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“Your sister?” I asked, turning to look at her. She was walking steadily beside me, her steps much softer than mine. I don’t know what it was about knowing everything that I did, but just the little bit of information put her in a whole new light. Shewastough—she’d had no choice but to be tough.
“Yeah, she’s my older sister. She’s nearly six years older than me. She was just as stuck as I was, but she finally met some guy on the internet—a really nice guy. They started talking and he came to meet her in South Dakota. After like a year of doing that, he proposed to her, asking her to move to Arizona with him. He knew the shit conditions we lived in, and he’s not rich, but he’s a hard worker. They have a real nice house and horse ranch outside of Scottsdale. They have a kid now.”
I nodded, seeing the longing on Cheyenne’s face—though I wasn’t sure if it was the kid or the getting out that made her react this way. “You can have a life like that.”
She blew out a sharp breath. “I don’t care about having a life like hers. I don’t want a family. I just don’t want to get stuck in the vicious cycle like everyone else I know.”
“You’re already doing that,” I pointed out, trying to reassure her and lighten the conversation. “You’re something else.” I nearly reached for her hand, longing to pull her in and hold her, but the sound of rushing water interrupted my thought process.
“Ohshit,” Cheyenne’s voice said before I could.
ChapterNine
Cheyenne
When I had thought of floodwaters, I hadn’t expected to see a full raging river of muddy brown water ripping trees from the ground and pulling them downstream.
“I thought you said it was acreek.” The sound of the water nearly drowned out my voice. I looked over to Wade, whose eyes were as wide as his face. There was no doubt that even if he heard me, he didn’treallyhear me.
“This is worse than I thought it’d be,” he finally looked over to me, shouting. “This is where the bridge was. We’re going to have to turn around and go back.”
“How much further do we have if we can get across?” I asked, refusing to give up hope. “There’s got to be some way around it.”
“This is the lowest point—and it’s clearly not a safe crossing.” He turned back to the rushing water. “I don’t even know how deep that water is.”
“Right, but how far do we have to walk if we can get across it?” I repeated my question, trying to account for how much time we had.
“I don’t know—maybe a few miles. We’ve come a long way. We’re well over halfway. I do know that.”
“Okay, so we have some time then.” My eyes lifted to the darkening skies, and my stomach flipped. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, the fear of being swept down the muddy creek-turned-riverwasa fear of mine. I’d heard of things like that happening over the years.
But I just couldn’t let myself go there.
“We need to get back to the cabin,” Wade said gruffly, his voice growing stern.
“No,” I argued, spinning around to look at him. “I’mnotgoing back. We’re going to cross this river.”
“The hell we are!” His cheeks went red beneath his hat. “Trying to cross this river is a fucking death wish, Cheyenne. We’re not doing it.”
“You’re not going to tell me what to do,” I snapped at him, heading further north up the water’s edge. “I’ll find a way to get across it. It’s not that wide—maybe ten feet. That’s all we have to do.”
“It’s not worth it,” he continued, following me down the new bank. Takoda followed along, staying a good few feet from the water’s edge. “This isn’t a good idea. There’s no way we can get across. We need to call a spade a spade. There could be hail—”
“Would you just hush for a minute?” I snapped at him. “Likecome on.We have come this far, and we’re going to do this. I need to get somewhere I can get some power for my phone. My sister is worried by now—and I don’t want her to think that something happened. She wanted to just fly me out, and I should’ve done that, but I insisted on having some stupid road trip.”
His eyebrows shot upwards at my confession. “Fine. You find a way across, and I’ll go with you. I’m not going to leave you here to die on your own. That would just be wrong.”
“Great,” I mumbled, my eyes focused on a downed couple of trees just a few feet up the way. “I already know how we’re going to do this.” I took off at a trot to the downed trunks, testing to see just how heavy they were. “Let’s just toss these across and we should be good to go.”
“You’re kidding, right? There’s no way that these things aren’t going to be swept down the creek.”
“You’re gonna hold one end while I get across and then I’ll hold the end for you. Or you can go first. I don’t know. But I think it’ll work.” I grabbed one end and began dragging it toward the water's edge. “I know they’re slim, but it’ll be fine. If we start to lose our balance, it shouldn’t be hard to just jump to the other side.”
“Right,” he grimaced, hurrying to help me move the down trees. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, sweat already beading across my forehead. Together, we moved the two twelve to thirteen-foot-long tree trunks, standing them up and shoving them over to the other side of the creek. The branches were still full of leaves, and it made a space between the trunks.
“Are you sure you want to go first?” Wade stood at the edge of the bridge we created, the water raging just below. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
