Chapter 23
Charlie
The silence between us was as thick and suffocating as the damn humidity. I kept sneaking glances at Mitch's rigid back as he marched a fraction ahead of me, apparently still steaming over one simple question.
I replayed the conversation in my mind. How did she die?
It was a normal question, wasn't it? People asked that all the time when someone mentioned losing a parent.
Then again, he hadn't asked me how my dad had died.
The way Mitch's jaw had clenched, and his hands had frozen, it was like I'd pressed a knife to his throat.
Now, I couldn't stop thinking about the way he’d reacted, and why he hadn't answered.
He was a man full of secrets, and I was apparently too nosy for my own good.
The heat pressed down on us as if we were walking through an oven.
Each step forward was a battle against the sweltering earth, the relentless sun, and my screaming feet.
My heels were the definition of hell. Every rock I stepped on sent fresh agony shooting through my socks and into my bones.
I’d give anything for a cold glass of water.
Hell, I'd settle for warm and muddy water at this point.
Sweat clung to my skin and dribbled down my back. My face was melting off my skull. I touched my nose and winced. Definitely sunburned. I wished I had my favorite wide-brimmed hat that I'd been wearing when my world had gone to hell.
God, I wished a lot of things.
I wished Doug wasn't dead. He hadn't deserved to die.
I wished my dinosaur discovery hadn’t been swept away by a flash flood.
Wished I wouldn’t lose my job.
Oh shit. Without my job, I can't pay my rent.
My grant money was tied to the dig. No dig, no money. I'd have to crawl back to my mom's tiny flat. Back to Mom's disappointed sighs and my sisters' I-told-you-so's while their perfect children ran around their perfect houses.
A sound that was half groan, half whimper escaped my lips before I could bite it back.
Mitch turned, frowning. "You okay?"
"Oh, yes. I'm great."
His eyes narrowed. "You don't have to be sarcastic."
"Well, what do you think, Mitch?” I snapped. “My whole world has imploded, and now I'm lost on some bloody cattle station I don't even have permission to be on."
He stopped walking and cocked his head at me. "You have my permission now."
"Great. Thanks." A hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. "Fat lot of good that'll do when I don't have a job, and no job means no rent. No rent means no place to live. So yeah, just fantastic."
"You're not going to lose your job." He rolled his eyes as though I was being dramatic.
Heat flooded my face and not from the sun.
"Of course, I am. My funding was contingent on finding ancient bones.
No bones, no funding. But even worse than that, our site office probably fell off the damn cliff with every piece of expensive equipment inside it, and they'll blame me.
I screwed up the best discovery I've ever made. "
"No, you didn't. That flash flood wasn't your fault."
"Just—" I flicked my hand at him. "Just forget it."
I stormed past him, and pain ripped up the back of my leg. I stopped, clenched my fists, and yelled at the sky, "Faarrkk!"
"If you're going to have a breakdown," he called after me, "we should return to the shade."
I spun around, hands on my hips, ready to unleash hell on him, but he was already striding back toward the trees.
I stood there, fists clenched, wanting to scream again. Wanting to cry. Wanting to rewind the last twenty-four hours and undo everything.
But I couldn't. The sun was killing me.
So, I followed him, limping back to the shade.
He was seated with his back against a tree trunk, eyes closed. I collapsed against another tree, keeping distance between us.
He didn't say anything.
I bit my tongue, determined not to speak first either. My face throbbed from sunburn, and my heels were pure agony. And I had so much shit going on, I couldn't concentrate. A heat haze shimmered across the landscape, distorting the horizon as though the air itself was mocking me.
Mitch pulled a root from his pocket and handed it to me. "I'm sorry," he said.
I shot my gaze at him. "For what exactly?"
"For everything that happened to you. I can tell you work hard. You didn't deserve this."
His tone was genuine, not pitying, and it made my throat tighten. "Thanks. That actually means a lot." I took the root from him and sucked the bitter sap.
He pulled the wrapped rabbit meat from inside his shirt.
"Eat." As he offered me a piece, his shirt gaped, giving me a glimpse of the bruise across his chest. I'd forgotten all about that.
The bruise bloomed dark purple against his tanned skin.
He'd gotten that saving my life, and here I was picking a fight with him.
I took the meat, and we sat in silence, chewing on cold rabbit.
