Page 50 of Forged in Deception

Karlin laughed. “Your brothers sound like fun, honestly. Including Gabe. I wish I could meet them.”

“I’m sure they’d love you,” he said, blushing a little at even the indirect mention of the L-word. “And even better, all the flirty ones except Jacob are taken, and he’s across the world somewhere.”

“All the flirty ones aside from you, you mean,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Obviously. Speaking of flirting, the sun’s about to rise.”

“Speaking of raisins, that’s a non-sequitur,” she replied without missing a beat.

Goodness, she was pretty.

Even when she was teasing him.

“Come on. You’re going to miss it,” he said, hopping out of the Jeep and striding around to the passenger side. He yanked open her door.

“Let’s go.”

KARLIN

Karlin wrapped her arms around herself as Axel opened the doorand sent a burst of freezing wind whipping into the Jeep.

“Are you insane?” she snapped. “It’s like forty degrees out! And I didn’t exactly think to grab my jacket while we were rushing Destiny to an ambulance.”

To her annoyance, Axel only smiled wider.

“Stop being a wimp,” he said, sliding out of his hoodie and holding it out to her.

For a moment, she considered slamming the door and turning the heat up to max, but decided against it. “If I die of frostbite, I’m blaming you.”

“Don’t be silly. It would have to be like eight degrees colder for you to get frostbite.”

“How reassuring.”

She allowed him to help her out of the Jeep and into the hoodie. She decided it was too cold to waste precious energy arguing as he led her over toward the railing of the lookout.

Despite her discomfort, she found herself stunned by the beauty of the scene that lay before her.

Axel was right–it was insane that she’d never been here, considering she lived so close.

The Palo Duro Canyon stretched out in front of her as far as she could see, and on the far end, she could see the sun slowly creeping up over the canyon’s red rim.

They watched in silence as the colors below began to shift from cool blues and purples to burning oranges, yellows, and reds. Innumerable shrubs and late flowering plants blanketed the canyon’s bottom, and needle-covered juniper trees clung to its steep cliffs.

Karlin wanted to comment, but the view had left her awestruck, stealing away any hope of finding the right words.

After a few more minutes, the sun had risen fully above the tallest stretch of cliff, and Axel broke the silence at last.

“It’s like…it’s like love, you know?” he said.

“What?”

The very mention of that word was enough to make her breath catch in her throat.

“I feel like we humans are always trying to quantify everything,” he explained. “We try so hard to explain everything, to break it down to the smallest parts in hopes of examining our way to the truth.”

Karlin stole a glance at him for a brief moment, but his eyes were still trained on the scene below. “I’m a scientist, so yeah. Trying to know things is what I do. It’s how I live my life.”

“There’s nothing wrong with knowing things,” Axel said. “But there are some things that the natural sciences can’t touch. Like the beauty of a sunrise. Or love.”

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