Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
When I pull away from headquarters in my field clothes, gear packed, water bottle full, a sense of optimism floods me so fast, I have to blink away the sudden hot prickle in my nose.
Catching sight of my reflection in the rearview makes me laugh a little.
I shouldn’t be so excited about measuring stream depths and looking for salamander poop on a Monday morning, but it means I’m not stuck making coffee for Keith or giving myself pep talks in the ladies room.
And it means getting my hands dirty and engaging in a problem with all five of my senses.
As if Mother Nature approves of my plan, we’ve been gifted a patchy blue sky with big, puffy clouds. The bright sun reflecting off the snow turns every surface into glinting, shimmering color. Even the Bitterroots are out today, the rocky spires almost purple against their snowy flanks.
When I arrive at the field area, the streambed looks worse than the aerial photos I studied, thanks to the decades of neglect since a silver mining operation abandoned this valley and a series of floods that would have never happened if beavers were in still charge of the landscaping.
I don’t see CJ’s text until I’m pulling on my hip waders at the back of the truck.
CJ:
Morning, beautiful
I stare at it, my heartbeat thumping in my ears.
Nathan used to text me every morning. I’d be in the middle of class or locking up my bike outside Fisher Hall and my phone would buzz.
Excitement would quickly follow because it meant he was thinking about me, caring about me.
Nevermind the message itself was his way of exerting control.
You forgot to make the bed again. Did you wear your new shoes in this rain?
Don’t bore everyone tonight by talking about spotted toads.
Why didn’t you text me back right away? You know how that worries me.
It didn’t start out that way. He was caring in the beginning, which now makes me think it was all a game to him.
Win me over, feed me just enough attention to get me hooked, then slowly withdraw, offering up just enough occasional kindness to keep me attached, using my deepest insecurities against me.
Meanwhile making me feel like I was losing my mind.
Did I forget to switch the laundry? Am I boring to our friends?
To the point that I felt incapable of making my own decisions, and unsure of myself.
Should I wear my hair up or down? Do I order the chicken or the veggie burger?
Maybe my family really doesn’t want me home for Thanksgiving?
Am I stupid?
Margaret Healy’s comment on the plane flashes in my mind. Oh, you. Always so focused.
I exhale slowly and gaze past the gravel pullout where I’m parked to the shallow creek rushing past its barren banks. Nathan got me so turned around I didn’t realize that I’d long stopped listening to my heart, my intuition.
What is my heart telling me now?
Closing my eyes, I think back to Saturday night. To CJ’s hungry kisses and his wicked tongue. To the shower we took together and the devotion in his touch, the way his dirty promises sent me careening over the edge. The way we laughed together. The way he listened.
Am I doing the right thing in asking us to slow down?
All day yesterday I tried to work up the nerve to talk to Dad about it, but he was busy, then Jesse and Morgan and Skye came for dinner, and by the time they left it was late and after being out till almost one in the morning the night before, I was beat.
A truck rumbles up the road. It shouldn’t startle me—this is a public access road and only a few miles from Elk Flats.
But it’s a reminder that I can’t stand here all day, so I finish looping the hip water straps over my belt, check for the tenth time that my knife is in my pocket, then sling on my pack and snap the tailgate shut.
As I turn away, the approaching truck comes into view. The pale man behind the wheel scowls, like he’s offended by my presence. I hurry down the bank to avoid talking to him, and he cruises past, slowing to get around my vehicle.
Little Elk Creek is maybe eight feet across and shallow, flanked by a mix of aspen and cottonwood with the occasional spruce and hemlock.
The snow has mostly melted out, exposing tufts of new grass and baby sage poking through the cobbles and loamy ground ravaged by the fall floods.
My goal for the day is to measure existing pool depths of the two-mile run we’ll be restoring and catalogue existing species.
I’ll also note any manmade structures that don’t belong, like old livestock fencing or discarded mining equipment.
