I wouldn’t just leave it. I righted the coatrack and replaced every item except one.
I picked up the cowboy hat Callum had worn on every storm chase back when he was the infamous tornado wrangler, and I left it on top of his keyboard so he’d have to deal with it when he got back.
At some point, he couldn’t keep running from the storm.
I’d avoided the house for as long as I could. First, touching base with the rangers and police. Then checking on the status of Maxwell and the other women. All the while, the pull to go back to her—to talk to her—burned in my veins. But this was one scenario where I wouldn’tbethe Directorbut a distraction when Lara needed to be with her sister. So, instead of going back to the house, I went to Free Fall.
This time, it wasn’t a race, but a restoration. Every grip. Every hold. Every calculated movement. It wasn’t an exercise in climbing the rock face, but in facing the condition of my heart.
For someone who tracked things for a living—who was paid to notice what others couldn’t—somehow I’d both observed yet completely missed every sign that I was falling in love with Lara Crane. Or maybe I hadn’t wanted to see them. Had tried not to see them.
Before, my idea of love was the torture in Cassius’s eyes when he saw Mom’s lifeless body. When he passed from day to day, knowing surviving each one meant facing another without her. My idea of love was colored over in shades of grief.
It wasn’t until Lara was on her knees in front of Ben that I saw the path, clear as day, that my heart had walked out of my chest and attached itself to her. It wasn’t a choice. It was a force of nature,too full to contain, that struck with a bolt of lightning and then seeped like a torrent of rain into my bones.
I couldn’t help the way I felt about her any more than I could control a thunderstorm.
I scaled the wall with deliberate slowness, feeling only a single sentiment sweat from every pore, strain from every muscle, and flow through every vein. I was in love with her. And not only would I do anything to save her, but I would also do anything to not live without her.
I pulled myself up to the ledge, turned, and sat. I’d seen this same skyline in every season of every stage of my life, changing but somehow always the same world to be explored. Until today.
Today, everything to the color-steeped horizon and beyond wasn’t a world I wanted to explore, but a world I wanted to share. And for the first time in my adult life, the choice of what to do or what came next wasn’t wholly mine to make.
A door opened and shut on the second floor, and I looked up from my crossword. After showering and changing in the Airstream, I’d finally returned to the house, puzzle in hand. By then, Cassius had made dinner and a foiled plate of leftovers greeted me on the kitchen counter.
Firm footsteps settled with familiarity on the staircase.
How many nights had I heard those same footfalls when I’d been burning the midnight oil, cooped up in the library reading or studying?
Cassius appeared in the doorway, his gaze ravaged as it found mine.
“Everything okay?” I set my puzzle down, the pen rolling off to the side. “She wake up at all?”
“For a little. Still pretty groggy, but ate a few bites of my chicken.” Cassius’s crispy hot chicken could tempt someone back from the dead—it was that good.
It was the first and only home-cooked food Callum would eat after his accident. The first meal Colton had wanted when we brought him home from prison. The only meal Creighton had deigned to learn how to cook. And the meal Colby requested for every birthday, holiday, and fourth Sunday of the month.
Not that we had very many guests or friends at the ranch, but Cassius had never made it for anyone but family before.
“She’s sleeping now.”
“She’s going to be okay.” After I spoke, I realized the words could’ve been about either Rachel or Lara, and directed to either Cassius or me.
“Physically, yes.”
“She’s strong. She’ll get through this,” I said, my head drawn back to the crackling fire.
I might not have been in contact with my ex since college, but the time I had known her, especially those moments at the end, left no doubt that Rachel Crane would survive this. Maybe not without help. Maybe not without some time. But in spite of the flaws of her younger self, she was a fighter.
“In my experience, the heaviest weights we carry are the ones no one asked us to. The ones we were never responsible for.”
The words settled like a band around my chest. I snapped my gaze back to Cassius and stared at him. Was he talking about Rachel, or was he talking about me?
After a moment, I decided it was both. Stones weren’t good at letting people in. Literally or figuratively. But I wanted to be better.I wanted to be better for Lara.And maybe Cassius wanted to be better, too.
Abandoning my puzzle, I stood. “Want some coffee?”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen my father’s shoulders lower quite like they did in that moment. “Would love some.”