41. Everett
41
EVERETT
T he polo game comes to an end.
Our referee approaches us, a stout man sweating through his shirt. He wipes tears from his eyes as he laughs. “Whew! That was the most entertaining match I’ve seen in a while.”
Riding is using muscles I’m unaccustomed to using. I can already tell my thighs will be sore tomorrow. I can feel the horse panting underneath us. Ransom fits peculiarly well in my lap, his body warm and bulky against mine.
“What’d we win?” Ransom asks.
Loren and his team ride up alongside us. Playing unfair was worth it to see his mouth twisted in a sour expression underneath that whiskery mustache. He answers, “You get to go find the ball, idiots.”
At the edge of the field, I see one of Loren’s teammates smack the polo ball hard. It sails into the woods, vanishing behind the trees.
Petty but effective. Ransom’s muscles tense against me.
“Pick your battles,” I murmur to him.
As the rest of the men lead their horses back to the tables, we pivot and ride into the woods. Ransom stalls the horse. I dismount first, and then he follows.
Under the canopy of trees, the light dims. The woods are thick here, and they swallow us.
I look toward the Equestrian Club. The people are small dots from here.
I can’t see them. They can’t see us.
We’re alone out here.
Ransom’s heavy boots crunch over dry leaves and snap twigs. He has no sense of stealth. His head is down, hunting for the ball. Quietly, I follow behind him.
Completely alone.
“Good riding out there,” Ransom says.
“You did all the riding. I did the swinging.”
“Guess we make an alright team, huh?”
I crouch down on a knee. I slip my hand into my boot. My fingers wrap around the hard steel of the small hunting pistol.
“I guess so,” I reply. I take the bullet out of my pocket, thumb it into the barrel, and click it into place. I’ll only need one at this close range.
Ransom gets to his knees and brushes aside a pile of leaves, hunting for the ball.
“Listen,” he says. “There’s something about Loren. I saw something, and—I don’t know. Might be nothing. Might be that I’m seeing things, but…”
Ransom is rambling as he hunts. He’s distracted.
Adrenaline pinches, and my heart quickens in my chest.
Now’s my chance .
I lift my gun.
Goodbye.
I understand that word now. Goodbye .
This is a good bye. A wonderful bye. The best bye there ever was.
Goodbye, Riley Ransom.
Goodbye to your stupid jokes and your filthy clothes.
Goodbye to your crooked grin and your color-coordinated bandanas.
Goodbye to your need to always get in the last word.
Goodbye to that big, bleeding heart you wear on your sleeve.
Goodbye to the way Claire looks at you with those soft doe eyes.
Goodbye to the way she wrote about you in her diary with such painful longing.
Goodbye to the shadow of you that hangs over us every moment I’m with her.
Good. Bye.
But as I aim the gun directly at the back of Ransom’s skull…
A dragonfly flutters in front of my vision.
It hovers in the air. Buzzing. Its blue-green body flickers. Then it settles, landing on the muzzle of my gun. Its tiny legs cling to the silver metal.
Everything within me turns to glass. Thin. Cold. Glass. The kind of glass that might shatter apart at the slightest touch.
My dragonfly.
Ransom turns to face me. The dragonfly lifts and zips away.
Ransom’s jaw goes slack when he sees the eye of my gun. “What the hell?—?”
“Don’t move,” I tell him.
He goes still. I fix my aim and fire.
The pistol goes off with a crack. The bullet sinks into the soft dirt an inch from Ransom.
The leaves shudder with movement. A brown copperhead snake whips around and quickly slithers away, its diamond-studded body weaving through the autumn leaves as it goes.
Ransom’s body deflates with a sigh. “Y’don’t like snakes, huh?”
“I don’t like snakes,” I agree.
I slip the pistol back into my boot. I step over beside Ransom and point to the white ball beside him. “Are you going to get that?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
He scoops it up. I hold out my hand, and when he takes it, I help him to his feet.
He dusts the dirt off his knees—a strange thing to do, considering his uniform is already covered in grass stains. “For a second there,” he says, “I thought you were going to kill me.”
I take him by the chin and tilt his head toward mine. Those brown eyes are electric when they meet mine. A hint of fear and… something else.
Not unlike being in the path of a copperhead.
You better be right about this one, dragonfly.
“Now,” I say, my voice low, chastising, “where would Butch Cassidy be without his Sundance Kid?”
There it is. That crooked grin. “Are you calling me your Kid?”
“I’m calling you my Butch .”
I watch as, in real time, Ransom settles back into his skin.
My hands have a strange itch to roam. To blindly explore the hard edges and warm skin of the man my Claire adores. I push my thumb roughly over the scruff of his jaw, petting him roughly. He doesn’t pull away, just looks at me with that blank, docile stare.
“Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s go find Claire.”