13. Ava
THIRTEEN
AVA
My head hits the window and the pain shooting through my temple jostles me awake. I groan, my body aching with the slightest movement, and I open my eyes. The sun is so damn bright it’s painful, and panic flares inside me as I try to discern where I am and what’s happening.
I blink an empty field of dry grass into view. It stretches around us as we drive down a dirt road . I’m in a car.
I think of Scott and his Jeep and squeeze my eyes shut as a barrage of images and memories slowly come back to me. Only when there’s movement in the driver’s seat do I open them again and glance over. My breath lodges in my throat when I see Knox. I blink again, trying to focus beyond the pain in my skull.
“What—” I croak, and I clear my throat. “What’s going on?”
His chest rises and falls before he answers. “We’re taking back roads since the highway is gridlocked.” His voice is low and level—he doesn’t even look at me, like being together in a vehicle is a regular occurrence.
“Taking back roads to where?” I swallow thickly. “Where’s Scott? Why am I with you?” I sit up straighter, rubbing my pounding head as I take in the cab of an unfamiliar truck. Of Knox’s truck. My messenger bag is stuffed between my feet. It’s bulging, barely closed, and my backpack is also packed haphazardly beside me. “Did you go through my things?” I snap, scowling at him.
“Your stuff was dumped out in the Jeep. I had to grab it in a hurry.”
Alarm zaps through me and I practically tear my backpack open, pulling my clothes out and searching through it. When I don’t find my meds, I unpack my messenger bag in a flurry.
I can feel Knox’s eyes on me, but I’m too focused on keeping the panic at bay. “There was a bag,” I rasp. “I tossed it into Scott’s Jeep before I ran into the feed store.”
“There wasn’t a bag when I gathered your things.”
“There has to be.” I pull the last of my clothes out, praying my meds are at the bottom. “It was right on top?—”
“It wasn’t there.”
“Yes,” I say flatly. “It was white with two pill bottles in it?—”
“Ava—” Knox’s hand clamps down on mine and my eyes dart to him. He glances from me to the road angrily. “There was no bag.” His words are slow and clipped, and while I’m prone to continue arguing with him, I know he would have seen it if it had been there.
My chest heaves. If my stuff was dumped out, they went through my things. Then I remember Ty coming in through the back of the store. “He must have grabbed it,” I breathe. “We have to go back.”
Knox shakes his head.
“I need that bag, Knox.”
“Are you going to die without it?”
“No, but?—”
“Then I’m not going back to that place.” His gaze shifts to the rearview mirror, and the hair on the back of my neck rises.
I stare at Knox and consider my next words carefully. “Why not?” As soon as the words fall from my lips, though, it all refocuses.
The look on Lars’s face.
Ty’s hold on me.
The scent of cigarettes.
The gunshot.
I shift in my seat, searching the side mirror for followers. “Are they chasing us? Is that why we’re driving through a field?”
“No,” Knox mutters solemnly. “They aren’t chasing us.”
I massage the side of my throbbing head. I feel nauseous, but it’s hard to say if it’s car sickness from the jostling, or, as I recall how hard I hit the shelf, from a concussion. I pick at what feels like dry blood on my temple, and the moment I look at my hand, my heart palpitates a little.
“I figured it would do no good to take you to the hospital,” Knox explains, and I think he’s probably right after everything I’ve seen today.
“Then...” I peer out the window again as we pull out of the field onto another dirt road, cacti and shrubs dotting the landscape. “What’s going on?” A question clings to the back of my throat and I stare at Knox’s profile. “Knox, where is Scott? Why am I riding with you?”
Knox’s fingers grip the steering wheel so tight, the leather audibly cracks beneath them. “Scott didn’t make it.”
It takes a minute for his words to resonate, and my fingernails rake over my thighs, clawing into fists. “He’s dead?”
