Page 315 of Hide and Keep

“It has to be a small dog,” I declare, making her lose it entirely.

“Whatever you say, Major.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

My wife’s smile confirms I’m right.

Shit.

Here’s to a lifetime of folding. And being ridiculously, sickeningly,patheticallyhappy about it.

Keeping my body sideways, I slowly make my way down the steep incline, one hand up and behind me, tightly gripping Ever’s as she follows my every step.

We’ve been on the move ever since we arrived in Mexico. After landing in Morelia, Michoacán, we’ve driven—in a car that wasn’t much bigger than that damn Mini Cooper I stole my bride in—rode horses—that werewaybigger than the Mini Cooper—and are now hiking.

All for butterflies.

All formybutterfly.

We’ve already spotted hundreds of monarchs during our travel to the preserve, swarms of them fluttering around our car, then on bushes we passed on horseback, but the forest we’re in now currently holds over a hundred million monarchs keeping warm until the spring when they can start the first leg of their big migration.

The entire hike has been littered with dead orange-and-black bodies of butterflies. Everywhere you look basically are monarchs that didn’t survive after the flight down here.

It’s sad to think about—spending so much energy on reaching a destination, just to die when you get there. That’s essentially what happened to Ever. Oralmosthappened to Ever. She escaped Arthur, was about to be free of him, until she got it in her head that sacrificing herself, her life, her happiness, was an even trade for mine.

It wasn’t an even trade. It wasn’t even a possible trade because my life’s forever intwined with hers. Same with my happiness. Andourlife is just beginning.

Our guide, Vincente, stops us to point at the tree trunks.

“There. You see?”

I scan the trunks, noticing how textured they are compared to other trees.

The altitude up here has me out of breath as I ask, “They’re fuzzy?”

He shakes his head and grins. “They’re alive.”

“Those are butterflies, Major.”

I look again, this time at the movement of those textured trunks. They do look alive.

“Shouldn’t they be orange?”

“The butterflies are so tightly packed together, all we’re seeing are the tips of their wings. The black-and-white parts,” Ever explains, not as affected by the altitude since she’s well-traveled and I’m…not. Not yet anyway. We’re working on it.

Ever and I both applied to some of the best cheerleading colleges in the country and were accepted to several. All of them highly ranked, we chose the cheapest. Now we live in Florida, where we spend our days either in class—going after degrees in natural resources conservation—or on the mat, together. After twenty-five years of doubting cheerleaders as athletes, I’mnow one. But only for Ever. I couldn’t let anyone else be my wife’s base. Truthfully, I like cheer way more than I ever liked wrestling. Having a partner makes every win, no matter how big or small, that much sweeter. It just so happens, I have a pretty big winner for a partner. Nobody at our college calls her Zero, but she’s definitely earned the title. Her precision inspires me to achieve my own, so even though this is my first year cheering, I work my ass off trying to match her skill level.

Every night, we walk along the beach—that doesn’t smell like sulfur but something else we can’t quite put our fingers on—then go home and fall asleep in each other’s arms, grateful that nobody knows or cares who Crue and Ever Brantley are.

Now that I have a little bit of money, I know it’s not what makes people good or bad. Money only provides more options. It’s what you do with those options that determines what kind of person you are.

We’ve been smart with ours, stretching Arthur’s inadvertent wedding gift out as long as possible. This trip is the first non-essential expense we’ve allowed ourselves. After visiting my parents for the holidays and checking on my dad’s recovery from back surgery, we flew down here—in coach—before our practices increase in both quantity and intensity in preparation for Nationals in April.

With it only being the beginning of January, the preserve warned us it might be too cold for the butterflies to fly around. They said it might even snow. I’m really hoping it doesn’t though and that the sun comes out so we get to see millions of monarchs take flight. A lot are flying around now, but most of them are sticking to the trunks and branches and leaves and—Holy shit, they’re on everything.

There’s a butterfly conservatory near where we live that we like to visit, but it doesn’t compare to Ever’s old one. A labor of love, hers was pure magic.

We don’t know what happened to it after Ever left the manor, but we’re optimistic the butterflies found their way out into the real world.

---