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“He’s on board. I talked to him already.”
She glared at him. “You did? Before me?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise for you, and I wanted to gauge how Ben felt about it, because I knew he would be your first thought.”
“Second. My first thought was how much I want to live out here with you.” A light frown creased her brow. “He’s on board?”
“He is. He knew we’d want to be on our own. Why do you think he’s starting to cook and clean?”
“I thought it was some reaction to the shit Mom said. Like he was trying to do things that showed his heart isn’t a rock, so she’d love him again.” She looked to the sky again for a moment before she added, “He’s doing it for me?”
“So you feel okay about leaving, yep.”
Something happened to Lyra then, a gradual thing, a subtle stiffening of her muscles, an occasional sniff, a deep sigh. Zach noticed each step and wasn’t surprised when she began to cry. He understood it, too. Not sadness, at least not on top. She was crying for love. Her love for her father, her father’s love for her. The love she and Zach shared.
Zach pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her.
His life had been good from his first breath. He’d had love and joy and contentment. He’d found success, as he defined it. There had been pains and sorrows, too, some of them deep. But his foundation had always been strong. Most of his guilt about needing to leave Tulsa had rested on that dilemma: how could he want to leave a life so good?
He hadn’t known the answer until he’d left, but he’d known it was out there. Without any clear evidence, he’d simply known that he’d had to go, and that he’d know why in time. He guessed it wasn’t unlike his certainty, despite the lack of clear evidence, that the Dragons’ truck was in that garage. His instincts were good.
That certainty had given him the resolve to weather his mother’s worry, his brother’s resentment, his own guilt and ambivalence, his worry about letting his father down. Then he’d met Lyra, and his roots had started sinking into the desert that very night. He belonged with her. He belonged with these Bulls, as their SAA. He belonged in this desert.
Here he wasn’t living his father’s legacy. Here was his destiny.
“Will you spend the rest of your life in the middle of nowhere with me?” he whispered.
“It’s not nowhere,” she said when she could talk again. “Wherever you are is my everywhere.”
“Is that a yes?” he asked, smiling into her silky, fragrant hair.
She answered by kicking him lightly in the shin.
“Knock twice for yes,” he chuckled.
She kicked him twice more.
He took that as a yes.
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THE END