Knox’s silence is all the answer I need, and my hand flies to my mouth. I turn for the window, away from Knox, as tears fill my eyes. I blink them away as best I can, taking a few shallow breaths to steady my voice before I can bring myself to speak again. I clear my throat, watching more cacti pass as we drive by. “What about the others?”
My heart is beating so wildly—so savagely—I can barely hear my own question, and when Knox doesn’t answer again, I force myself to look at him. The man with whom I’ve barely exchanged five words in the past decade. Whose glare has kept me up at night and haunted my dreams. Now, he sits beside me with his lip swollen and crusted with dry blood, and his eyebrow split. Because of me.
“Everyone else is dead,” he finally says. The heaviness of what he’s done—what he had to do while I was unconscious hurts my heart. Regret? Relief? Complete and utter disbelief? It’s hard to sort out how I feel. I’m the last person Knox would ever want to get stuck with during the end of the world, and on top of that, he had to kill someone today, maybe two someones. Because. Of. Me .
His dad could probably stomach something like that, but not the kid I watched from the sidelines growing up. In fact, I want to ask him so many questions about what transpired while I was unconscious, but I can’t bring myself to. Knox might be strong in all senses of the word, but like me, he looks as if he’s barely holding it together, and I won’t prod him for the missing pieces. Not yet.
“We’re going to bury him,” Knox says over the diesel engine as he accelerates down a private drive.
Unexpectedly, I huff with relief, grateful I get to say a semblance of goodbye. But the wave recedes just as quickly, and I wrap my fingers around the seatbelt strapping me in. “Where are we going?”
“To my pla?—”
“No,” I grip the armrest. “No, Knox. Your dad is going to freak out. I can’t deal with that right now. Please?—”
He stares at me and every word on my tongue withers away. “There’s nowhere else to go,” he says coolly. “Besides...he’s gone.”
My heart pounds in my ears as I watch Knox’s profile. I don’t know if he means his dad fled Sutton County, or if he’s dead, like so many others today.
“Is he...” I let the words fall away, unable to utter them. I have no love for Mitch Bennett, but for Knox’s sake, I would feel sorry if he lost his dad, having already lost his mom too.
“I don’t know.” His voice is so quiet I barely hear him.
For obvious reasons, I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it, so I say nothing more and focus on exhaling the anxiety that’s alive and slithering around inside me. Before the sun even rose, I lost Mavey. Now, Scott is gone, and so are Lars and some of his crew. And beside me is Knox, who only yesterday wordlessly glared at me from the other side of the checkout counter.
I stare at stretches of barbed wire fencing, the world blurring around me. “Is there anything else I need to know?” I ask softly, the energy completely draining from me. “I might have a heart attack if there are any more surprises today.”
Knox makes a derisive noise. “You and me both.” He rests his elbow in the window, rubbing his stubbled jaw anxiously.
I risk a glance in the side mirror. Now that I know Scott must be in the back, I’m afraid to check. But having slept through Knox loading Scott’s body and everything else on his own, forcing myself to look is the least I can do. I’ll have to at some point anyway.
But when I look, all I can see are the tops of gas cans, a flat of water, and the edge of a few crates, so I focus forward again.
The gate of the Bennett Family Ranch comes into view. I’ve seen their insignia a hundred times, but I’ve never been here, and my stomach roils with how wrong it feels.
Knox pulls through the open gate and brings the truck to a stop just inside.
“I’ll do it,” I offer, knowing he’s going to close it behind us.
“No.” Knox shoves his door open. “You shouldn’t be walking around until we know how bad your concussion is.” He gives me no time to respond and strides over to the barred metal gate and pushes it shut.
I watch in the mirror as he drapes the chain around the post before he locks it. I realize Knox is in a basic white t-shirt and jeans, both spattered with dirt and blood. No hat today, which I’ve rarely seen. Instead of turning back for the truck when he’s finished, Knox stands there with his back to me. I watch and wait until, finally, Knox leans forward and braces himself on the bars. His t-shirt tightens over his expanding body as he heaves. Tears blur my eyes again, and my heart feels a dozen times heavier, knowing the part I’ve played in Knox’s momentary breakdown. I look away to give him privacy. I owe him that much.
