Page 106 of Fighting For You

Knox took me to Sedona for Thanksgiving weekend. He said it was a good place to find crystals. He was right.

The shop was on the main road through Uptown, tucked between a gallery and a café. Crystals lined every surface, raw and polished, arranged by color and type on wooden shelves that ran floor to ceiling.

Knox was standing near the back wall holding something in his hand. "This just looks like a regular rock."

I walked over and looked at it. "That's not a regular rock. That's a geode." I took it from him and turned it over. The inside was lined with crystal, pale purple, catching the light in every direction. "See?"

Knox looked at it. He turned one half over in his hand, held it up to the window, and looked again. It was the most interested I'd ever seen him be about a crystal.

"How much is this?"

I checked the tag. "Four hundred."

His eyebrows went up.

"They can be really pricey," I said. "Maybe another time." I set both halves back on the shelf and headed toward the crystal rack on the other side of the store.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Knox pull his phone out and take a picture of the geode.

I picked up a citrine from the rack. Small, warm gold, rough on one side and smooth on the other. It caught the light from the front window and held it.

I'd rebuilt my collection since the fire. Piece by piece, over the past year and a half. The labradorite from Oatman, the black tourmaline I bought when I moved in, the moonstone Ian bought before he died. New pieces from shops I found on days off, gifts from Gracelyn, one from Maureen. They sat on the windowsill of our bedroom at the duplex, lined up where the morning sun hit them first.

"Are we getting that one?"

"Yeah." I held it up. "I think I want this one."

Knox took it from my hand, walked to the register, and paid for it before I got there.

We had dinner at a restaurant off the main road with a patio that looked out over the red rocks. The sun went down while we ate, and the sky turned from orange to pink to a deep violet that settled over the canyon like a blanket.

After dinner, Knox drove us out of town. The road narrowed and the lights fell away behind us until the only thing left was the desert and the dark.

He pulled off onto a dirt overlook and cut the engine.

"Come on."

He grabbed a blanket from the back seat and spread it in the truck bed. I climbed up beside him. He put his arm around me, and I leaned into his shoulder and looked up.

The sky was full.

In Vegas, you could see maybe ten stars on a clear night. The Strip washed out everything above it, and what was left was a handful of bright ones scattered across a pale sky. I'd spent years on rooftops looking up and pretending I could read something in it.

Here, the sky was so full of stars it didn't look real. The Milky Way ran across the center of it in a pale band, and the constellations I'd only ever seen in books were right there, sharp and clear, more stars than I could count pressed together so close the spaces between them glowed.

"I got into astrology because I needed a way to make sense of my life," I said. "After my parents died and it was just me and Ian, everything felt random and impossible. Like I was just stumbling through it." I looked at the sky. "It's not always accurate. I know that. But it's comforting when the stars tell you something nice."

Knox pulled me closer. His arm tightened around me. I felt his chest rise and fall beneath my head.

"What are they telling you now?"

I laughed. "That this is one of the best nights of my life." I tilted my head up and kissed him. He kissed me back, soft, his hand in my hair for a moment before he pulled away.

"Nora, there's something I have to tell you."

I sat up. Something in his voice made my chest tighten. "What is it?"

He sat up beside me. He was looking at me, and he was steady, but his eyes were full in a way I'd only seen a few times.