As I start to let myself believe we’re actually going to get awaywith this, an elated laugh escapes me. The short-lived sound drowning out whatever it is that Maddock is screaming, even if it can’t drown out the quickly dawning realization of what I’ve just done while I turn to watch him grow farther and farther away over my shoulder.
“Wolf,” Cypress calls to me again, and I look at him in time to see his grin before we reach the end of the stable’s lantern light. “Don’t look back.”
The sun is coming up by the time we finally stop, drawing our spent horses into a pocket of trees and waiting to see if we really had managed to give them the slip. The more hours that have passed, the more unsaid things have piled up in the silence, until when we both agree that we’re in the clear, I’m not sure which of them to address first.
“Aiden,” I start to say right before he turns, dismounts, and begins walking with his mustang deeper into the woods, headed toward the valley on the other side and hopefully a continuation of the stream we caught a glimpse of a ways back. “Aiden,” I say again, getting down too before moving to catch up. “We should—”
He rounds on me so fast that Cerberus startles with a snort from where he’d been plodding along behind me, a noise that Aiden’s horse greets with pinned-back ears—a perfect extension of the look his owner is aiming at me.
“Let’s get one thing real fucking straight,” Aiden says, pointinga finger in my direction. “There is nowe. There is you and there is me. That’s it. You understand?”
No, I want to say.No, I don’t understand. You left with me. You chose me.
Hadn’t he?
“Wolf,” I try again. “Maybe if we—”
“Jesus Christ.” He shakes his head before turning his back on me. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“No,” I do say this time. “I’m sorry if—”
“You’resorry?” he repeats, pivoting to face me once more without letting me get a full sentence out, without letting me even try to explain. “For which part? For running your little con? For making us fuckingfugitives?” He steps nearer with each question until we’re only a couple feet apart, close enough for me to see the absolute fury in his eyes. “We very easily could’ve died back there. You sorry for that?”
I frown, noticing for the first time the tear in his clothing along his arm and the blood seeping from beneath. “It wasn’t my intention. Although it might not have been such a close call if you’d ridden your horse down to the saloon.”
In response, he only stares at me for a long moment before he starts to walk away again. “You’re fucking unbelievable,” I think I hear him mutter. “Of all the fucking…”
“I’ll fix it,” I offer quickly, jogging to catch up. “I’ll sort it all out. And when I do, it’ll be better for you than it was before.”
“How?” he scoffs. “How could this be better?”
“You wanted to be free of Maddock,” I remind him. “And now you are.”
He shakes his head, not turning toward me this time, and somehow, the fact that he doesn’t is so much worse. “We’ll see howfreeI am when we’re both sitting in a cell waiting on the noose.”
“It won’t come to that,” I assure him. “I promise.”
“Don’t,” he warns me. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Make promises you can’t keep. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. We’ll sort it out.”
“There’s thatweagain.”
“Well,” I say, wishing he would simply stop and listen. “You have to admit,wewere great together. A few hiccups, sure, but you…youwere spectacular. When you stepped into that alley? You were better than I even hoped you’d be. And to think, I had…”
He finally does stop. So abruptly that I almost bump into him, and the sense of victory I feel is perhaps part of the reason why I don’t see the real collision coming.
Aiden’s fistslamsinto my jaw.
“Motherfu—” The swear word cuts off as the rest of him quickly follows, his shoulder barreling into my chest and sending both of us crashing to the ground in a complicated heap that serves as a nice distraction from the fresh, blinding pain in my face.
“I fuckingknewit,” he’s saying, going for another right hook as he looms over me, one that I manage to redirect into my left side more than I manage to block. While not the most ideal, it does at least throw him off balance enough that I can get my feet beneath me, pushing myself up into him. I roll us across the ground until our positions are reversed.
“Aiden, wait—” I get out, trying to pin his arms down as I straddle his legs. “Hold on, please stop trying to kill me. Let’s talk for a minute first. What is it you think you know?”