Maverick (Star Valley Book 3) (30 page)

“Go get her and bring her home,” Walker declared quietly. “Bring her back to the family.”

Austin swallowed hard fighting waves of confusion, desire, disappointment, and excitement all roiling inside him. He wanted to stay and argue, to figure out what the fuck was going on, but he needed Leah. He had to go get her. Something inside him wouldn’t wait any longer.

He gripped the ring, stuffed it into his pocket with a guilty look cast toward Dakota who said nothing, then he ducked past Walker and headed out the front door.

‡

L
eah stepped off
the bus and was greeted by a now-familiar sound—distant thunder. It seemed to be following her now, stalking her every move. Storms clouds appeared so frequently in her life now that she was certain they’d never leave, never stop casting their shadow over her. It reassured her, at least, that she was doing the right thing (for once).

She crossed the street and made it to the dam side of the highway. Before she could make it safely past the building, the large doors opened and a woman stepped out. Leah recognized her from before, the one who’d tried to warn her about the storm.

“Well, hello again!” she said, waving. “We haven’t seen you lately,” she said. Something about Leah’s appearance must’ve struck a chord because the woman’s smile faded quickly. Her brows knitted together in a frown. “Are you all right, dear?”

Leah forced herself to nod even though she was the farthest from ‘all right’ as she’d ever been in her life, even crouching on her knees vomiting after each round of chemo had nothing on the wave of nausea that had taken hold of her since the miscarriage and showed no signs of ever letting go. She seemed to be operating now in a fever dream of sorts, here but not here, alive yet not existing at all.

“I’m fine,” she replied in a voice as even as she could muster. To avoid any more uncomfortable questions, she slipped past the woman and headed toward the dam’s large, concrete walkway. A cool breeze shot over the ledge as large thunder clouds rolled in from the east.

“It’s going to rain,” the woman called after her.

Leah merely waved a hand in acknowledgment.

Apparently unsatisfied with the limp response, the woman shouted, “
There’s another storm coming!
”

Leah ignored her, too tempted to tell the woman that the storm had already come and gone, and had left nothing but destruction in its wake. She hurried across the walkway, stopping at the halfway point, already out of breath from such an exertion. The doctors had told her recovery would be slow. She wasn’t certain
decades
would be enough to overcome the exhaustion that felt as though it were set deep into her very bones.

Weakness had become her permanent state.

And she hated it.

From her pocket, she drew out that wrinkled, rumpled, crushed, and folded scrap of paper that had seemed so important once.

She tore it, shredded it, then let the wind take it, like an offering.

Or a sacrifice.

The tiny little pieces got caught in an updraft, swirling overhead before descending to the water below. She’d done everything on her list, and not a bit of it mattered. They were pointless little moments in a life that had never, and would never, amount to anything.

She looked down at the dark, churning water, her own tears dripping from her cheeks and adding to the reservoir below. She leaned over farther, pressing against the warm concrete. The sun was gone now, hidden behind the storm clouds, but the walls of the bridge still remembered. Too bad people weren’t like that, she thought. Leah couldn’t remember the sun. Only the storms. And the pain. And the exhaustion of illness. She angled down over the water, dangling
herself
maybe. And why not?

God had dangled so many things in front of
her
over the year
s
: Life, a child, a family of her own. Now it was all gone, all pulled away from her in one long, painful slow-motion loss. It was too much, she decided—too much to give, too much to lose.

Climb a mountain. Yeah, right. She’d
tried.
She’d given it all she had, but she couldn’t climb anymore, couldn’t lift herself up. She was too tired, too broken. Below her, splintered wood scraped across the smooth, solid walls. She felt that way, too, shattered and at the mercy of the forces around her.

Climbing back up was too hard.

Down was easier.

So much easier.

Falling was easier than climbing.

She looked up at at the gathering clouds just as the first drops of rain hit her face. Another storm in a life filled with too many.

Leah closed her eyes and gripped the railing, scratching at it with her fingernails, pushing on its solid mass with outstretched hands as she lifted herself up onto her toes.

‡

A
ustin parked his
truck in the lot of the Buffalo Bill Dam Visitor’s Center and killed the engine. He was out of places to look for her and it was getting dark fast. As he leaned forward in the driver’s seat, he thought he saw the shape of a person on the bridge on the far side of the lot. A larger woman was standing by the building’s front door, frantically waving her arms.

He threw open the truck door and sprinted between the parked cars. “Leah!” he yelled, but the wind carried it away. The woman; however, was closer and she turned to look.

“On the bridge!” she called out, as though he didn’t see her, as though he weren’t already trying to get to her.

