Something Wilder

Her shoulders dipped and flexed as she scrabbled up and over a boulder and then reached back to help him. But Leo was tall enough to reach the top and pull himself up. “I’m good,” he told her. “Thanks.”

She stopped to catch her breath at the top, squinting at him with the sun at his back. “Were you responding to what I said or was that about the rock?”

“The rock,” he said. “I’m thinking about the other part.” Digging the water out of his pack, Leo took a long drink and then admitted, “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, so maybe just get it all out. I already told you where I stood.”

“So that’s true, then?” she asked. “What you said last night?”

“Which part?”

Even flushed from the heat, her cheeks went pink. She had to turn and keep hiking before she could answer. “That thing you said about how you fell in love ten years ago and never moved on,” she called back.

“Yeah.” He leapfrogged across a few rocks to catch up. “Can we stop, please?”

She relented, ducking into the shade between two large red sandstone pillars.

“I want us to be able to look at each other when we have this conversation,” Leo said, following her into the dark, cool space. Lily leaned back against one side and he leaned against the other, facing her. “I want to be very clear that it’s okay if you don’t feel the same.”

She gnawed her lip, and for a brief second, her eyes teared up. She blinked the moisture away. “I think I might.”

His chest took on a euphoric, caving-in feeling. Leo fought the urge to raise his fists in victory. “Okay.”

“But it’s not as simple as it was then.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “But I lived my life in the most responsible, boring way imaginable for the past decade.” Leo looked to his left, out of their little crack in the rock and to one of the most beautiful views he’d ever seen, red stone and tanzanite-blue sky. “I think I’m done with that. Things are easier now that Cora is grown, and I’m not afraid of making a huge leap. When I was twenty-two, with every bone in my body, I wanted to stay in Laramie with you. But I couldn’t.” He paused, studying her, hoping she understood the sincerity of his words. “I can now.”

She winced, searching back and forth between his eyes.

“I still love you,” he told her. “In hindsight, if I’d never come out here, if I hadn’t seen you again, I would have just kept moving forward with a life half-lived.” Leo took a step closer, gently crowding her space. “I see you doing the same thing, Lil. You’re just trying to get through every day.”

“Leo—”

“There’s probably not a life for me in Hester, but there’s a life for us somewhere else if you want to try to find it.”

She stared at him for several silent heartbeats. “This is crazy. You’ve known me for a week.”

“Five months plus a week, with a little gap in between.”

She closed her eyes, tilting her face up. “I need you to understand that I can’t shape my life around someone else ever again. Every day has been dictated by another person’s shitty choices, or my own circumstances resulting from another person’s shitty choices. I realize I’m being rigid here, but I have to be. I can’t bend to suit what works for you.”

“Then let me bend,” he told her.

Lily stared at him. “What does that even mean?”

“It means you figure out exactly what you want your life to look like, and I find a way to fit into it.” He reached forward, drawing a strand of hair from where it was stuck to her lip. “Maybe you get a job on a bigger ranch, and I—”

“I can’t work for someone else’s operation like that.” She seemed to hear the stubborn edge to her voice and softened. “I know myself, Leo. I’d be frustrated all the time.”

“Then we set a goal and work toward getting our own ranch.”

“Leo, you’re on the verge of getting a promotion.”

“Exactly. We’ll save up faster.”

She set her jaw, shaking her head. “We have to find this money.”

“Why is that the only way?”

“Never mind the whole dead-body situation,” she said pointedly. “It’s the only way I can imagine right now. If we don’t find this money, whether you’re here or not, I’ll have to keep doing some version of this. And this isn’t the life of someone in a relationship.”

Leo nodded, thinking this through. If she was even able to keep leading her tours, she’d be gone most of the time. He’d be alone in Hester, or some nearby town, working an hourly job just to have the privilege of seeing her a couple of days a week. He wasn’t saying he wouldn’t do it, but he did see her point.