Page 110 of Dustwalker

“There should be a chain of logic to follow. I can’t piece it together with him.”

“Not everything is logical, Ronin. You have emotions, and you act on them. Why wouldn’t he?”

“He’s behind us now.” Ronin slid beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him. “Whatever he’s done, we must leave it in the past and look to our future.”

Lara nodded and leaned her head against him. Her thoughts turned to Gary and Kate, who had a young daughter and a second child on the way. They couldn’t just leave it in the past. They were stuck in that place. And there was nothing Lara could do for them, nothing she could do for anyone in Cheyenne. All she could do was look ahead to the life she’d have with Ronin. To her own happiness.

She lifted her head and kissed his jaw. “Thank you for giving me a future to look forward to.”

“It’s nothing you haven’t already given me, Lara.”

Though her appetite had fled, she finished off the jerky. She would need her strength for this journey. After draining the canteen, she pushed herself to her feet. Her body threatened to collapse at the exertion, but she didn’t give in, she couldn’t. They had to keep moving. She refilled the canteen from one of the larger containers and hooked it on her belt.

Ronin gathered their belongings, stuffing Lara’s coat into one of their packs as she wrapped her scarf around her head. Together, they went out into the sweltering heat. Sweat beaded on her skin, trickling between her breasts and down her back. How could anyone deal with such wild variations in temperature every day without reliable shelter?

As they walked, they passed the twisted, skeletal remains of trees. After having seen the greenery in the bot district, she could almost imagine how this land might’ve looked, the beauty it must’ve possessed.

The rugged terrain soon put an end to such musings. The ground dipped and rose with increasing severity, and large, scattered rocks became increasingly numerous. Several times, her foot caught on the uneven ground, causing her to stumble. She stopped occasionally to catch her breath and take a drink, often at Ronin’s insistence. It took all her focus to keep her legs moving.

As they progressed, the dirt gave way to sparse patches of greengrass. It was an unexpected sight outside of Cheyenne. Part of her hadn’t believed it could exist anywhere else.

She stopped at the crest of a tall hill, eyes wide. A stream wound through the small valley below, with clusters of lush grass, trees, and bushes growing along its banks.

Lara tugged the scarf down from her mouth. “It used to look like this all over, didn’t it?”

“I think it did, in a lot of places.”

“Wish I could’ve seen it. Is the rest of the world anything like this spot?”

“There’s a lot more vegetation to the north and west, but the Dust goes on for a long, long way. It’s near a thousand miles across in any direction.”

A thousand miles? Why had she thought she could do this? She was ready to fall over, dead, after a single night.

Lara recalled the day she and Ronin had argued, recalled how angry she’d been at the implication that she would slow him down, that she couldn’t keep up.

How fucking wrong I was.

Ronin watched her closely, as though he were puzzling out her thoughts. “We’re in the northwestern corner of it now. We still have a long way to walk, but not nearly a thousand miles.”

“I can’t walk day and night, Ronin.”

He tilted his head. “You don’t have to.”

“Then we need to get on some kind of schedule for proper rest. I won’t be able to keep doing this. Even with as good as I’ve been eating, I’m not used to traveling like this.”

“Glad I didn’t take you on scrap runs?”

She shook her head. “No. We could’ve taken our time on those. There would’ve been no reason to rush. But this…we’re running from something, even if we think it’s already long behind us.”

“Best to treat it that way for now. Knowing what we left behind…”

“I just know I can’t keep up this pace, Ronin. We have to either rest at night and walk during the day, or the other way around. You can’t expect me to do both.”

“I don’t expect you to, Lara. You’re worn out, and I’ve taken you away from the only place you’ve ever known. There is uncertainty both in front of us and behind us. I’m not going to walk you to death when the only reason we left is because I care for you.”

She turned away, eyes watering. It wasn’tI love you, but it was pretty damned close.

Ronin was in front of her a second later, lifting his hands to wipe away the tears trekking down her cheeks.