When he rounded the corner, he was close enough to see what she must’ve seen. Leah far too close to the edge, with one knee already on the wall of the bridge. His heart leapt to his throat and he pushed himself forward, legs pumping hard on the asphalt. “
Leah, no!
” he bellowed and this time he was close enough for her to hear.

Her head jerked, eyes searching until she found him, charging toward her. She backed up, backed away from
him
, but he covered the rest of the space between them in just a few steps and grabbed her arms. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing, I…I was…”

“Were you going to jump just now?”

“I…you can’t be here,” she said, sounding suddenly angry.

“The hell I can’t. I just pulled you off that wall! God damn it, Leah? Answer me!
Were you going to jump?
”

“I…I don’t know what I was going to do,” she said quietly. “I really don’t know. I just…I don’t want to hurt anymore.”

He could tell she’d been crying and still was. Hell,
he
had barely stopped since seeing her in that hospital bed.

“I can’t believe this,” he said, shaking his head, trying hard to not shake
her.
“If I hadn’t been here. I almost
wasn’t
here. I was almost too late.”

There were two women now, he noticed, standing at the door of the building. He moved Leah farther away from the edge so they were both standing in the middle of the bridge. “Come on,” he told her. “We have to go. We have to get out of here. I’ll take you home. We’ll…” He wasn’t sure what would come after that but it was obvious that things couldn’t go on as they were. They were both hurting way too much. “We’ll get some help.”

“I don’t need help, Austin.”

“Leah, you were…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Images of Walker dragging their father’s frozen body back to the house flashed in his mind. They were soon replaced with an image of Leah, floating in the emerald green reservoir below them. He shook his head, clearing it from his mind before he vomited. “We’re going to go home, damn it. Back to Star Valley. And I’m going to find someone for us to talk to and we will get past this. Together. I came to get you, Leah. I came to bring you home.”

“I’m not going with you, Austin.” She surprised him by sounding as firm and unwavering as he’d ever heard her before. She pushed on his chest, wriggling out of his grip. “I’m not going back to Star Valley. I’m just not.”

“You are, Leah,” he growled. “You’re upset and you’re hurting and I get that. Believe me, I do. But we’re still
us
. And I still love you.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re not thinking clearly,” she replied.

Maybe he wasn’t. She might be right about that. After all, just this morning Walker had pulled him out of the Snake and Austin, like Leah, couldn’t say for certain why he’d waded in. He only knew he’d been in pain, his whole body on fire with it, and he needed peace. But Leah was his peace. He understood that much; that much felt as real to him as the land he loved and the air he breathed and the rain coming down on them now.

Leah was all he had. And he couldn’t lose her.

He pulled the velvet box from his pocket, nearly fumbling it in his haste. “I came to get you. And I’m not leaving without you.”

Leah backed away from him, though, and Austin fought the urge to grab her and throw her in the truck and get the hell away from this place, out of this storm. She shook her head but he wouldn’t accept it as an answer. He was
here
. He was here for
her
. The way it always should’ve been. He sank to one knee. The denim turned dark where the rising water seeped into it.

“Come home with me, Leah,” he pleaded, holding out the ring.

She blinked down at him. The rain seemed to wash away her tears but the pain in her eyes remained. “No,” she told him, as thunder rumbled over head again.

‡

L
eah couldn’t believe
how everything had gotten so twisted up. She’d come here to get away, to release him from his obligation to her. But here he was, kneeling in front of her, after pulling her back from the literal brink, though she still felt beaten down by all she’d been through. She wanted there to be a light at the end of the tunnel, but didn’t want it to be him. What kind of person would do that to him? Not the person she wanted to be.

So she backed away, instead of reaching for the ring—
for him
. It was everything she wanted but not what
Austin
wanted. Not really. How could it be? She’d drag him down as surely as if she’d jumped over the wall just moments ago and taken him with her. They didn’t need to drown in this, not both of them.

Austin could be saved.

Leah couldn’t protect anyone else, not her parents, not her baby, but she could protect him—
had
to protect him. She couldn’t let him make another huge mistake. She shook her head, tears running down her cheeks. “No,” she whispered at first. Then louder. “No. I can’t.”

Austin leapt to his feet and reached out for her. “I need you
home
, Leah! And you need to
come
home. We need to take care of each other.”

Leah’s chin hit her chest and fresh, hot tears spilled onto her shirt. As much as she wanted to be with him, wanted him to love and care for her always, she couldn’t do that to him. “No,” she whispered even as her heart broke inside her hollow chest.

“Leah, I know it won’t be easy but I’m not ready to give up on us. I’m not ready to lose you. Come home. We’ll get married. We’ll work all this out. We’ll
heal
from this. Together.”