Before I get out my field notebook and pencil, I snap a picture from the middle of the stream that takes in the patches of blue between the trees and the clear water running over the granite cobbles, then send it to CJ.
ME:
Morning
I’m sniffing the underside of a rotting deadfall when a beam of sunlight catches on an object hanging from a low-hanging pine bough upriver.
It’s in an area I haven’t covered yet, so I leave my gear and splash up the center of the creek, my felt-bottomed boots sliding over the slick cobbles and my arms extended for balance.
I wade out of the water and stand below what, from a distance, looked like a woven dreamcatcher, but up close, the resemblance vanishes.
The hint of warmth from the midday sun does too, sending a chill down my spine.
During my short tenure with the Boy Scouts in fourth grade, for Mother’s Day gifts we made these woven things using two sticks and colorful yarn.
The yarn was scratchy and because I was the unwanted girl in the group, I got last pick of the colors.
I ended up with gray, red, and a neon pink.
Mom hated it but that might just be my warped memories talking because by then, she had one foot out the door.
I snap a picture of the thing as it shifts in the soft breeze coming down the little valley.
The sticks have been whittled smooth to a uniform diameter, but the ends have been left rough.
The vertical one is longer, like a cross, and whatever’s been used—fabric, yarn?
—to make the geometrical eye pattern around the sticks is faded by the elements.
With the comforting rush of water filling my ears, I take a slow scan of the area, but nothing about this spot feels special.
I double check my GPS, but I haven’t stumbled onto private property.
It couldn’t have been the prospectors who left forty years ago after turning the creek basin inside out in their futile search for silver, but I can’t imagine a cattle rancher leaving this here either.
And it’s not some hiker. Maybe a school group visits here to talk about stream ecology?
Though if so, why wouldn’t there be more of them?
And I can’t see kids carving sticks with this much precision.
A hunter doesn’t fit either. They don’t sit around weaving and whittling.
So who left this here? And why?
On Tuesday, I’m spending the morning on the permitting system when an interdepartmental email arrives from “parkscassidyj” regarding the Lost River elk herd.
Even though I know it’s just a work-related email, not a love letter, seeing his name in my inbox makes my heart bounce a little higher in my chest.
The report wouldn’t qualify as poetry, but I still eat up his observations and descriptions. He mentions the winter feeding program but he warns against activating it for several of the same reasons I wrote about in my paper. In fact, he’s using a phrase from that same paper.
Almost like he’s read it. Has he?
I don’t even think Dad’s read that one. Mostly because he read parts of it while I was writing and we’ve argued about it for as long as I can remember.
CJ points to several indicators that the herd is struggling. If winter drags on much longer, we may have no choice but to supplement.
I’m not a policymaker yet, but I reply to the team with my unpopular opinion anyway. Two minutes after I’ve sent it, a reply pops up from CJ.
I think we should discuss this over lunch today.
I double check that the email was sent just to me and not the entire team before typing out my reply:
I’ll be at my desk with my PB&J. Feel free to drop by.
He replies within seconds.
I’ll pick you up at noon.
A little thrill races under my skin as I check the clock—that’s only forty-five minutes from now.
I hit reply and type out Where are we going?
Another nearly immediate reply pops into my inbox.
Do you like surprises?
My first instinct is to lie, because the obvious answer is yes. Everyone likes surprises, especially from a sexy cowboy who tolerates your meltdowns and hasn’t yet run for the hills.
No. But with you I’m willing to try just about anything.
Are you talking dirty to me?
I laugh out loud.
A sharp knock on my door makes me jump. I close my email and spin in my chair, my cheeks burning, to find Keith sauntering into my office. Why does he bother knocking if he’s just going to barge in?
Unease churns in my gut. Did I make a mistake and “reply all” to CJ’s email?
He pauses next to my desk, arms crossed. “We weren’t scheduled to survey Little Elk Creek until next month.”
“It was a nice day yesterday.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Did you collect butterflies and make daisy chains while you were at it?”
