Chapter Six #2
“Some people like to live like that.” Ramona had seen this firsthand in her time here.
There were those who came to these wild places to disappear, and they pursued that goal no matter what it cost them in comfort or ease.
“They don’t want to answer to anyone, or do anything they don’t want to do.
Ever. On some level, I can see why that’s appealing. ”
“I like running water,” Knox said, his mouth curving.
It seemed to be connected directly to the center of her, like a kind of punch.
And everywhere else. “Radiant floor heating. Electrical appliances. Me, personally, I’m of the opinion that modern advances make life better rather than worse.
I like camping as much as the next guy, but I’m always happy to come back home. ”
“I love getting away from everything,” Ramona agreed.
“My grandfather and I used to go on long camping trips in the summers down in Yellowstone and over near Big Sky. He taught me how to forage, how to fend for myself, how to build myself a shelter in any kind of weather. All life skills that I’m happy to have. ”
Knox waited, like he knew where she was going with this.
She smiled. “But I’m with you. I like coming home.
I don’t really think you would appreciate getting away from it all if you didn’t have the contrast of it.
” She made a face. “Also, for the most part, my observation is that most of the people you’re describing who live in situations like that aren’t really doing it because freedom calls.
It’s usually because they’re avoiding pesky inconveniences like law enforcement. ”
“Atticus confirmed that.”
He traced a few patterns on the table, idly, and she found herself wondering what he was drawing. Or, if it was letters, what they spelled out. She didn’t let herself ask.
“I’m not going to lie,” Knox said into the quiet of the kitchen. “It wasn’t the most welcoming place I’ve ever been. Happily, Boone is intimidating without trying. And Wilder can talk to anyone. So we didn’t get shot, which is a bonus. It looked dicey there for a minute.”
Both the doctor and the woman in her had to work not to respond to that. Not to ask what he meant by dicey—but then, she could guess.
“It doesn’t sound like you found who you were looking for, either,” she said instead, because the less she imagined dicey, the better.
“They definitely didn’t like anyone coming there, looking for one of them,” Knox agreed, and he laughed. “They also strenuously discouraged us from ever doing that again.”
“I’m sorry that you wasted your time.” She cupped her hands around her mug because otherwise, she didn’t think she’d be able to keep from reaching over and touching him.
“Though I suppose I’m glad that you went, if only so I know to avoid that area.
Something I probably would have done anyway, given the name.
My experience of Western place names is that they tell harsh and sometimes bitter truths. ”
“That they do.” Knox took another drink of his coffee, and continued his story.
“We figured they knew exactly where Shoshana was, but there wasn’t much use trying to get such fine, upstanding folks to share that information with us under the circumstances.
We figured we’d regroup, maybe see if we could happen upon one of them the next time they came into town.
Because they’ll have to every once in a while. Everybody does.”
“Great thinking,” Ramona said dryly. “They sound like exactly the kind of people who would react well to being ambushed at the General Store.”
“Fair point,” he agreed, his eyes crinkling in the corners.
“Anyway, when you’re leaving Devil’s Gorge, you have to sort of maneuver around this big boulder to find your way back out of the gorge and onto one of the so-called roads.
It separates you from the part with all the scarily rundown shacks with piles of debris all around them and the folks who look a whole lot like serial killers, waving their weapons. ”
“This is sounding better and better.”
He fully grinned at her then, his eyes gleaming like burnished gold, and Ramona felt her breath flutter in her chest.
Making it abundantly clear to her that she wasn’t clean when it came to him. At all.
But he kept going. Thank God. “There was a girl waiting and she flagged us down. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
She knew exactly who I was, though I’ve never met her before and she refused to tell us her name.
What she did tell us is that Shoshana is in Billings. She even gave us an address.”
That could only be a good thing, Ramona thought, though there was a part of her that didn’t want Shoshana found—because what would that mean for little Hailey. And Knox, who she’d watched dote on that little girl in a way she wasn’t sure she’d known he could.
But she didn’t want to say that out loud.
“Please don’t tell me that you left that poor girl there,” Ramona said instead. “That doesn’t sound like the sort of place where eighteen-year-old girls should be hanging out.”
Knox nodded. “A sentiment that was widely shared between me and my brothers. But the thing is, Ramona, you can’t go around kidnapping eighteen-year-old girls. No matter how much you might think they’d benefit from it. It’s pretty universally frowned upon.”
Ramona frowned. “I guess that’s true. But I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.” His gaze was serious. “But taking her with us wasn’t an option, believe me. I think she might have shot us herself if we’d tried.”
They sat there, then. It was quiet in the kitchen.
She had been reading a book on the couch and there was music playing softly from the other room—one of her favorite songs about alchemy.
A little too on the nose, Ramona thought, because she wasn’t the one who went around denying the alchemy in the first place—
But it did not do her any good to think about any lingering alchemy between herself and this man. Just like it didn’t do her any good to jump to conclusions about why he was here at ten o’clock at night, sharing these things with her.
