Page 68 of Wild Child
"That way didn't have water, and we wouldn’t have been able to do that in the middle of the night while running for our lives. We couldn't have scaled that ridge. The path we took was our only option.”
His voice remained tense, like a thin veneer of politeness held him together and threatened to break at any moment.
"It had some water,” I said. "But mostly it had familiarity. We could have been back to the old campsite by now where there’s plenty of water.”
"Withoutwateron the way,” he ground out. “We have no containers to hold it in, like we did yesterday.”
All my patience evaporated in a heartbeat. I shot to my feet. "Yes, Dev,” I retorted. “Without as much wateron the way. But at least we would have enough wateranda path back to the truck now."
"With no keys! Remember? You kept the keys with you.”
The wordsInstead of leaving them hidden in the truckremained unsaid between us. I recalled our conversation before we’d left with gritted teeth. Growing up, we’d always ditched the keys near the truck just in case we did something unexpected—like jumping off a small waterfall—and lost them. But as an adult and a professional guide, I hadn’t expected a posse of drug dealers to steal our stuff after tying me up and almost killing Devin.
My mouth opened to reply, but snapped shut because he was right. The truck keys were in my bags. Which could be burned to a crisp for all I knew, along with hundreds of dollars of camping equipment—some of which I'd grown very fond of through the years. The thought sent another frisson of annoyance through me.
"I did," I replied. "I took my keys with me and now we're locked out. But the truck had a road and a road leads to something and it's far easier to walk through thanthis."
He closed his eyes, his face a mask of frustration that I understood. But heat rolled through me now and I couldn't have tempered it if I wanted to. After keeping my boxes stowed away all day while ourknownpath dwindled into territory we'd never seen before, the boxes hummed with the force of my frustration.
They were about to explode.
"Well, it's too late to backtrack now," he said evenly, with an obvious attempt at patience. "I think we should just keep going while we have light. We might run into someone or something and not have to stay here."
My mind spun as I attempted to cobble a plan together. Wecouldbacktrack, but we'd lose almost all day getting to the point where we could resume our previous trail to the first campsite. We'd have water access, but no food. No animals except for rodents and skittish deer found us today, but every hour we remained out here increased our odds of an encounter. If we did make it back to the right spot easily, we'd still have to cut farther south through rough terrain, with little water, and find the campsite again.
It wasn't a great plan, but neither was his.
“I want to sleep on it and decide in the morning,” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s my proposed plan. Unless you can tell me where we are and exactly where you want to end up tonight?”
His expression hardened, and I hated myself for being more attracted to him than ever. “You can't tell me where we are either,” he replied.
"I never said I could."
"Then why are you putting that on me?"
"Because you want to keep walking in the dark and I think that isn’t wise. If movement is your desire, it’s responsible enough that we prove the plan out first."
"We don't have time for this!" he cried.
"We don't have time foranything,Dev!"
Our voices rang through the trees in an unnerving way. We'd spent the whole day being carefully quiet just in case Kimball did follow. Now, it seemed absurd. No one could have followed our erratic trail, and we'd given up trying to be sneaky long ago. We’d trekked next to the stream for the past four hours.
Neither of us had truly shouted just now, but the intensity was far greater than our usual conversations. His cheek twitched like an errant tick. I couldn't fathom what must be running through his mind right now.
"I just . . ." I hesitated. "I don't think it's our best plan, Dev. Not when we’re this tired, even if there’s still daylight to burn.”
"Fine." He threw his hands in the air. "We sleep here. We wake up in the morning. We backtrack and try to map our trip home. Then when you find out that we were going the right way all along and just needed to give it more time, you'll feel really dumb."
"That's not going to happen! We would have found Red Lake by now." I gestured to the stream, only two feet across now and burbling in a shallow run of rocks that was hard to even get a cupped hand underneath. "The stream is dying! Even if we keep going, we'll lose our water then, too. We need sleep, Dev. Will you just trust me?"
The words escaped me before I could stop them, and once they broke free, I couldn't pull them back. I held my breath when a startled expression crossed his face. An interminable seven seconds passed while he considered his response. What would he say to such an audacious question after all I had—and hadn't—done the past three years?
Trust was not something either of us had earned.
Not lately.
"I want to," he whispered with a heavy frown. His eyes met mine, then dropped. "I want to."
