Page 49 of A Curse On Black Lake (Black Lake Gothic Cowboys #1)

Chapter thirty-nine

Killian

“I’m going to check on the herds. I’ll be back in a bit,” I tell Eliana.

She’s sitting on the couch sketching in her book.

“Do you want me to come?” she asks.

“No, I can do it. You relax,” I tell her. What I don’t say is I need a minute to shake off all the memories of unsolved cases, and one that’s slowly becoming my own unsolved case because I’m stuck and the walls are closing in.

“I’ll be here,” she says.

I drop my hat on my head and lean down to kiss her temple. Eliana’s cheeks flame, and I smile to myself as I head out the door.

The moment I step foot onto the porch, I stop, spinning on my heel and going back into the house.

“On second thought, yes, will you go with me?” I ask her.

She snaps her sketchbook closed and drops it on the coffee table. “Yeah, give me a second to get some jeans on.”

I nod and wait by the door.

A few minutes later, she comes flying down the stairs in a t-shirt, jeans, and her cowboy hat over her white hair.

Taking her hand, we go down the hill to the barn to get the horses saddled up.

I decided to take Sunny, and he, surprisingly, let me ride him without much irritation. Maybe this is progress.

By the time we finish checking the herds, the sun is beginning its descent behind the horizon.

Crickets and tree frogs chirp and buzz with the sound of summer, and the warm air fills my lungs, and the black tar of my time in law enforcement has lifted.

Texas gets hot this time of year, but the evening is turning into a nice one, comfortable.

“Want to keep riding?”

She angles Winnie closer to me. “Yeah, that sounds nice,” she says.

“I’d like to show you something if you don’t mind,” I tell her.

She nods, and I lead the way to one of my favorite spots on Eden Ranch.

There’s a hill that sits a little higher than the rest of my land. The lake can be seen, and the surrounding area is trees and green as far as the eye can see.

I pull Sunny to a stop and help Eliana off Winnie. Leaving them to graze, I take her hand and we walk through the taller grass. The golden hour sun shines over her caramel skin — she’s utterly radiant.

Eliana’s hand squeezes mine as she tilts her head back, closing her eyes. The breeze blows through her hair, drying the sweat on her cheeks.

“You stare at me a lot,” she breathes.

I chuckle and kiss her knuckles before dropping onto the ground. “Can’t help myself.”

She snorts and sits next to me.

With a grey-blue sky and my girl next to me, it might be the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.

“This is beautiful,” she says, looking at the small dips in the land. It’s relatively flat, but there are trees throughout, and the grass gives the impression of rolling hills as the breeze blows. It’s always felt like home to me, despite what I’ve faced.

“I don’t know what it is about this spot that makes me feel connected to it. I know that probably doesn’t make a ton of sense, but—”

“It makes perfect sense,” she says.

I meet her eyes, and they’re peaceful, like a cloudy blue sky on a sunny day.

“Thank you for sharing this with me.”

“I want to share everything with you,” I tell her seriously, my chest taut with an edge of naked insecurity.

Eliana draws her knees up, resting her elbows over them. “I wish it could always be like this,” she whispers.

I don’t ask for explanation, giving her the space she needs.

“I feel a lot of things, but right now, the only thing I can feel is peace.” She looks at me. “Because of you. You keep me away from the edge, I haven’t fallen in because of you,” she says.

I lean over and kiss her temple. I want to tell her to cling to me, let me be her rock, but before can utter the words, she turns her head and leans in, our mouths meeting in a needy kiss, full of so many words unspoken.

I push her to lay down, as I position myself above her.

Those blue eyes make me forget to breathe and she grabs the back of my neck tugging me down. My heart pulls, and my soul trembles. I pull away to look at her again, memorize, internalize every detail.

The sun is almost down, and I know we need to go but I don’t want to.

“What?” she asks.

I shake my head, tripping on words filling my throat, looking at the way her hair cascades over the flattened grass.

She giggles and rubs her thumbs over my bearded cheeks.

“You leave me speechless most of the time.”

Eliana smiles widely. “You always have something to say, or grunt to me.”

“Not this time,” I rasp.

Overwhelmed.

I am entirely overwhelmed, and utterly helpless.

“It’s getting dark, we should probably get home,” she says.

Home.

That’s what she is to me. She’s home.

On our way back to the barns I look up at the sky and it’s cloudless, it’ll be a great night for stargazing. I don’t want this night to end and I’m anxious to make it last.

“I have an idea,” I tell her, as we walk up to the house.

Eliana smiles. “You’re full of those today.”

I chuckle and lift a shoulder. “Would you like to go look at the stars with me? I think they’re going to be pretty bright tonight.” I ask her.

She smiles and pushes her hair out of her face. “I haven’t looked up in a long time.”

I rub my beard, a little nervous, a little shaken from our sunset ride. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes, I’d love to,” she says.

“Cool. I’ll make us some dinner, and it should be dark enough by then.”

“I’ll help,” she says.

“No, no, you go take a load off. I told you I wanted to feed you.”

Her cheeks blush, and my chest puffs. “Okay,” she whispers.

After we finish eating, I grab a blanket from the basket that’s been in the same place since I was born.

Not much has changed in this house since Mom died.

