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“I need some space. I need to think.”
“There’s nothing to think about,” I tell her. “We need to keep moving.”
“Unless you’re going to hogtie me to the bike, you should give me a few minutes.”
I grind my teeth. “I could do that, Kay, pretty damn easily. I’ve got rope, and I doubt you could stop me.”
She takes a step forward, glaring up at me. It makes me think of her as a mother, defending our children with that same fierceness in her expression. “If you do that, I’ll hate you forever. And when you drop your guard, I’ll use it to get as far away from you as possible. Just leave mealone.”
She spins, walks over to the lake, picks up a stone, and throws it angrily. I scan the landscape and then walk up beside her. My chest is rising and falling way too fast. My head is full of hurt, thinking about her hating me forever.
She’s being dramatic. She has to be. It’s another sign of our age gap. A woman my age wouldn’t behave in this way. Fuck.No. A woman my age… I can’t think of any other woman, in any context, ever. Just the thought feels like a betrayal. No, itisone.
She sits on the ground by the lake, staring into the water. I stand nearby, head on a swivel as I wait for her. I’m not going to let anybody sneak up on us. I’m not going to let anybody hurt her. I’d take a bullet before I allowed that to happen.
Minutes pass, maybe twenty. Finally, she stands and looks at me like she’s making good on her promise, as though she hates me. “I guess we should get going before you lose your patience and tie me up.”
I’d like to tie her up. It’s true, but not in this context. She’s agreed to come, though. That’s all that matters. We can deal with the emotions later. Or do what’s best, which is to let them die.
Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
Kayla
“Are we allowed to camp here?” I say.
Kai has his back to me, setting up the tent in the Colorado National Park. The gray of his shirt has flecks of sweat from hard riding and the work he’s doing now, the muscles shifting against his back, his arms bulging with each movement. I don’t think the physical exertion makes him surge like that. I think it’s the fact of us and the tension. There’s something he’s not telling me. I thinkheknows I’ve guessed something.
“A little late for questions like that,” he grunts.
I sit on a rock, looking through the tall pine trees to a small body of glistening water. The sun begins to set. I close my eyes, trying to think of some poetry about this place, about anything—something to mark this experience and burn it into my mind forever.
When I asked Kai if he wanted help with the tent, he just grunted. He’s been doing that a lot since Utah when I snooped and found the watch. I was almost hoping to find drugs or something bad, something that would justify demanding him to take me home. Not the watch, not another reason to love my big brother even more.
Whispering under my breath, I recite some morbid Emily Dickinson lines, dragging my mood into the gutter so I don’t get any silly ideas. My mind strays to home, to what’s happening.
There’s a mystery in my man,
In his sharp emerald eyes.
When he looks my way,
We could live forever,
Or die.
Once he finishes, he sits on a rock opposite, wiping his face with a flannel. I go to the bike and bring him a bottle of water.
“Thanks,” he says, taking it quickly, almost snatching it, not looking at me.
His wild hair has swept down his forehead, close to his eyes. Standing over him, I almost reach down and smooth it back into place, but I manage to stop myself. It would be easier if he didn’t always look so hot, his biceps gleaming when he reaches up, brushing his hair.
“Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?” I ask.
He stops drinking the water and replaces the cap.
“Well?” I say. “The fact you didn’t just saynothing’s going onor ask what I meant tells me I’m right. It’s not like I’d have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.”
