In the end, Cruz won out. He often did. She glided downhill almost the entire way into town, took a right at the Pecos, and pedaled to Quincy’s cabin, dodging to miss an occasional tree branch and a rampaging squirrel. The nurse had sent him home after a quick check. He hadn’t ripped any stitches loose, but he did pull at them hard enough to cause some minor bleeding. She’d sterilized the area, applied surgical tape to hopefully avoid that in the future, then kicked him off campus, insisting he go home and get some rest. The look on Cruz’s face told Auri he was getting tired of hearing those words, but that’s what he got for getting stabbed saving her.
Cruz’s big red truck was there, but Cruz was not. She checked the cabin, marveling at all the gifts the town had sent him. Besides the usual flowers of condolence and get-well cards was a plethora of clothes, jackets, shoes, and food. Mostly food. Banana bread, cakes, and fruit baskets lined the kitchen counter while Auri knew the fridge was stuffed with fried chicken and lasagna. He and Quincy had been living off the town’s generosity for two days. It thrilled Auri that the citizens of Del Sol had rallied around one of its own like they had.
Hiking down to the river, she finally spotted him on a rock about waist high, his back against a jagged cliff. She walked closer and realized, much to her surprise, that he was asleep. He had an arm draped over one knee. The other leg stretched out over the boulder, a journal on his lap with a limp hand barely holding down the pages in the breeze. His profile struck her yet again. The perfect lines. The well-proportioned dimensions. His hair ruffled in the breeze and his lashes created shadows across his cheeks.
She watched him a moment before tiptoeing closer and doing something she should’ve probably been ashamed of. Perhaps she would later, but for now, she eased onto the boulder next to him and pressed down the page he’d been writing on so she could read it. The pen hung loosely in his hand, threatening to fall as she leaned over and studied his work.
It was only a few lines, but they struck her so hard she felt the breath leave her lungs. She blinked in astonishment and read them again.
I think I’ll be happy once I give in to the black. Once I succumb. Once it swallows me. Devours me. Bites through my bones and drowns me in my blood. With the coldness will come the numb, and the molecules in my body will finally stop screaming. It’s a heavy price to pay, but freedom, as they say, is never really free.
Auri stared at the page, her heart threatening to break under the stress of the tightening cage around it. The page blurred as tears gathered between her lashes.
“It’s just a poem.”
She jumped and scrambled back, her shock impossible to hide when she met his gaze.
He casually closed the book, like it was just any other book. Like he hadn’t written his intentions in it. “It’s just a poem.”
Shaking her head, she slid off the rock. “That wasn’t just a poem, Cruz.”
He turned away and looked out onto the Pecos, the water flowing cool and bright under the warm New Mexico sun. “I’m not going to take my own life, Auri. I thought you knew me better than that.” Her doubt must’ve shown when he looked back at her, because he reiterated, “It’s just a poem.”
She didn’t argue with him. There was no need. She’d been there once, too. In that dark place. He could pretend all he wanted, but she knew that place better than most.
He stuffed the book into his back pocket, stood on the boulder, and held out his hand to her. “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked, that lopsided tilt back in his grin.
She backed away. “I have to get to class.”
“Auri, wait.”
She turned and hurried to her bike before her tears betrayed her, as they were wont to do. Instead of going back to school, she rode straight home, heedless of the time.
“Hey, pumpkin,” her grandfather said when she burst into the house. He went back to pouring his coffee. “Aren’t you supposed to be at—”
She tackle-hugged him before he could finish his statement.
“Oh. All right, then.” He sat the coffeepot and his cup down and wrapped her in his arms, his embrace warm and soothing. Just what she needed, because she had been where Cruz was now. She had been in that dark place. And she knew exactly what came next.
* * *
Seabright pulled the UTV to a stop behind Levi’s truck at the top of the pass. Sun got out and turned back to her newest recruit. “The next academy doesn’t start for a few weeks. That’ll give you some time to recuperate, then I can hire you in a probationary capacity until the class starts.”
He smirked at her. “So, I’ll be on probation?”
“Yes. No fraternizing with criminals.” She wagged a finger at him in warning.
He looked over his shoulder as Levi closed his door. “I guess this is the end of our bromance, dude.”
Levi frowned as he grabbed the climbing gear someone had rolled up for him and put beside his truck. “Last time I checked, you were the sketchy one, what with you kidnapping children and living off-grid like the Unabomber.”
“At least I don’t make moonshine in my daddy’s shed.”
Sun almost laughed. That shed was a sixty-thousand-square-foot, state-of-the-art distillery, the floors of which she could eat off of, and Levi’s father had nothing to do with its creation.
She glanced around, realizing what they were on—a state highway—and what Seabright was driving—a utility vehicle created for off-roading. “Is this thing street legal?”
Seabright reared back, clearly affronted. “Are you questioning my dedication to the law already?”
“Go,” she said, pointing into the distance. “Rest. Get better. Give your new family a hug for me and call me in a few days.”
“You got it, boss.” He gave her another salute, lifted his chin in goodbye to Levi, and performed an illegal U-turn before heading out.
She shook her head, then watched as Levi tossed his gear into an aluminum toolbox in the back of his truck, still wearing his harness, the same harness that framed his steely buttocks to perfection. He unbuckled the straps and stepped out of it before stowing it in the toolbox as well.
After studying him another moment, she folded her arms on the tailgate and rested her chin on them. “So, you just happened to be heading to Taos—taking the long route, no less—with climbing gear at the ready, when you heard the call?”
He didn’t answer at first, and when he did, he didn’t look at her, but that was okay. It was hard to beat a profile like his. Studying it was hardly a chore. “Something like that,” he said at last. He walked around to the back of the truck, and she turned to face him when he stopped directly in front of her, but he glanced at something in the bed of his truck.
While a thousand questions danced on the tip of her tongue, mostly questions about his sentiments now that he knew he had a daughter, she veered toward safer ground instead. “Do you have a cabin up here somewhere? Is this where you hide out?”
He still refused to make eye contact. Instead, he reached over her shoulder, the act bringing him so close he pressed into her. His sculpted mouth almost brushed across hers and she felt his breath fan across her face as he lifted out a bottle of water from a cooler. He opened it, the plastic sound crackling in the still air, then braced his free hand on the tailgate beside her and finally captured her gaze with his, the bronze depths ensnaring her in their trap.