy, Wade Warren, as I slapped my palm against the top of the wall. “How the hell do you keep winning every time? I’ve never seen someone climb so fast!”

“I’ll tell you how,” Weston Abrams called from down below, his hands tight on the end of my rope. “He gets all his energy from those damn squirrels he ate on his last trip to Kentucky.”

“Hey!” Holding onto the wall with one hand, I turned and looked down at the floor. “I’ll have you know, those squirrels were delicious!”

Wade let loose a raucous laugh as he fell backward off the midway point where he’d stopped, causing his belayer, Zane Maxwell, to scramble to hold on.

“Christ, Warren! A little notice next time!”

“Nah, you got me.” Wade turned to Zane as he landed and slapped him on the shoulder. “I trust you to have my back.”

Weston shook his head, then turned his attention back to where I sat in my harness, thirty feet above their heads. I knew he was ready for me to come down, that he’d have my back the way Wade was sure Zane had his. But I was happy up here. For the first time since I woke up alone in my marriage bed, I felt a genuine smile cross my lips.

Good friends. Good fun. Not thinking about anything else. The familiar hum of excitement coursed through me, making me feel like me again.

It’d been more than two years since the best night of my life. Two years of searching, of finding nothing, of not giving up. I tried. I failed.

Now it was time to move on.

I itched with the need to do something. To leave this state I’d come to for no other reason than to try to find Joss. There were reasons to stay, of course. I’d settled here. Found a job. Found these friends. But adventure was always calling, always telling me I was needed somewhere else. Something was out there and maybe, just maybe, this place wasn’t meant for me anymore.

That itch told me I didn’t need the job—the fortune I’d made off my jackpots had been more than enough to tide me over, and the financial advisor I’d hired to handle the funds had made some excellent decisions.

That itch also whispered I didn’t need these friends. That I could leave tomorrow, and no one would care. They’d get over it. They’d find someone else to take my place. They didn’t really care after all.

Sucking in a deep breath, I let it out slowly, trying to expel that thought. Then I turned away from my friends, trying to find that piece of me I’d lost.

“Coming down!” I waited a beat, giving Weston a chance to tighten his hold. Then I half-walked, half-jumped down the wall. Each leap had my heart racing just a little, that familiar rush of adrenaline rushing through my veins. For a moment, I thought I found what I was missing.

Down on the ground, I unbuckled my rigging from the wall. And I tried—the entire time—not to think about the way the wind made Joss’s hair dance around her face after she touched down on the landing pad at the Strat.