Dad couldn’t bear to do it, and I didn’t want to upset him.

Now that both of them are gone, I don’t see the point in changing any of it unless I need to.

“Ready?” I ask her.

“Yep,” she chirps, following me out the door.

Night settles in, and the stars come out to play.

I decided we wouldn’t go out on the hill next to the house.

I want to get us as far away from light as we can.

It’s not hard since we’re in the middle of nowhere, but we walked about fifteen minutes from the house, and the only light to our feet is the moon.

The stars are bright, dotting the sky in waves of constellations, and this is the time of year it’s perfect to see them all.

“How about here?”

“Sure,” Eliana says.

I spread the blanket over the grass and sit down. Holding my hand out to help her, and she takes it, but steps over my legs. I look up, with my hand still in hers,and she plops down, straddling my thighs.

“I’m not sure looking at the stars works this way,” I say.

She smiles, and her blue eyes have gone nearly silver. “I don’t think it does either, but I wanted to tell you thank you, and I care about you a lot.”

My arms slide around her waist, and I tug her closer. “I care about you too … a lot.”

She grins, and I kiss her hard.

Her hands grasp either side of my face, forcing my chin up. Eliana presses in, dipping her tongue into my mouth, throwing every other thought and what-if out of my mind. She’s the only thing I can and want to focus on.

Eliana pulls away with a gasp and rests her forehead against mine. We soak each other in for a moment as the stars watch us fall deeper and deeper.

I kiss the space between her brows. She smiles softly and pecks me on the cheek before rolling off of me to lie on her back.

“Wow,” she says.

I lay back and instead of gazing at the glittering sky, turn my head to look at her and the way the moon casts its glow across her features. The white moonlight matches her hair, disappearing into the pearl strands.

“My mom and I used to do this when I was a kid. We’ve seen all kinds of things, like shooting stars.

Sometimes the planets were bright enough you could almost see the color of them.

We’ve watched blood moons and a lunar eclipse.

Somehow she managed to borrow a telescope from someone, and we were able to see at least seven of the planets lined up. ”

Eliana reaches for my hand, lacing my fingers with hers. “She taught me the constellations and some of the meaning behind them.”

“How did she learn all of that?” Eliana asks.

“She got a ton of library books about it. I don’t think she was ever interested in it on her own. I think it was a way for her to spend time with me, especially as she got worse. She couldn’t walk towards the end. I was strong enough to carry her to this spot, so we could look.”

My chest gets heavy, buckling under the pressure. The night before she died, we were out here together.

“What happened to her?” Eliana asks.

I puff out a breath and look up at the stars. “We don’t know. Dad drove her three hours to some hospital that could diagnose all kinds of things, they couldn’t figure it out either.”

“Did you come to Grams?” she asks.

“Honestly, I’m not sure what he did. I think a part of him was dying with her. He didn’t like talking to me about it on the phone, even if I asked constantly. I was in and out of town because I had to go to the police academy.”

“Sounds like she hung on for a while,” she whispers like she doesn’t want to disrupt the stars.

“She did. My teenage years through my early twenties. She died a month after I came home to be a deputy,” I tell her.

“No one could tell me why. The doctors suggested that it was some kind of genetic disease, but I don’t think it was.”

“Why do you think that?” she asks.

“Because one day we went for a swim in the lake. We were moving cattle, and then a few days later she got sick. We thought it was the water, or many other things. But it wasn’t.

None of it made sense. I—” I pause because I’ve never said this out loud, but with everything that’s happened, I don’t believe it’s too far-fetched anymore. “I think it was this town.”

“The curse,” Eliana whispers.

“Do you really think it is?” I ask her.

She hums, still looking at the sky. “I believe it’s what killed my Grams too. There is power in words, Killian. I think Cassandra Radcliffe cursed every single soul that steps foot in Black Lake, past and present, and it doesn’t matter if you leave. It gets to you.”

“Have you thought about leaving?” I ask her.

“I have, but I won’t. The Greers have been here for generations, and the last thing I want to do is disrespect my ancestors by leaving what they built.”

“Yeah, I get that. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. No one would probably buy this land, and I don’t know where I would go.”

“I don’t think there is anywhere else for me,” she says.

We go quiet while looking up at the tiny dots filling the sky.

The warm breeze brushes over us, and through the trees. I could live in this moment with her, the peacefulness of it all. Tired of the stars, I turn my head to watch her again, and it’s irritating. Every time I simply look at her, I fall a little more.

She sighs. “I love that sound. It’s what I think the ocean sounds like. When you left Black Lake, did you see the ocean?” she asks.

I watch her lips move and listen to the breeze going through the trees. I can hear it. “Yeah, the training camp was in Houston. On a weekend off, some buddies and I went down to the coast in Galveston.”

“What’s it like?” she asks.

“It’s huge, and warm, and various shades of blue, like your eyes.” She smiles, and I continue. “It’s beautiful. Have you ever been out of Black Lake?”

“I’ve been to a few surrounding towns. But that’s it. I love the water. I’ve always wanted to know what the ocean felt like.”

I tug her to my side and press a kiss to her head. “Maybe we can go one day.”

Her hand rests on my chest, right over my heart. “I would love that.”