CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
TRISTAN
The road stretched through dark forest into the rising dawn. The van rumbled beneath my hands, tires humming against the asphalt as morning reached the Rockies. I kept my eyes forward, but my mind kept circling back.
Daisy was asleep next to me, tucked into the passenger seat with a blanket pulled up around her shoulders. Her head leaned against the window, hair tangled, cheek pressed to the glass. She looked peaceful. Looking at her, no one would have known what she had survived to end up beside me.
And still, it wasn’t far enough.
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. I should’ve felt relief. We were moving. No headlights in the mirror, no phones pinging, no shadows at the door, no bangs of a police officer asking for her. But the silence gave my thoughts more room.
I’d fucking kill him if I could.
I don’t know if that makes me a worse man than I pretend to be, but it’s true.
I’d imagined it more than once in the last twenty-four hours—what it would feel like to find him, to look him in the eye and make him answer for what he did to her.
For what he took. Her safety. Her son. Her fucking freedom.
I’d make him eat a fucking bullet if I could.
Daisy hadn’t told me all of it. She didn’t have to. I saw it in the way she held herself, always scanning rooms like they might collapse around her. In how she didn’t even realize she was holding her breath until I touched her hand. In the way she tried to apologize for the most trivial things.
The shopping; when I had bought her things and she retreated inside herself, terrified of what it might cost her later on.
When she’d torn that Seneca book apart in the bookstore, looking crazed and distraught.
When she’d fled from the bar and told me she was a mother; she’d tried to push me, see just how much of what she deemed baggage I would accept.
Maybe I should have asked about her troubles sooner.
I could have dug into her a little more, been a bit more persistent. I thought I was giving her space. I didn’t want to push her, but I was starting to think my patience only ended up making her more afraid of losing what we had between us.
I fucked up.
I wouldn’t fuck up again.
I should have been focusing on the road.
On getting us as far away from him as possible.
If he was even there. I wasn’t sure, but the paranoia burned in my skull.
This was what she wanted. But the anger sat heavily in my chest, and a big part of me still wanted to turn this van around and go hunting.
The gas light blinked on just as we rolled into a small town. A single gas station sat by the road. I pulled in slowly, careful not to wake her, but she stirred anyway.
“Where are we?” she mumbled, voice thick with sleep.
“I don’t really know. Somewhere far,” I said. “I’m just getting gas.”
She sat up, blinking at the light outside. Her eyes were glassy, lost for a moment.
“Daze?” I whispered. “Are you alright?”
She shuddered and looked down into her lap. “Nightmare.”
“What did you dream about?”
Goosebumps pebbled on her arms. “I dreamed…” She paused, her face paling as she recounted her dream.
“I was in a dark place again, but this time I couldn’t move.
I…I knew he was there, holding me down, forcing me to look at a…
wall.” Her brows came together and then a look of panic crossed as her eyes darted to me.
“You were there, but…you were watching me. Just watching.”
I swallowed hard but unease gripped me. “It was just a dream.”
She shook her head slowly. “It didn’t feel like one.”
I didn’t answer as images of her dream sprang to my mind, familiar in a way I didn’t yet understand.
Something bad is going to happen.
The thought came out of nowhere, paralyzing me in place for a solid moment.
“Tristan, are you okay?”
Daze’s voice sounded distant. I shook away the strange feeling, gruffly saying, “Yeah. Be right back.”
I stepped out and went inside the gas station. The attendant was old and tired. His eyes, heavy with bags, swung to mine. I told him the pump number. “Fifty bucks in gas.”
I slid him the money and he wordlessly put it through. I hesitated, licking my lips. “You know of any good place around here a camper can get a good shut eye in? Maybe even do some exploring?”
He took a moment. “Clearwater Nature Reserve. Good views. Long trails. Easy place to find a quiet spot.”
“Easy to find on the map?”
He nodded. “You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
Returning to the pump, I filled the tank, hands shaking more than I liked. I couldn’t shake the strange feeling in my bones. Something didn’t feel right. Daisy’s dream ran through my mind, and the strange intrusive thought that followed. I shook my head again.
It was just a dream.
The air smelled like dust and diesel. The morning wind tugged at my shirt. The town was quiet, not a person in sight. I kept my head down, hoping no one saw us as more than just passing through. I didn’t feel like engaging. The small talk with the old attendant took it out of me.
When I got back in, Daisy was staring at the sunrise. “Are we staying in this town?”
“Somewhere around here,” I said, pulling out the map from the glovebox. I unfolded it and searched for the park. “There’s a good spot we can take a breather at.”
“A breather?”
“Yeah.”
“No singing tonight?”
I shook my head. “Fuck no, we’re putting a pause on all that.”
