by Katie Cross
"You ready?" she asked.
For you? I thought. I always have been.
Instead, I dropped my gaze. "Just about." I couldn't tolerate her this unbound and in her element. The depths of unfiltered Ellie affected me too heavily to articulate. This is what I'd lived for. The hope of these sort of moments again with her is what kept me alive. Now that I lived them, they scared me more than anything.
How would I live without her easy grace to look at every day?
With her away from me, I slowly stood. Both of us roved through the forest with our eyes, but no movement or sound unfolded. We seemed, for all intents and purposes, alone here. My head pulsed with the movement, but it passed when I paused. The lingering headache still ached, but I'd deal with that later.
"You need more water," she said. "Drink it while you can. Dehydration will only make your headache worse."
I nudged her with an elbow. "Thanks, Mom."
She smiled reluctantly. "I'm hoping this stream leads to Red Lake, remember?"
"Yeah. We went there all the time."
Another fleeting smile brightened her face. "Yeah, and we won that game of chicken against your sister and her boyfriend at the time."
"That guy was a total jerk."
She giggled. "He was so angry. Anyway, Red Lake is miles from the truck, but maybe we can find someone, borrow a cell phone, and call Maverick?"
"Hernandez, too."
The edge came back into her gaze when she nodded. "Yeah. Him, too. It'll take most of the day," she murmured with a sigh, "but we'll get there."
After I'd rubbed my face down and drank until my stomach hurt, I motioned downstream, where it narrowed through a little gully, then opened back up. "Let's cross over there and stay on that side. If they come upon us later and have to cross, it could slow them down."
"Sure."
"Then, let's get this over with. I'm starving."
My body warmed up fast once we started moving, even though my stomach protested every now and then. At least we'd been able to fill up with water. If we stuck close to the stream, we'd be fine. If not, dehydration sets in fast at these altitudes in the summer. We would only decline from there.
We moved back out of the immediate view of the stream, then picked our way through the forest. Boulders appeared here and there to narrow our path options, but we stayed out of sight and mostly quiet.
"So," I said after a long stretch without speaking, my voice pitched low, "tell me what college was like. You covered the vague stuff when you said you didn’t like it, but I’m curious about the details.”
The question had lingered on the tip of my tongue for months after Mom told me that Ellie went to the state university, then returned a few months later. Ellie tightened a little as she considered my question, but didn't clam up.
"Isn't much to say," she murmured as she stepped over a log. Her gaze darted to the right, where the creek cut through the trees out of sight. Seeing nothing of concern, she relaxed a little. "I hated it."
"Why?"
Her brow furrowed. "Are you going to get high-school-Devin-level protective if I tell you?"
"No."
"Oh."
"I'm going to get Marine-corps-deployed-soldier-Devin-level protective. Some asshole put his hands on you?"
Her lips twitched and some of the humor returned to her gaze. "I took care of it."
My feet stopped of their own accord. Wait, what? She took care of what? Warily, she slowed and glanced back. My brow rose and I had a sick feeling I wasn't going to like whatever story came next.
"Ellie?"
"Let me explain."
She spoke quietly, but with the same tone she would have used even if we weren't hiding from rogue drug dealers that wanted to kill us. I nodded back to the forest to indicate we should keep moving, and she followed suit.
"I didn't get along with my roommates," she continued. We walked side-by-side through a more open expanse of trees. "They were too loud and in my space. I think I got assigned some particularly rowdy people, I guess. I don't know. They had boyfriends over all the time and they didn't really respect boundaries. I didn't expect them to not drink alcohol, I just didn't want them and their drunk friends in the apartment. That seemed fair."
My entire body tightened. "Tell me how this ends first," I said, "then tell me the details. I don’t want to wait through all of this until I know how whatever you're going to say happened."
She snorted. “Dev, I'm obviously alive."
“Say it, E.”
"I kneed him in the groin, then almost broke his nose, and he never came back."
The conclusion of the story only made it worse. I didn't relax. Instead, I felt more troubled than ever.
"Tell it."
She sighed, but let the story roll off her lips more quickly. "One night, my roommates and their boyfriends were drunk. One of the boyfriends stumbled into my room and wouldn't leave. He . . . he got belligerent, so I kneed him in the groin. That made him angry, so he tried to come at me again. Naturally, I shoved an elbow into his face. Noses bleed like crazy," she finished on a mutter, and my anger at the image of some hulking, drunk man in her bedroom made my rage at Afghanistan look like party glitter.
"I don't like that," I said, shaking my head. "I don't like that. I don't like that."
I should have been there, I thought.
Her hand found my arm, and the touch soothed my rattled nerves. "I know, Dev. I didn’t like it either, which is why I never went back. I packed up the next morning after barricading myself inside."
“Do you think you could have gotten different roommates?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. At that point, I didn’t care. I had already been miserable and didn’t think it was worth it to roll the dice. I hadn’t really found a major that I wanted to do, and I missed home. It just . . . it wasn’t a good fit.”
Her ending wasn't satisfactory to me, but I nodded anyway. She gave my arm a little squeeze, then her fingers slid away. Trails of fire lingered in their wake, and I wondered how it would feel to interlock our hands.