"For what it's worth," Mitch said eventually, "if your landlord kicks you out over this, he's a dick."
"Oh, he's a dick, all right."
Mitch frowned. "So why stay there?"
"Because it's cheap. The house belongs to my best friend Harper, but her husband Tommy has been hinting for ages that he wants me out. Not paying rent will be the last straw."
He rubbed his palms down his jeans, as if he was trying to wipe away the conversation. "You won't lose your job. So, he can't kick you out."
The certainty in his voice grated on me. He had no idea what I was facing when I went home.
I squinted at him, then followed his gaze out to the wavering heat over the land. His land. "This property is owned by your family, right?"
He stilled, his hands going motionless on his thighs. A beat passed. Then he nodded, slowly and deliberately, as if he realized exactly where I was going with that statement.
"So, I'm guessing you've never had to worry about losing your job."
His expression hardened, maybe warning me not to go there.
But I was too hot, too exhausted, and too pissed off to care. "Must be nice to have that kind of job security. And I bet you don't pay rent either, do you?"
His silence said everything.
"No comment?" I pressed.
His jaw tightened, and I recognized that look. Another wall was going up. Another door was slamming shut. I flicked my hand dismissively. "Forget it."
The silence stretched between us. Yet, I felt his eyes on me, burning into the side of my face, but I refused to look at him.
"You don't know me, Charlie." His voice was low, controlled. Dangerous.
"No, I don't. How can I, when you don't even answer basic questions like what happened to your mom?"
He shot me a look that could've sparked a fire.
I glared back, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
He dragged his gaze away and stared straight ahead. "Mom took off when I was sixteen." His voice was flat, unemotional. "She left my siblings and me with our asshole father to run this land."
The breath left my lungs. "Oh, God. I'm sorry."
He turned those green eyes on me, and the sorrow churning in them made my chest ache. "What are you sorry for exactly?"
"Ha-ha." I huffed. "I'm sorry your mom did that. But I'm also sorry for pushing you to answer. It's none of my business."
He heaved a sigh, opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head and fixed his eyes on the horizon once more.
I plucked a twig from the ground and stabbed it at the dirt. "Sorry for my outburst, too. It wasn't really about you."
"I get it. You've had a hell of a day and night."
I wanted to argue, but he was right. "It's just … I've worked my ass off for years, and now everything's gone to shit, and I don't know how to stop it."
“Sometimes, shit falls apart. You can’t undo it. You can’t forget it. Sometimes you don’t even get an explanation that makes it hurt less. All you can do is keep breathing, wait for the dust to settle, and trust that you’ll still be standing when it does.”
My shoulders slumped. “That’s depressing.”
“That’s life,” Mitch said. “You take the hits. You keep moving. That’s the only way through.”
I had a feeling his mom's disappearance was just the beginning of whatever had hardened him. Maybe this cowboy's life hadn't been all rosy.
He stood and dusted his hands on his jeans. "Come on. We've got maybe four hours of daylight left, and I want to cover as much ground as possible. You ready to try again?"
As I pushed myself up, the skin stretched across my blistered heels so damn tight that each movement promised to rip them apart. The first step sent white-hot pain shooting up my legs, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. "Do you actually know where we're going?"
"Generally. North-northwest. With any luck, we'll find Zeus soon."
"And if we don't find Zeus?"
"Then we have a very long walk ahead of us."
I wasn't sure I could walk another hour, let alone make it through the rest of the day. The heat bore down on my sunburned face like I'd stuck it in a furnace. "How long?"
He squinted at the horizon. "On foot? Four days. Maybe five or more, depending."
"Four or five days?" My voice cracked. "We can barely survive a few hours in this heat. We'll shrivel up and die from dehydration."
"No, we won't. There's always water when you know where to find it." He walked faster.
I stared at his retreating back, then at the endless expanse of red dirt and sparse vegetation stretching in every direction. Four or five days in this suffocating heat with nothing but bitter tree sap for moisture.
My mouth was already so dry that my tongue stuck to the roof of it.
We're going to die. And it won't be quick.
But I'd be damned if I'd let Mitch see me panic again. So, I straightened my spine, released my hair from my ponytail so my neck wouldn't burn, and followed him into the scorching heat.
One step at a time. Just like he’d said yesterday.
Even though every painful step was harder than the last.
Even though I knew I couldn't keep going for much longer.