Chapter 11
Camila
In the morning, while I'm making coffee, Liz has a strange look on her face. Her eyes linger on the breakfast table longer than they need to.
“I wanted to see you before the day's chaos kicked in,” she blurts. “There's a place on the ranch I want you to see. It's...” She hesitates for a beat, then finally lets it out. “Sacred. To me. To the ranch. To Rosa.”
“Sacred,” I repeat, lowering my voice to a whisper, like it's a word I shouldn't touch.
She shrugs, though she’s started drumming her fingertips on the table.
“I know this kind of thing isn't really your thing, but I want you to see it. I think maybe she wanted you to see it before... the will...” She lets the sentence die in the air and slides a battered topographic map toward me, smoothing it flat on the table.
I watch her hands as she holds the map. Strong, a few scars, broad, pale knuckles from hard work.
She sets her index finger on the paper, down south, and traces a faint blue line that snakes through a canyon at the far edge of the property.
There’s a mark in red pencil, maybe Rosa’s, maybe from a generation before, right at the head of the creek.
“We’ll have to pack water, and we should probably be back before dark.”
For some reason, I want to ask if she’s ever taken anyone else out there, but I don’t.
We ride for a long while, and, by noon, the heat is already unbearable. The only cloud is a grayish smudge, solitary and almost washed out, hanging far off over the Sacramento Mountains.
I’m already wiped out when the landscape opens and I can make out the distant shape of the canyon. Every so often, Liz points out a landmark, some trick of the land I never would’ve noticed: “That’s where the old Candelaria trail used to run,” or “the coyotes den in those caves over there.”
By the time we reach the mouth of the canyon, I’ve sweated clear through my shirt, and I’ve got blisters on the inside of my fingers from the reins. I hear the sound of water, distant but steady, in the middle of the desert, and for a few seconds, I believe in magic.
I try to picture my grandmother Rosa making this trip when Liz was still a kid, her laugh echoing through the canyon, but I can’t. I realize I barely knew her. I stopped coming to the ranch when I turned 19, and almost all my stories are secondhand. Deep down, it hurts.
The trail bends and, suddenly, through a gap in the rock, I see green. Real green, not the silvery gray of desert plants, but the lushness of an oasis. I urge my horse forward, and when we round the last curve, I hold my breath.
A spring spills over a natural pool from the stone wall, forming a little waterfall that feels almost like a dream. The water runs clear. There’s greenery, birds—everything here hums with life.
I’m sure I look like an idiot when I pull my horse up to look at Liz. There’s pride in her eyes, and maybe a trace of vulnerability. She swings down and helps me do the same before tying the horses and letting them graze.
“I can’t believe this,” I breathe. “Good thing Michelle doesn’t know this place exists. She’d be unbearable about making me sell.”
“This is the heart of the ranch,” she says softly. “Rosa showed it to me when I was a kid. She said, if you could get all the way out here and not feel it, you didn’t deserve to own a damn thing on this land.”
At the edge of the spring, the ground is spongy and soft.
It smells like grass and wet earth, and when I kneel to touch the water, it’s so cold it startles me.
Liz comes to my side, crouches, and slips her hand into the pool.
She doesn’t speak, just lets the droplets slide off her fingers onto the chaps over her jeans.
Before I can say anything, she sits me on a rock and kneels in front of me.
“You’ve got chafing, don’t you?” she asks, looking up.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“No, you’re not.”
She goes back to Diabla and rummages in her saddlebags until she finds a glass jar.
“I brought it just in case,” she admits as a delicious flush climbs her neck. “I knew that... well, I figured this would probably happen.”
She kneels in front of me again with the jar in her right hand.
“It’s a salve Alba makes. Calendula, aloe, and something else she never tells me. I need...” she pauses and swallows. “I need you to pull your pants down to your knees,” she adds, lowering her voice.
I want to make a joke. For a second I would like to tell her it’s a pretty slick way to try to pick me up or something, but the truth is the insides of my thighs are on fire and any relief is welcome.
I sigh before unbuttoning my pants and tugging down the zipper. She blushes as I slide them to my knees, and I’d rather not think about where I’m pretty sure her eyes just went.
“Fuck, Camila,” she whispers. “You should’ve said something. We could’ve stopped way sooner.”
“I didn’t want to look useless,” I admit.
“You’re not. You’re human, and you’re not used to riding for hours.”
She opens the jar, scoops out some cream with her fingers, and when she strokes the insides of my thighs to apply it, my breath catches.
She massages them with a gentleness that leaves me speechless. Those hands of hers—hands used to breaking horses, pushing cattle, fixing fences—glide over my thighs with a wonderful tenderness.