Never mind that her lips would probably start my heart ablaze.
"There were a few other close calls,” she said breezily, as if that could be so simply dismissed, “but all my self-defense classes had paid off."
"Self-defense?"
She nodded. "Yeah, I took classes with Benjamin and Serafina after you left. She’s been helping with them every few months. I didn't . . ." She hesitated, met my gaze, but then gave me the full dish of honesty that I deserved. "I didn't feel safe without you by my side all the time.” Her tone brightened just a little, but not enough to feel inauthentic. “The classes ended up being a good thing, particularly when the three guys approached me on campus.”
My stomach twisted in a sickening way. I stopped. She stopped. Then she turned toward me with a hesitant, almost apologetic look.
“Three guys?” I whispered.
She swallowed, the sound audible.
“Dev, it’s—”
“What happened?”
Troubled now, she spoke quickly. “It was a few weeks before I left college. I had a study group that ran late and had to leave after dark. When I walked across campus, a group of three guys called for me to stop. Said they had a question.”
My questioning glare could have burned through brick. She hurried to finish. Although she played a tough game, I could see the trouble in her gaze. This event, whatever it turned out to be, still bothered her.
“I didn’t trust them, particularly because they approached too fast and tried to push me against a building, where there were shadows.”
“What happened?”
My tone remained steady, but the agitation was evident. Her voice became a bit more distant. She nudged her toe at a clump of fading wildflowers and focused on a spot in the distance. Deep grooves formed between her eyebrows.
“I kicked one in the throat. The other two advanced. I had my car keys between my fingers and slashed
one in the face. I stepped back to prep a kick, but the third ran away. I took off.”
“Did you report it?”
“I did.”
“Did they find those assholes?”
She nodded.
“You pressed charges?”
She nodded again. A long breath of relief rushed out of me. No wonder her form had been so excellent at the gym.
“Good.”
I regarded her with an entirely new set of fears now. Once Ellie had returned to Pineville, I hadn’t felt as concerned. Clearly, I still needed to be. Her beauty, so wild and untamed, was too much by half. The disinterest she gave most people only made it all worse.
She chewed on her bottom lip, but didn't look away. The weight of the last three years sank into my bones. Not only had ghosts, injuries, and memories torn apart the fabric of my life and put me on a different path, but they did that to Ellie too. My sudden departure had rocked her world as much as it had mine.
I would have left no matter what—I had to help my parents and make sure both of us knew ourselves without the other. This had been the right path. But maybe it wouldn't have been so jarring if my pride hadn't been so great.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
Did she feel the weight of what that encompassed? Could she know, in just two words, how deeply I meant what I said?
She blinked and studied me, then she said, "Don't be. You did the right thing, Dev. Your parents needed you."
Her exoneration didn't feel as good as I'd hoped.
"I should have told you about their debts."
"I wish you would have," she murmured. She looked away first, then kept walking as if she didn’t know what to say. The slow crunch of twigs and grind of rocks beneath her feet was the only sound for several heavy moments. I followed, lost in her footsteps and my thoughts.
"And you're happy now?" I asked.
The slightest hesitation came before she said, "Yes, of course."
"If I hadn't left Pineville and we went to college together according to our plan, would you have stayed in school?"
Her brow wrinkled. "I don't know. If you'd stayed, Dev, everything would have been different. We could have found a place together. Gone to classes together. I wouldn't have been in that apartment or—"
"Exactly."
"What do you mean?"
My heart beat firm against my chest now, as if I'd been running. For three years, I'd wanted to make this point. For three years, I'd wanted her to see my side of this whole dilemma. Now it was my chance, and I prayed she'd come far enough into adulthood to understand. Or to at least consider my angle.
"If I had been at the university with you, would you have taken self-defense classes?"
"No."
“Would you have ever been on your own?”
“Well . . .” She hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”
"You might still have finished college because I was there. Even if you were miserable, you wouldn't have left, would you? Even if it wasn't right, you would have stayed because I stayed.”
Her mouth remained partially open for several seconds. Finally, she gave a reluctant nod. Her honesty filled me with hope.
"You would have stayed for me no matter how much you hated it. Never would have gone to the Outfitters and played in the mountains and learned all of this stuff about yourself. Right?"
Storms built in those beautiful emerald eyes and I let them build. Something charged the air between us, intense and hot and building like a thunderstorm. Ellie licked her lips.
“Maybe."
"I had to go, Ellie. We had to do something apart so we could come back together." My voice thickened with intensity. "We relied on each other too much. We would have resented it at some point. Somewhere in the future, we would have broken apart because of that resentment, but then it may never have been repaired. We may never have healed. I could see it. I wanted us to find ourselves first."
Her eyes had gone wide and a little distant, as if she reviewed things in her mind. Did memories and circumstances play through her mind the way they had with mine? Because they had haunted me at almost every step of my adult life.
Did she see it all so differently now?
