Page 74 of Ride Long
“Not today,” I said. “Maybetomorrow.”
* * *
The moon was full,casting a silver glow clear across thedesert.
“Gasket said you’d walkedoff.”
Turning, I saw Chaser looming out of the landscape, weaving between the scrappyundergrowth.
“I wanted to be alone,” I replied, not adding the part where it had taken him hours to follow his girl into thedesert.
“I know. Just wanted to make sure you weren’tlost.”
He sat beside me, pressing into my side. He just melted into me like it was the most natural thing in the world. We were two pieces of a puzzle slottingtogether.
“Never,” I drawled, turning my face toward him. “I’ve got an amazing sense ofdirection.”
“You’re not worried about coyotes?” he asked, lifting aneyebrow.
I snorted, thinking back to the night we’d been run off the road by two Hollow Men. I hadn’t liked the way the wild landscape had made me feel, but now I craved it. The isolation was soothing, and now Chaser was here, it wasperfect.
“I can see why you like looking at the sky,” I said. “I can barely count a handful, let alone themall.”
“No one can count them all,” Chaser said, glancing up. “There are stars out there whose light has never reached us at all. Maybe it neverwill.”
“Do you regret it?” Iasked.
“What?”
“Coming back here withme?”
“Why are you asking?” He was avoiding the question, and it made mebristle.
“I think about it sometimes,” I murmured. “What it would’ve been like if we’d just turned around and driven away fromFortitude.”
“I don’t believe in what-ifs,” he stated. “After… At first, I dwelled on them to the point it drove me to despair. You can’t build a life on what might’vehappened.”
“I imagine that’s why you’re so…” I trailed off, not wanting to be that person. The bitch who stuck the emotional knife in andtwisted.
“Clinical?” Chaser asked. “Was that the word you were goingfor?”
I grunted, turning my face away so he couldn’t see the regret pooling in my eyes. I shouldn’t have saidthat.
“We all deal with our shit in different ways,” he went on. “This ismine.”
“I didn’tmean…”
His arm snaked around my back. “We are who we are, Sloane. People never change, not really. Their views and motivations might, but their core always remains thesame.”
I took his words as a hopeful sign that underneath all thatclinicalness, as he’d put it, was the man he was before his life had changed for theworse.
“You don’t want to speak to your dad?” he asked when I finally turned my gaze onhim.
“Not today.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know what to say to him. I can already anticipate his answers, so it’s like…whybother?”
Chaser tightened hisembrace.
“Besides, we still have to worry about the other half of Fortitude. The renegades. Then there’s still the Hollow Men,” I added. “Hopefully, they haven’t gotten wind of this major fuckup.”
