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Bruno massaged Lily’s naked ankle. She winced and flinched like she had a multiple compound fracture that was gushing blood, for God’s sake. What a wuss. Odd, knowing how tough she actually was.
“It’s not swelling,” he said, for the tenth time. “It’s not sprained.”
“Well, it hurts! I’m the one inside my body, OK?”
“For Christ’s sake, Lily. What part of ‘the sun will go down soon, leaving us stranded in pitch black, sub-zero cold and hundred-mile-an-hour wind gusts if you don’t get off your ass’ do younotunderstand?”
“So leave me here! Collect me on the way down! I won’t move, I promise. I’d get eaten by a grizzly or instantly lost. So just go!” She flapped her hand at him, in a ‘be off’ gesture. “Buh-bye! See ya!”
He stared at her, stony. “You’re sticking to me. Like glue.”
Her eyes burned. She was furious, with good reason. He could see it, and feel it, too, from her point of view. It made him feel like shit. But he couldn’t follow her to the realm of bugfuck lunacy. Mamma, involved in a sinister plot with an evil mastermind? Not. She’d just had bad taste in boyfriends. And in any case, the subject was charged with such lethal emotional voltage, a single touch would fry him.
So he wasn’t touching it.
But if he couldn’t support her version of reality, the next best thing was to try to keep those shitheads from killing her, until she could get the help she needed. That help was out of his depth, maybe. But kicking shitheads’ asses, that was a job he could wrap himself around.
He wrapped both hands around her delicate ankle, trying to impart some of his body heat, and started inserting her clammy foot back into her sock. She responded by kicking his chest, knocking him onto his ass. Ouch. Ingrate.
“I’m capable of putting on my own sock, thanks,” she snipped.
“Do it, then,” he growled. “And hurry.”
She shook his arm off when he tried to help her up.
He headed on, stopped at the turn-off, debating whether to do the pilgrimage. Didn’t seem like a great idea under the circumstances, but as soon as he thought the sensible decision was made, and tried to proceed on up to the bluff, the impulse sank in, and forced him right off the path. So. That was how it was going to be. He gave in, and struck off horizontally across a long, treacherous slope of broken rock.
“Hey! ” she yelled. “Didn’t you say the cell reception is at the top of the bluff?”
“Quick detour. Something I have to do first. Come on. Keep up.”
“Detour?” Her voice cracked in disbelief. “What the hell could you possibly have to do up here in the frozen wastes?”
He didn’t bother to turn. “It’s personal.”
“Is it, now! Well, excuse me for wondering why I’m being dragged across a goddamn rockslide!”
He could estimate how far behind him she was from her labored breathing, and she was doing all right, so he just pushed on, scrambled up the steep part, and crawled over the lip of the small hanging valley.
It was almost level up there, a long, gentle slope, with a broad swath of trees, larger and taller than the scrawny malformed ones on the more exposed, wind-whipped side of the bluff. It was a pretty place.
He walked over to Tony’s silver pine, laid his hand on it. The contact calmed him down. He’d been up here maybe four or five times since he’d lost Tony. He’d found that it helped. For a little while.
Lily clambered over into valley, plainly uncharmed by the beauty of the place. She glared as she leaned over to pant, bracing her hands against her knees. So much for the calming aspect of this side trip.
“Would you mind turning around for just a second?” he asked.
Her brows snapped together. “Come again?”
“I asked you to turn around.”
She looked affronted. “I got that part. What I don’t get is why.”
He sighed. “I have to take a leak,” he explained. “Do you mind?”
“What? You’re kidding me. You dragged me all the way over that so that you could piss on your favoritetree?”
He turned his back and got down to business, letting her mutter and fume. It was a long one, after all the coffee. By the time he was done and all buttoned up, he’d decided she deserved an explanation.