I wish I had some snappy retort, but words are bottling up in my throat. “The spring flooding is going to be epic after so much snowfall this winter. We need that data now.”
“So you saddled up and went alone the minute my back was turned?”
“In the Selkirks, I—”
He leans down, so he’s looming over me. “Field work is something you have to earn around here.”
“Why? Because I’m a girl?”
Keith scoffs. “It’s called building trust.”
There’s a kernel of truth to this, but the logic isn’t quite tracking. How am I going to earn his trust by sitting behind my desk all day?
“You’re not going to get anywhere in this job by being so difficult all the time.” His tone isn’t harsh, but the words still sting.
I shouldn’t let him get to me. But deep down, I know he’s right. I am difficult. My goals too big. My standards unreasonable. I’m inflexible. Unfriendly. Unlikeable.
Unworthy.
With a smug twist of his lips, Keith turns for the door.
I get back to work, but my concentration keeps slipping.
Just before noon, I pull on my coat and grab my lunch box and water bottle, then pass the reception area where Betsy flashes me a tight smile before she returns her attention to her computer.
All I did was ask her politely not to spray her perfume in the bathroom, and now she acts like I might bite her.
Just add it to the growing list of my transgressions.
More reasons why I’ll never fit in. Here or anywhere.
As I step out into the breezy parking area, CJ is cruising toward me in his silver IDFW work truck. It looks like Dad’s but older, probably because he’s the new guy. I know the feeling.
Should I be this relieved to see him? Nervous energy wheels inside me as I head for the passenger door, but he jumps down and crosses the front.
“Not so fast,” he says with a half-grin that stops my heart. The bright sunlight catches the copper highlights in his curls and turns his gray eyes the color of wet slate.
“CJ,” I whisper as he opens my door for me and offers his hand.
I could protest that I’m perfectly capable of opening my own door, and that this isn’t a date, or that people might be watching us. Though my office is the only one not facing the mountains.
Instead, I take his hand and climb in. The contact from his touch brings on a welcome flicker of warmth inside me, but the moment he steps back and shuts the door, it reminds me of how quickly that comfort can be taken away.
His cab has a refitted flat center console that flips up, tan fabric seats, and a narrow bench in the extra cab space.
I’m sure there’s a gun safe back there too, like Dad’s.
Everything is neat inside, with two insulated mugs in the cup holders and only a stick of mineral sunscreen in the junk bowl.
Back behind the wheel, CJ buckles in and drives to the exit. “I wasn’t sure if you like hot chocolate or caramel hot cider, so I got one of each.”
I glance at the two mugs that are not in disposable cups. “You brought these…for me?”
“Nothing like a hot drink on a cold day.”
I blink at the windshield, trying to stuff down my emotions. “That’s really thoughtful.”
Maybe it’s the edge in my tone, or that my fingers are stiff when I reach for the first mug, but he stops checking for cross traffic and focuses on me instead, his gaze flickering with unease. “Oh shit, you don’t like either one of those things, do you?”
“What?” I laugh. “No. I, uh, I just…” Quit stammering! “Thank you. I love hot cocoa.”
He smiles. “I had them put in extra marshmallows, because that’s kind of the best part.”
Our eyes lock and I can’t help leaning closer.
His lashes lower in that sultry way that makes the butterflies in my stomach spin and dive.
It’s his broad chest and full lips and those gorgeous eyes.
It’s the way his uniform molds to his lean, strong frame.
But it’s not just how good he looks, it’s the respect that uniform garners.
It’s these acts of kindness. His filthy mouth. His fresh cotton scent.
How can I say no to this man?
Before I can stop myself, his lips meet mine in a barely-there kiss, the soft bristles of his mustache tickling my skin and reminding me of Saturday night. How that added bit of friction heightened the pleasure and held my awareness with that extra edge that kept me grounded.
When I pull back, he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, the brush of his fingertips on my skin sending a tremor down my spine, and his smile turns mischievous.
“Ready for your surprise?”