Taut: The Ford Book (Rook and Ronin Spinoff 2)

But I do not care.

Where are you going, Ford?

I don’t answer the voice. Partly because I have no idea and partly because it’s not good to encourage the internal monologue. My flight out of DIA tomorrow is too far away. Tomorrow is just way too far away. I’m not going to survive the night if I stay here in Denver. I need to get out of this state right the f**k now.

The snow builds with each vertical mile, the sky nothing but white everywhere I look. No stars above and just dark forest on either side. There aren’t even many cars on the road. Hardly any coming towards me from the west, and only slightly more traveling from the east like me. Locals know when to stay off the mountain passes and not many tourists are driving on New Year’s Eve.

The snow grows thicker as I finally make it to Genesee. The perfect curtain to keep my thoughts at bay. Because they are filled with longing and aching. With self-loathing and hatred for what I am. For what I can’t be. For letting her get away. For letting Ronin take her. For wanting something I can’t have.

For caring.

And I vow to myself as I push the accelerator to the floor to make the steep grade that will pluck me from civilization and pour me out into the wilds where I can be alone with myself, I swear, I will never—ever—care for another woman for as long as I live.

I will never allow myself to be weak like this again. I will never learn their names or buy them presents or plot out a way to help them reach their full potential.

Never.

Chapter Two

The drive is more and more tedious as I move west. The climb seems endless, with a few reprieves every now and then as I reach a flat stretch of road on a summit, then plunge a little, only to be reminded there is nothing for hundreds of miles but these mountains, and begin the ascent all over again.

It’s a stupid idea to drive the Bronco up here. I’ve had this truck since high school—worked my ass off at the Science and Nature Museum for three years saving for it. I started working there—unofficially, of course—when I was twelve. My childhood neighborhood is across Colorado Boulevard from City Park, and the museum was right there all growing up. I spent so much time there I started giving tours. Except they were unauthorized and there’s just something a little intimidating about a pre-teen leading a group of tourists through the exhibits that tends to piss off the higher-ups. But they couldn’t stop me. I had a clipboard and a sign-up sheet out in back of the museum near the kids’ fountain.

It’s a public park. I was a member of the public. My prices were cheap. Five dollars a person, a family of four for fifteen dollars. It was a niche waiting to be filled, so I filled it.

And the day I turned sixteen my dad took me to buy the Bronco. Of course, we’re filthy rich so I could’ve had any car I wanted. Our house is the largest in Park Hill. It’s an old foursquare, has seven bedrooms, a brick wall, and a gated driveway. No small feat in such a congested neighborhood. But I wanted to earn my first vehicle, to make it worth something to me. I wanted to be invested in it and I didn’t want it to be perfect. I wanted it to be flawed. I wanted it to be a work in progress. I wanted to rescue it.

It was not in bad shape when I bought it, but these older cars need constant work. And this transmission is not happy with me at the moment. If I was smart I’d get off on the next exit and turn around. Go back home to my mom’s, drink a shitload of Jack, and pass out until my flight takes off tomorrow.

But I’m wounded. And, I admit, sad. I see her face in everything. Even now, I wonder what she thinks of the mountains. Ronin has a penchant for gambling, so I know they go to Black Hawk and Central City, but did he take her to see the aspens when they changed color in the fall? Does he take her skiing? I’ve never heard them talk about skiing, but I haven’t been around them on the weekends in months.

Do they go to Grand Lake? Or Granby? Or Pikes Peak?

I want to know every thought in her head.

It’s a weakness I have, this longing to understand the thoughts of others. And I had limited coping abilities as a child, so I had to assign labels to wrap my head around people’s thoughts and actions. I came up with a system. The Leaver, that’s what I called Rook last fall. But she proved me wrong. Oh, she left all right. But she didn’t leave. She put her life on the line to save Ronin. And then Spencer and I put our lives on the line to save her.

And then we all came back and things moved forward. It was stressful at first, watching Rook be publicly massacred by all sorts of people who judged her to be a fraud, a liar, a whore, any number of terrible things that just made me want to tuck her under my arm and never let her out of my sight.

But she’s not mine to protect.

What is she thinking now? I pick up the phone and turn it on. Seven messages. I press voice mail and her messages start.

“Ford? Please, call me back, OK?”

“Ford?”

“Ford, come on. Don’t do this to me. To us,” she corrects. And I want to correct her. Because there is no us. There is only them. Her and Ronin. “Ford.” She lowers her voice to a whisper for this part. “Please, come back. I need you.”

“I need you too,” I say softly to the snowy mountain highway. “I need you so bad.” I’d give anything to have her alone, free of Ronin’s claim, so I could tell her all the things I’ve been holding in since the day I met her. So I could get her honest answer without her guilt of wanting two men at the same time getting in the way.

So I could get the truth out of her.