Wiping my eyes, I search my bag for sunglasses, praying they will help with my headache. I worry they’ve also been left behind when I find them in the bottom of my bag. I consider it a win and wipe the smudges off before slipping them on.
I can’t help the direction my gaze drifts, but I feel slightly better when I see Knox straighten in the mirror. He wipes his face on his bicep and turns back for the truck. His eyes are glassy and red, and I face forward as he climbs into the cab, pretending I saw nothing at all.
Knox doesn’t look at me, and he says nothing as he shifts the F-250 into gear. We continue down the drive a quarter mile in silence before a lodge comes into view. I assume it’s his house, as grand as it is, and as the homestead opens up, the barns and stables and some paddocks sprawl along the right side of the property.
An Australian shepherd runs out from the shade of a tractor, barking and butt-wagging as it trots closer. Knox continues past the barn and stables, past a few paddocks with steers, before he finally stops at a large redwood shed.
“Wait here,” he says, shutting off the engine. I don’t argue as he climbs out of the truck, greeted by his dog.
“Hey, girl,” Knox murmurs. He rubs her ears and bows his head, and with an excited whimper, she licks his face. The dog can barely contain her excitement, and Knox seems to soak it in, like it gives him strength.
Finally, he rises to his feet, pushes the driver’s side door shut, and heads for the shed. His four-legged friend follows after him, prancing and hopping around by his side. When they emerge again, Knox has a shovel and pickax clutched in his hands. He lays them carefully in the back of the truck and climbs back into the driver’s seat.
We continue past the shed, leaving the homestead behind us, and I take in the land surrounding the ranch. Low hills and some flatland grazed down to nothing. There are ash trees and prickly pears scattered here and there and fence lines off in the distance, but nothing more than that. We head toward a cluster of Texas oaks, and when we reach their shade, Knox brings the truck to a stop.
I open my door to get out.
“Ava.”
I look at him.
“You were out for nearly an hour. I’m not a doctor, but I’m guessing you have a bad concussion. You’re not helping me dig a hole.”
“Of course I am,” I counter. Climbing out of the truck, I realize it’s higher off the ground than I thought, and I grip the armrest to steady myself as my feet hit the hard earth. My headache is loud and proud, but the nausea ebbs a little now that we’re no longer moving. “I’m not letting you dig a hole for my friend while I sit back and watch,” I say, and as I shut my door, my eyes fix on Scott’s body wrapped in a painting tarp in the back. My heart drops. My hands begin to sweat, and I feel like I might be sick. Boxes and crates and supplies are stacked around Scott, almost protective in a way, and all I can do is stare at him.
Metal clangs against the truck bed as Knox lifts the pickax out.
I swallow the returning nausea, along with the sob threatening to bubble up inside me, and walk around the tailgate on mostly steady feet. I lift the shovel out. “I want to help,” I tell him, meeting his hazel eyes. My voice is strained, but Knox doesn’t argue. He only stares at me a second longer, then heads toward the trees. “It’s this way.” His voice is a low rumble, barely audible above our footsteps, but I follow him around a sprawling oak.
The afternoon is hot and humid, and it feels like every bit of dust that lifts with each step sticks to my sweat-dampened skin. Unlike town, where the scent of fried food and magnolias fill the air, it smells like sunbaked soil out here, and as a slight breeze picks up, sulfur too.
When we get to a small plot of grave markers, I realize we’re burying Scott in the Bennett family cemetery.
Knox leans his shovel and pickax against a tree trunk, and I pause behind him. His mother is buried out here, and discomfort prickles over me. The nights Mitch came to my house in a drunken fury because of his dead wife flare to life. Now, I’m looking at her headstone, and it makes me sick to my stomach, like I’m trespassing where I don’t belong. “It feels wrong to be here.”