He could have texted.
Or, given the state of their relationship these days, he could have kept her out of the loop entirely.
“I’m hoping you’re not here to tell me that you lost two of your brothers to the mountains,” Ramona said instead of launching into a monologue on alchemy. Or, worse, their relationship.
She knew better than to make speeches to him. The last time she had, she’d told him she loved him and that had resulted in her having to stop all things Knox Carey. Cold turkey.
“They’re good,” Knox assured her. “We started back, but it was already dark and rapidly getting much too icy. We figured we were better off not trying to drive all the way back. So we went north and spent the night out at that ridiculously fancy Resort at Ransom Ridge instead.”
Ramona blinked. “I didn’t see that coming. I would have thought that the entire Carey family stood stoutly against luxury resorts of all kinds. Purely on principle.”
The Resort at Ransom Ridge wasn’t just fancy.
It was a world-class five-star experience.
It catered to high-flyers, who could literally take a helicopter or their private planes in, thereby sparing themselves the indignity of mountain roads and the vagaries of the small towns along the way.
It had existed in hotel form while Ramona was growing up.
But it had skyrocketed into the luxury space over the course of the past fifteen years or so, and was now considered one of the finest resort experiences in the Rocky Mountains—and the world, having been named a three Michelin key hotel last year.
Knox laughed again. “Some members of the Carey family stand against almost anything that’s new,” he agreed. “The thing about the Resort at Ransom Ridge is that it isn’t new. That family has been around forever.”
He leaned forward, in storytelling mode, and that did not exactly help her keep her heart in one piece.
“They all sprang up out there after an outlaw hightailed it out of Livingston in the wake of a botched bank robbery and a shootout. Knowing them to be about as ornery as possible, I bet they decided to make it all fancy and elegant to spite him. That’s the kind of people they are. ”
Knox grinned. “And being a hardheaded Montanan myself, I support it.”
“I heard the rooms there start at nearly a grand a night,” Ramona said, shaking her head. “In the off-season. Which this is not.”
“It helps to know people,” Knox said. “But yes, we went from the Delaney off-grid shack situation to the epitome of Western high life, and I’m not sure that Boone will ever recover.” He shrugged. “Wilder and I were fine.”
“You have hardier constitutions when it comes to the finer things.” Ramona laughed. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Knox nodded, and then he spread his hands out on the table, staring down at them like he didn’t know what to do with them. Like he was considering putting them on Ramona, maybe, but didn’t.
She could relate.
She needed to stop relating.
“There was some weather to wait out before we drove back today,” Knox continued after a moment.
“It took us a good while. I dropped my brothers off at the ranch, checked in on Hailey and my mom, and then figured I should come down into town and do a little brainstorming with Atticus about my next move. Then I figured I might as well eat, because I was hungry. And since I was already here, I thought I’d fill you in on what happened. ”
Ramona searched his face. Her heart was beating a little too fast, still, though she was doing her best to ignore it.
With about as much luck as before.
Meaning, none.
“You’re going to have to go to Billings, right?” she asked him. “I feel like there’s no way forward with anything until you know what’s going on with poor Shoshana.” She flushed a little after she said that. “I don’t know why I’m assuming she’s poor Shoshana, but I am. I can’t help it.”
Knox was watching her, that brooding, intense look on his face again. And she’d never been any good at resisting that face. “I want you to come with me, Ramona.”
She felt her heart stutter a bit. It was like everything suddenly froze, then clattered. She swallowed, and realized her throat was tight.
And it was so easy—too easy—to simply go along with this. To let him in. To talk with him like this, like he often came here and updated her on his life, with all their clothes on. To laugh, and feel cozy in this kitchen, like he belonged here.
But that wasn’t their story.
She could understand why he’d called her on Christmas Eve.
It was what he’d said at the time—he’d called the clinic line, because he was calling the doctor.
Because there was an abandoned infant in the mix who’d been exposed to the elements for an indeterminate amount of time, and that was a perfectly reasonable thing for him to do.
This was something else.
Ramona could see that he knew it. She could see it all over his face. It was there in that brooding intensity. He knew that this was a big ask because this wasn’t a medical inquiry.
This was personal.
And Ramona had to caution herself, because her urge was always to simply jump in and try to fix things. To say yes, immediately, because that was what she wanted in the moment—but it didn’t actually get her what she really wanted, in the end.
She’d made a lot of assumptions about what they both knew, what they both felt, what they both were doing, and they’d still ended up apart.
Ramona had still ended up with her heart broken into smithereens, and if nothing else, she owed it to herself not to throw herself into a whole new heartbreak all over again.
Knox was looking at her expectantly. Maybe a little apprehensively, which she thought was only appropriate.
He was waiting for her to answer.
So she did. She blew out a breath, and then she held his gaze with hers, direct and intent.
Because this time she wasn’t going to assume a damned thing.
What she said instead was, “Why?”