She looked at me then, like she was reading all the things I hadn’t said. “Laying low so he doesn’t find us?”
“If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be laying low,” I admitted.
“I’d be turning back and facing him.” I looked at her then and offered her a weak smile.
“But I don’t want you looking over your shoulder, worrying.
This isn’t about me. You need to breathe, and I want to give you all the time in the world for that. ”
She let out a shaky breath. “I’d like that.”
After I found the directions, I handed her the map and took her hand. I slowly led her index finger along the map to our next destination, staring at her intently. Her doe eyes met mine, a silent tear threatening to escape one eye.
“Wherever you go, I follow,” I whispered. “We’re in this together.”
Her smile was wobbly, but it met her glistening eyes. My body weakened at her beauty, even shrouded in sadness she was the most breathtaking woman I’d ever seen.
And she was mine.
Within the hour, we found the hidden pull-off near a broken trailhead. I parked beneath a stand of mature pines, the van swallowed by shade. No other cars. No campers. No eyes. It was the kind of place we might be invisible in for a while.
She climbed out with a soft groan and stretched, arms to the sky. “It’s nice to be alone, like we were at the start.”
“Yeah, we let the noise in,” I said, slamming the door. “Now it’s out. Just you and me and this mountain. For now, that’s all we’ve got.”
And that was the truth. We were running, and maybe we’d always be running from something. I didn’t like the thought. I didn’t want us burdened by our past, like we would always be shackled to it.
But for today, we could pretend it didn’t exist. For today, I could hold her hand on a trail, instead of gripping the wheel and fantasizing about vengeance.
The rage would still be there tomorrow. But so would she. And I’d take that trade every time.
I made sandwiches and we hiked to a creek. We sat down and quietly ate. The sandwich sat like a stone in my stomach. I managed two bites before wrapping it back up. This girl dragged every good and bad feeling out of me.
I shut my eyes, exhausted by it. There was an ache behind them and a constant burn in my chest.
Gritting my teeth, I admitted, “When my dad died, I cashed out on my holidays and took off. The night I met you, I was getting ready to go back home. Was gonna call it quits early. Couldn’t stomach the thought of letting my dad go just yet.
I’d already packed up. I was prepping to get back to work at the mines, and then on my return swing home, I was going to go to Ammonite Falls to scatter his ashes. ”
She already knew this, but I needed to start from somewhere.
“I’m so sorry, Tristan,” she whispered.
I opened my eyes to look at her. “I am, too. He’d just retired, and that fucked with me, you know? You work your whole life, waiting for retirement, and now I’m thinking, well, fuck, you might not even live to make it.”
She nodded. “Feels a bit like slavery, doesn’t it?”
“It’s why I like to drive and turn the world off. It feels like I’m breaking away from the system.”
“You are.” She ran her slender fingers through my hair, studying me. “How long were your swings at work?”
“Two weeks on, one week off.”
“That’s tough.”
I shrugged. “For a freshly single guy, it didn’t feel like much for a while.”
“Do you ever complain?”
I let out a dry laugh. “I have nothing to complain about. Except for the fact I’m scared shitless at the thought that I might have missed out on you.
” I actually shuddered, looking pained. “I’m not the kind of guy who believes in fate, Daze, but something kept me there that night. Thank fuck it did.”
She smiled, and my chest burned hotter as heat reached her eyes when she looked at me. “You would have been fine, Tristan, without me.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d have been fine, but knowing what I know now, if I went back to that time and lost you…I think it’s fucking tragic.”
She shook her head, saying nothing.
“What?” I prodded. “You don’t agree?”
“I think you’ve built me up in your head.”
“We went through this already. I didn’t.”
“You did.”
I shook my head with conviction. “Nah, you’re the one. I know it. I fucking feel it. You’re it for me, Daze. I knew it the second I laid eyes on you. You’re my soulmate.”
Her voice was hoarse now. “If you believe in fate, you think if you missed out on me, you might have found me another way?”
I thought about that for a moment. My face went tight, and the thought physically hurt me. “I think we’re too alike not to cross paths with each other.”
“You think we’re the same?”
“We’re wanderers.”
“What if I wasn’t wandering?”
What if she was still trapped? The thought made me uneasy.
“Nah, the world would have worked to put us back on track,” I said, adamantly. “We would have found each other. In this life or the next, you’re mine.”
And I fucking meant it.
I knew it at my fucking core.
That damn woman’s words from when I was a child suddenly flashed through me.
“You’ve done this before…this journey…but the destination… it’s never certain.”
I shook off the chill that raced down my spine.
Whatever that woman had meant all those years ago, I knew one thing now: if there was another road after this one, I would look for Daisy on it.