“Then go back to the truck,” Knox says tersely. He’s staring at me, the pickax half lodged in the ground.
Instead of trying to explain myself or arguing with him, I start to shovel out the earth he has loosened with the axe. Who Knox buries here is his business, but I won’t leave him to bury Scott alone.
I feel the bruised muscles of my body with each heave of the shovel, but I work as hard and fast as I can, trying to keep up with Knox. With each swing of the pickax, he gains momentum until I imagine it’s my face he’s picturing, or perhaps Lars’s, and he continues to upturn the hard ground until it’s loose and malleable.
I pause once to grab us each a water bottle from the back of the truck so we don’t die of thirst on top of everything else. Then we continue to make quick work of the hole in silence. I don’t know where Knox’s mind drifts, but I realize I’m staring at the earth, awed by how long it’s been here—far longer than us. If the fate of this planet is truly altering, whatever happens, the dirt will remain long after we’re gone. And soon, like Scott, we’ll be a part of it too.
Knox pauses, assesses the human-sized hole, and drops the pickax. Without ceremony, he turns for the truck. “Come on.” He calls for me to follow, and I steel myself for what comes next.
Dropping my shovel, I walk to the tailgate where Knox tugs Scott’s canvas-wrapped body from the back, careful but intent. Knox’s arms strain, his hands trembling a little, and I know it’s from utter exhaustion. I imagine him wrapping Scott’s lifeless body and lugging it into the truck alone. And him having to load the supplies and then worry about me and my things on top of everything else.
“Take his feet,” Knox says. His muscles strain some more under his bloody t-shirt as he lowers Scott’s upper half from the back of the truck, taking the brunt of his weight. His jaw clenches and Knox nods toward Scott’s final resting place in the ground.
All I can think as we carry Scott to his grave is how heavy he is and how I will never forgive myself if I drop him. My arms tremble, but my grip tightens and I hold fast, using every ounce of energy I have left as we clumsily lay him to rest.
Both of us stand there, heaving for breath. This morning, Scott offered to help me, and now he is dead. “Thank you,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. “For everything.” My chin trembles because Scott deserves more than this, and yet, words fail me. He has been more than a boss since the day I started working for him—the closest thing I had to a protective male figure in my life. He made me laugh and feel seen, and I will miss him.
When I realize Knox is staring at me, I meet his gaze.
“Ready?” he asks quietly.
Exhaling, I nod, and Knox pushes piles of dirt back into the hole with the head of his pickax. I use the shovel and we fill the earth in around him.
The sun is setting on the longest day of my life by the time we’re finished, and as the sky turns rose gold, I find I’m strangely grateful to be standing here with Knox. Or maybe I’m grateful to be standing here with anyone. I’d be alone otherwise. Julio and Sweetwater are all I have. My chest aches with the need to cry, but no tears come. I’m too exhausted. Too numb.
I give Knox a moment as he stares at the older graves a few yards away, then ask, “What happens now?” I’m at Knox’s mercy out here. On his land. At his home.
Slowly, he shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He rubs his dirty hand over his face. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow. You can stay here tonight.” It’s a statement more than an offer, and I can tell I’m not exactly wanted here. I can’t say I blame him after all the trouble I’ve laid at his feet. He had to kill a guy today because of me. More than one, if I had to guess. But I don’t have the guts to ask him to relive what happened while I was unconscious quite yet.
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him. I rake my fingers through my blood-crusted hair and lift my face toward the slight breeze, drawing in a deep breath.
“Yes,” Knox says, “I do.” His dog comes traipsing from behind the trees, bobbed tail wagging and utterly oblivious to the heaviness suspended between us.
“The roads,” I realize.
Knox picks up the tools and turns on his heel, walking back to the truck. “Come on. I’m tired.” I don’t want to talk about it he really means, and as I watch Knox trudge away, I contemplate what to do. My options are limited at this point, but to rely on Knox?
The longer I stay around him, the more he will grow to hate me at the end of all this, and I am not sure I can stand it.