“You’ve thought about me,” I whisper, fighting the urge to run my fingers through her mane or, worse, to let a moan slip out.
She stills for a second and smiles, flushing.
“I think about you a lot,” she confesses, so quietly I almost don’t hear her. “Since you got here. Even when I didn’t want to. Especially when I didn’t want to.”
She draws soft circles on my skin with her fingertips, spreading the cream, and I have to bite my lip not to moan. Not from pain, but from something entirely different.
“Give me your hand,” she says.
I show her the blisters along the insides of my fingers, and she clicks her tongue like it’s her fault.
“I should’ve given you gloves. I should’ve...” she stops, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for taking care of me,” I whisper.
She takes my hand and rubs in the cream while I close my eyes, and I don’t even bother hiding the sighs that escape me. When she’s done, she doesn’t let go. Instead, she brings my hand to her lips and kisses my knuckles.
“Liz...”
“I’ve been waiting so long,” she murmurs against my fingers, between kisses. “Waiting for you to come back every summer, and you never did. And then Rosa... then the will... and I thought it was too late.”
I lean forward, cupping her face in my hands.
“It’s not too late,” I assure her. “I’m here. Now.”
She closes her eyes, leans into my palm, and for a moment this woman who’s so strong seems so vulnerable I want to shield her from the whole world.
“Liz, what happened when we were eighteen. I’m so sorry, really, I got scared and...”
“Shh, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she assures me, laying her fingers over my lips.
She strokes my cheek with the back of her hand, and when she kisses me, she does it gently, as if asking permission. Still, soon the kiss turns more heated, and, when I tangle my fingers in the thick braid at her nape, she moans against my mouth.
I tug on the lapels of her shirt to draw her closer, and she gets the message, sliding her hands under my shirt and skimming up the skin of my back. She eases it off carefully, letting it fall at our feet.
I yank off hers in a rush and stroke her shoulders—strong, well-defined, dusted with tiny freckles. She sheds her bra, revealing the breasts that obsessed me when I was a teenager: small, firm, with nipples that are a true work of art when they harden.
She lets out a long, long sigh and gently pushes me down onto the grass, then slides my jeans off my ankles, taking my underwear with them.
Liz bites her lower lip as she strokes my calves and parts my legs, kneeling between them and just looking at me, doing nothing for the longest minute.
I try to pull her up so she’s level with me, but she pins my wrists with one hand, pressing them over my head before kissing me and sliding her free hand over my sex.
She smiles when she feels how wet I am, leaning down to kiss my nipples, nibbling them lightly, licking my areolas and the curve of my breasts.
I’m so wet I can feel it on my thighs, but Liz takes her time.
She slides her fingers through the slick, teasing at first, then easing inside me very slowly, like she wants me to feelevery inch of her fingers.
She holds my gaze as she curls them within me, driving into me with a steady rhythm, brushing my clit with the heel of her hand until I’m seeing stars.
I dig my nails into her shoulders, arching my back, moaning, rolling my hips, searching for more.
She quickens the pace, pushes deeper, harder, and I feel the heat gather low in my belly, the pressure building, until I can’t hold it back. My whole body shudders as I come. I curl my toes, cry out her name, tremble in her arms while she holds me, kissing me, until my body loosens.
I lie there, mouth open, chasing breath.
I draw her to me, settling her astride my thighs.
She rides my fingers, setting the pace she likes.
She’s loud, almost feral, shouting my name, moaning, begging me to go harder as she tweaks her own nipples.
Her orgasm is intense, brutal; she quakes around my fingers with a sharp cry, arching her back and gripping my wrist to keep me from pulling my hand away.
She collapses onto me, our skin slick with sweat even though the sun’s already gone. She showers me with kisses and cuddles, with small caresses. With sweet words. The light is the color of honey now, and the sound of the water is a lullaby.
“I should’ve brought a sleeping bag,” she laments.
We stay there, naked and spent, until the stars come out.
And if there’s a moment I want to keep forever, it’s this one: the sky above us, the spring’s song, Liz curled against me, naked, her hair tickling my neck.
The sky seems sharper tonight. I point at one star, then another, making up stories as I go. Liz laughs at my nonsense, then tells me the names Rosa used, the ones no one else remembers.
She tells me how, in winter, Orion’s arm floats right over the ranch house, like a guard who wants to protect it.
How, in spring, the Pleiades vanish early, signaling the start of calving season.
Every memory is tied to some piece of the ranch’s folk wisdom, and for an instant, I feel a pang of envy.
My grandmother passed all those stories to her.
I never stayed at the ranch long enough to hear them.