“Before you see a fire ant or a scorpion that needs rescuing next,” he added.
She rolled her eyes this time as she jogged around the hood of the truck. She climbed in the seat and slid to the middle, whipped hand sanitizer out of her backpack and squirted out a puddle as he clipped on his belt and exhaled a chuckle, shaking his head. This was just like her. She was bolder, but she hadn’t changed at all. And seeing the return of that carefree smile instead of those guarded eyes she’d viewed him with when he’d first met her again was everything. How often did she genuinely smile these days? Not the fake smiles she’d forced for her friend Lydia or for Dr. Glasser in the ER?
“Remember that time you brought the armadillo into the shelter?” he teased.
She smacked his arm as he chuckled, groaned, and raised her eyes heavenward, tossing back her head as her hair swirled up into a tornado. She fought her hair under control. His arm stretched around her.
Her thigh brushed his as she wriggled to get comfortable, playing over his senses, as Keith Urban sang about young love, “…I was your first, and you were mine…”
She nestled into his grip like a hand reinserting itself into a beloved glove.
“I was so foolish sometimes, wasn’t I? I wanted to save everything.” She chuckled wryly.
Her body warm against his, he roared back onto the road, anxious to feel her reciprocate the touch. Already there was more ease between them. He’d been fantasizing about her in his truck since he’d sat there staring at her photo a couple days before.
“You weren’t foolish, babe. You actually gave a shit. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of.” He hooked his elbow around her and pulled her head close, dusting a quick kiss upon it.
Her bare shoulder nestled into his armpit; her hand came to settle on his thigh like she’d always done. Naw, he couldn’t handle it there. It was going to make him hard, make him unable to watch the road. It all felt so normal, as if for this moment in time the past hadn’t happened, even though it had. He’d take it because reality would seep in soon enough like a leaky pipe, unnoticeable at first until the subflooring was ruined and the collateral damage was overwhelming. He’d have to change his prosthetic tonight, have to eventually meet her horses and check out her stable for Lopez and remember he couldn’t ride, eventually go back to his empty house with his bed on blocks and his lone camping chair and be reminded everywhere he looked of the trajectory his life had taken away from Sky. For now, he just wanted to bask in this.
Yet as he turned onto the access road that carried them along the base of Sierra Blanca, his nerves were worked in a knot as her body, tight against his and her palm on his thigh, stoked his every dirty thought without even trying. Memories of those fingers teasing paths up and down the inside of his thigh wouldn’t abate, her slender fingers weighing his stones reverently, as if cupping tender fruits she found delectable. He wished to God she’d do it now. He cranked the steering wheel one handed so as not to extricate himself from their physical bond as he headed up the mountain road.
“Are we going to the top of the mountain?” she asked, her eyes lighting up.
He grinned. “Yup. Got a cooler in the back with some drinks. Thought we could watch the sun go down like we used to do up on Casas Grandes.”
She tensed, the blessed ease between them cooling a degree. What was it? He glanced sidelong at her. Her smile had fallen, and she chewed her lip.
“What is it?”
Did she not want to come here? Had she hoped to go somewhere else? Somewhere nicer? She had worn a dress after he’d told her she didn’t need one. But the old Sky had lived for those drives up to the top of Cerros Casas Grandes, standing sentinel over the Legacy. It was where he’d danced her up after prom. Where he’d let her dusty pink dress that hugged her curves fall to the desert ground; where he’d seen her fully naked for the first time, not just bits and pieces of her as they fooled around; where he’d been naked for the first time in front of her, or any girl, for that matter; where he’d laid her out in the bed of this very truck and gave into four years of burgeoning, intensifying need.
Maybe Skylar didn’t want to remember those moments like he did, and that was why she tensed now—
“What sort of drinks?” she hedged. “Like…beer?”
His brow furrowed. This was about the cooler? “Like some sodas and sparkling water,” he said guardedly, praying it was the right answer. He didn’t want to lose this moment, didn’t want it to go sour.
She exhaled and smiled. “Okay.”
He eyed her, daring to relax an increment, too. “You don’t drink?”
She looked out the window, her profile darkening, and shook her head. “I woke up to one too many Jack D. bottles and beer cans spilling off the counter while my dad snored in his recliner or shouted at me to ever want to touch it.” The disgust in her voice silenced him.
Yeah, he’d worried that he’d made a mistake, letting her go. But no. That disgust in her voice, so thick he could slice it, told him everything. He’d done the right thing back then. She would have hated him. He extracted his arm from around her and picked up her hand on his thigh, holding it instead.
She eyed him warily. “Do you drink?”
Tight-lipped, he stared hard at the road in front of him. He couldn’t tell her about the pain-pill-and-alcohol binges or the overdose. He could never tell her. He wouldn’t be able to bear the disappointment or loathing that would darken her eyes at him as it did right now about Rhett.
“Nope.”
She smiled, relaxing back into him and pulling his clasped hand around her shoulder again to tuck into his side. “My ranch is way over there, see?”
The sun glowed through the window. Sky’s hair was a beautiful disarray. He glanced at the sunlight, casting her skin like bronze and etching her profile in a halo as she gazed out the passenger window as the road rose higher and higher.
He pulled around the final switchback.
“You know, I’ve lived here for six years and I’ve never come up here,” she said. “I’ve ridden Patches on the trails about midway down, but I’ve never done the top rim.”