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Bubba rolled his eyes. “Oh please, when were you my teacher? Remind me of this time in our history, bro, because right now it isn’t ringing a bell.”
“I taught you how to shoot,” Cole said as Bubba mounted up. “And I taught you how to kiss.”
“Dad taught me how to shoot,” Bubba said, scanning the dusty trail behind them again for a sign of Marisol. “And you taught me to tongue my pillowcase so hard I almost choked Amanda Gull during seven minutes in heaven.She’sthe one who taught me how to kiss.”
“You’re an ungrateful bastard,” Cole said with a grin. “I’m heading in with the cows. Go check on your woman. I know she’s a ranch brat and I haven’t seen any mountain lions around this area in months, but it’s not a good idea for anyone to be alone out here for too long.”
“Meet you at the house if we don’t catch up,” Bubba said, already planning not to.
Visions of taking one last swim in the spring with Marisol danced through his head as he urged Cricket down the trail. It wasn’t simply that he wanted an excuse to get her naked—though he did—it just felt like the perfect way to end their time on the ranch, and bring a little peace into his heart before he had to tell his family he was running off to become a country music singer.
He was so focused on recalling how sexy Marisol had looked with her breasts barely kissing the water and her wet hair hanging in thick ropes around her face, that he didn’t get worried as soon as he should have. But once he’d doubled back over the same stretch of trail twice, calling Marisol’s name with no response but the caw of the crows lingering over a jackrabbit carcass, he began to get concerned.
Fifteen minutes later, concern had become flat out panic. He rode back and forth across the trail, scanning the valley below for some sign that Marisol or her horse might have taken a fall, but there was nothing. There was no sign of hoof prints on the other side of the trail, either. Bubba wasn’t an expert tracker by any means, but he’d learned enough growing up hunting with his dad to be able to track Marisol to where she’d led the horse back onto the trail, but after that…
After that, it was like she had disappeared into thin air.
His heart slammed against his ribs and his mouth filled with the sour taste of panic. He should never have left her alone. He should have turned his back while she did her business behind a bush rather than risk anything hurting her. He was a fucking idiot, and now she was out in the desert somewhere, maybe lost, maybe hurt, maybe something even worse.
Bubba was getting ready to ride close enough to the ranch to get cell reception and call the police, before coming back to keep looking, but just as he dug his heels into Cricket’s side, he heard hoof beats on the trail ahead.
A moment later, Cole rounded the corner, an “oh shit” expression on his face. Even before his brother opened his mouth, Bubba had a bad feeling he wasn’t going to like what Cole had to say.
It took less than ten seconds for Cole to confirm it.
“I got down to the bottom and found Darcy tied up near the pens,” Cole said. “I was going to go see if Marisol had headed into the house as soon as I got the cows locked up, but Mom came up the hill before I finished. She said Marisol came in, grabbed her bag without saying a word, and headed off on one of the four-wheelers. Last Mom saw her, she was turning right onto the main road.”
“What?” Bubba fought the urge to punch something. Even if he got off his horse, there wasn’t anything on the trail to punch except rocks and scrub brush. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Cole said, looking as baffled as Bubba felt. “Mom asked if you two had gotten into a fight, but I said everything seemed fine. And Marisol was in a good mood last I’d seen her.”
Bubba cursed colorfully, torn between being mad as hell that Marisol had made him worry, and breathlessly relieved that she was okay. Or, at least she wasn’t at the bottom of the cliff with a broken neck. She obviously wasn’t okay, or she wouldn’t have run away from him for some reason he couldn’t begin to fathom.
It was at that moment that his dark thoughts from the night before came back to haunt him. Maybe he’d been right to worry. Maybe loving Marisol wasn’t going to be enough. Maybe their story was going to end up a sad country song, instead of a tribute to the enduring power of love.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Bubba mumbled between gritted teeth.
“Tell me what you want to do, Bubs,” Cole said, a pitying look in his eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can to help out.”
“If I’m not back by sundown, come looking for me,” he said, digging his heels into Cricket’s sides hard enough to send the horse leaping forward.
“What? Where are you going?” Cole called after him, but Bubba was already a hundred feet away, then two hundred, hunching low over Cricket’s back as he urged the horse into a canter with his thighs.
He hadn’t ridden a horse this fast in years, but Cricket was as sure-footed as any animal he’d ridden, and he didn’t have time to waste running into the house to get the keys to his truck. He needed to get to Marisol—fast. Before she succeeded in running away from him, before the dark thoughts in his mind could take root and ruin the beautiful thing they’d found together.
Bubba had known he would have to fight to win Marisol’s heart, but every war had a deciding battle. This was his and Marisol’s. He was riding out to make his last stand, and he was coming back with the woman he loved thrown over the saddle in front of him, or he was coming back alone, and starting the next phase of his life a changed man.
A man who would be forced to admit that there were walls love couldn’t climb, and battles it couldn’t win.
But as he reached the flat stretch of land next to the cattle pens and urged Cricket faster, until the horse’s thick muscles were bunching and roiling between his legs, he prayed that he wasn’t going to become that man. He didn’t want to believe fear was more powerful than love, and he didn’t want to move on with his life without Marisol beside him.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Turn around!Turn around, before you screw up the best thing that has ever happened to you!
Marisol pulled in a breath and bit down hard on her trembling bottom lip as she gunned the four-wheeler down the gravel on the side of the road leading out of Lonesome Point. The next town big enough to have a bus station was fifty-five miles away, and she had no idea if she had enough gas to get there, or what she was going to do with the four-wheeler she’d liberated from the Lawson family shed if and when she did.
To say she hadn’t thought this through was putting things mildly.
