27. Ava
TWENTY-SEVEN
AVA
Julio’s room is small and his bed is comfortable, almost too comfortable, but still, I can’t sleep, even if I’m desperate for it. I stare up at the squeaking ceiling fan, thankful Sweetwater still has electricity. The night is hot and humid, but that’s summer in Texas. One of the horses sneezes outside the window, and the crickets bask in their night songs. It’s soothing, and yet...
Since waking to wildfires, our accident on the bridge, and arriving at Julio’s, wave after wave of what next floods my mind each time I close my eyes. It leaves my heart pounding and my head filled with dread and doubt and all the troubling emotions in-between. The fact that smoke lingers in the air doesn’t help, even if I barely notice it anymore.
I look at Knox lying to my right, his bare back facing me. His breathing is even, but something tells me he’s still awake. A bedless spare room and the couch neither of us have touched since arriving left one option—bunkmates. “Knox?”
A heartbeat passes. “Yeah?”
“Do you really think we can make it to Ransom tomorrow, even with the ground splitting, like that lady said?” I dare to hope that by tomorrow night, we might be at his uncle’s place.
Knox rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, clasping his hands on his stomach like me. “I don’t know. Theoretically, it’s only a day of driving. But the way things are...it’s hard to say.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “I know.” I stare at his profile, watching the way his chest rises and falls. The biggest unknown neither of us state aloud is whether his aunt and uncle, or even their farm for that matter, are still there. We’ve heard nothing about the situation in Kansas.
“Anything could happen between here and Ransom,” Knox mutters, and his words only solidify the tension in my shoulders. “There’s no point dwelling on it.”
It’s true, anything could happen in five hundred miles, but I feel so much solace in Knox’s presence, I feel like we’ll get through it—whatever it is—no matter what. “Your uncle will be relieved to see you.”
A few more moments pass. “Yeah,” he whispers.
“You seem...skeptical.”
Knox lets out a hefty sigh, running his hand over his face. “I want to hope he’ll be there and everything will be okay—that we’ll get to the ranch in one piece and finally be able to breathe, but...”
“It feels dangerous to hope?”
When Knox looks at me, his eyes are dark and shimmery in the moonlight streaming through the window. “Yeah,” he admits, “it does.”
I take a deep breath, letting his words sink in, and a thought gives me pause. “Do you think—” I turn on my side to face him fully. “Do you think they will mind when you show up with another mouth to feed?”
“No.” Knox says it effortlessly. “Mason and Beth will welcome you with open arms. My uncle is nothing like my father.” A pregnant silence fills the room as Mitch’s fate—unknown as it may be—weighs on us.
“But we will get there,” Knox says when I’m silent for too long, and I realize he’s staring at me. “Eventually.”
I offer him a tired smile. “I know we will.” I’m not sure why, but I rest my hand on Knox’s. I don’t know how I expect him to react, but he laces his fingers with mine like it’s second nature. “Is it terrible that I’m relieved I’m going to Ransom with you? I didn’t want it to be on these terms, of course, but...Still, I’m relieved.”
Knox stares at me for so long, I start to worry. “No,” he finally answers. “Because I’m glad too.” His thumb brushes mine. “I don’t know how to do this without you.”
His words aren’t only a confession, but raw, filled with emotion, and comforting in a way that makes it hurt to breathe. The visage of him blurs a little as my eyes sting with the threat of tears. “Me neither,” I whisper.
We share a drawn-out moment of silent understanding—Knox searching my expression for whatever he needs to find, and me willing him to say whatever it is I can’t decipher in his gaze.
“I’ll do everything I can to get us there safely,” he promises.
I have to swallow the lump in my throat to answer. “So will I.”
Knox reaches for my face and brushes a loose strand of hair out of my eyes. “Try to get some sleep,” he whispers. “We should get on the road early if we’re going to make it before nightfall.” What Knox doesn’t mention is that bringing me to Sweetwater took him off course, so our journey is longer now, and we have a lot of ground to cover.
I exhale that burden, knowing there is nothing I can do about it now. “Night.”
Swallowing, Knox drops his hand, and this time when I close my eyes, sleep is unavoidable. I feel like the empty parts of me have been soothed just a little, but as levity fills me and the cricket songs fade away, Knox whispers my name.
“Yeah?” I whisper back.
“What’s that scent you wear?”
His question is as sobering as it is surprising, and I open my eyes to look at his shadowed features. “You mean the sunblock?”
If I’m not mistaken, he smiles in the darkness. “Yeah, I guess. That, and your shampoo, I think. I like it.”
My stomach does a somersault, and I can’t help a grin of my own. “Good,” I whisper. “Because you’re sort of stuck with me.”
* * *
We sleep until the earth starts shaking and crashing objects rattle through the house. Lucy skitters out of the room, and as groggy as I am, I know the drill. In a heartbeat, I’ve assessed the rocking ceiling fan, the boxes crashing on the other side of the closet door, and our bed rolling closer to the television mounted across the room that could tear from the wall in a single instant.
Knox and I scurry off the mattress for the doorframe. I expect the quake to cease but the entire house protests and the roar of the moving ground is deafening. My toes grip the floor as I brace myself for what I worry won’t end when the world goes eerily still again.
Body thrumming with adrenaline, I meet Knox’s gaze. His chest is heaving to match mine, and only as he lets go of my hand do I realize he was holding it at all. We stare at one another, catching our breaths. As exhausted as we are, there will be no sleeping tonight, not after that.
Knox scrubs his hand over his face with a groan. “This state is going to crumble out from under us before we can be rid of it,” he mutters.
“No, it won’t,” I promise him. Knox looks at me. “Because we won’t be here much longer.”