"I'm sorry," I said again. "I should have told you my thoughts, my parents' troubles. If I had been transparent with all of this, those terrible years would have been easier on both of us. But I was weak, Ellie. I didn't have the strength and courage to do that. So I took the coward’s way out and I didn't say anything. I just . . . disappeared because I thought it would be easier."
My chest tightened with the power of finally letting that out. Now, she had to decide what to do with it, and I wouldn't blame her if she hated me a little.
"It wasn't an easy path,” she said.
"I know. Because seeing what happened to you as a result of my decisions totally sucks. Without knowing what you went through, I still hated it every moment of every day. But it felt right at the time.”
Ellie's wide eyes remained frozen in muted disbelief. Finally, she nodded. I could see the implications and layers of what I'd just said slowly settling in, and I didn't want this pleasant part of the mountains to stay in this odd tension. I started to walk again, and she followed at my side. Silence followed for several minutes before I couldn't stand it anymore.
"So," I let out a punctuated breath. "You came back to Pineville after college. Then what happened?”
"I came back," she said with finality and a little relief. "Started back at the Frolicking Moose. Hired on at the Outfitters. Eventually cobbled together the idea of guiding and working outdoors. It was much easier here. Much . . . safer."
"And you like it? Guiding?"
She laughed. Despite our circumstances, there was real levity there. "Not sure anymore." She hedged for a second, then added, "I don't really know. Being outside is great. Getting paid to be outside is great. But . . ."
"It's not what you thought?"
"No."
A real sense of defeat lingered in her words. I slipped around a tree stump in a cluster of rocks while she gathered the words in her head. The easy flow of her responses and lack of hesitation was like a balm. Ellie wasn't holding back out of mistrust this time. That felt like a step forward.
"It just . . . hasn’t been as fulfilling as I expected,” she finally said. “I mean, this is my first overnight guide, so that’s probably not a fair measurement. The day hikes were fun. Just not . . .”
“Not what you thought?”
“Right.”
"What are you hoping to get from it?"
"I don't know," she said quietly. "Maybe something I used to have."
The words rang with something else, but I couldn't puzzle together what she meant. Not with the low pulse of a headache through my neck and my thoughts cluttered with men that tried to hurt her. Men I should have been there to protect her from. But that wasn't realistic. We’d been together for days now and I hadn’t been able to protect her from these men. Our current circumstance was proof enough.
"I'm jealous."
Her head lifted up. "What?" she asked.
"I'm jealous," I said easily. "I'm jealous of all the people that came into your life that spent time with you. Time I didn't get. It's . . . weird that you have all these experiences I wasn't a part of. That was hard when I left. Knowing we'd have parts of our life that we didn't share."
To my surprise, a quick smile lifted her lips. "I know the feeling."
"Yeah?"
She nodded, her hair waving around her shoulders. I wanted to reach out, take a fistful of it into my hands, and lay a kiss on the lips I'd studied every day of my life from the time I was a kid. The moment I met Ellie was the moment I fell in love with her.
"It . . . it seemed so weird that you'd be in the world without me," she said. "I didn't know how to say it, but it does feel like jealousy."
"Did you date?"
The question rushed out of me. If I'd known it lingered there in the shadows, I wo
uldn't have let it free. But once it came out, relief followed. Ellie snorted again, but something like a wall had appeared in her eyes.
"Not really. A few dates, but no serious boyfriend."
"Couldn't find anyone?"
She shrugged. I glanced to the right and then behind us, feeling an obsessive pull to be certain we were alone. No signs of others lingered, so I motioned forward again. With the mostly clear ground, we moved quickly. Hilltops built up behind us as we angled down the mountain. Once we moved closer to the popular Red Lake, we'd grapple with what came next. For now, I felt content just to be with her.
"How about you?" she asked and pulled me out of my thoughts.
"Me, dating?"
She nodded, her lips pursed together. Her gaze remained ahead as she picked a path for us through the pines and brush.
"Nah. Too busy. Went on one or two dates but wasn't really interested."
"Oh."
She kept her gaze ahead. Did I see new tension in her body? Was there a glimmer of hope for us after all? If Ellie had any sign of jealousy, maybe it meant something else. Then again, maybe it didn't.
Although tempted to reveal all, I set that thought aside and let the lulling forest speak in the gentle sough of leaves overhead. This weird moment of revealing ourselves was not the time that I'd tell her how I felt—how I'd always felt—about her. Running from druggies in the mountains after almost dying several times just didn't ring with romantic drama. At least, not the way I wanted.
Or maybe I was still just too chicken.
The crack of a stick and a muffled noise sent me to the ground. Ellie followed. I lay in the bracken, my heartbeat in my ears, for ten full seconds before the splash of something in the stream came next. A dark figure moved not far away. Before my mind registered what it was, Ellie cracked a wide smile.
"A moose."
I straightened over the brush I'd ducked behind. A lanky, hulking shape hovered in the middle of the stream. Loose lips nibbled over mossy rocks that stuck up out of the stream and collected greenery and sticks. Bone paddles at least four feet wide stretched from either side of its head, and a dark waddle dragged in the stream at its feet. I grinned and whispered, "It's been years since I've seen one."