Page 70
CHAPTER 70
I got up before dawn. We’d spent the night back in Rocky Start because bathrooms. Dawn because that’s when you start a hike. Maggs looked at me like I was a betrayer. I looked at Rose, sleeping peacefully in her bed under her pink-striped comforter—I’d been sleeping under a pink comforter, there was an attack on my manhood—looking warm and flushed and smiling in her dreams.
I’d told myself over and over that I had to leave, I had to finish the mission, I had to prove to myself I could make it sober to the end of the Trail. That was important. A commitment I had made many months ago. I just was having a hard time remembering why. It was kind of a deal with the entity that controlled me, that if I could do this, things would work out.
You can’t build a future on a month of good sex, especially when there had been so much adrenaline flowing from people trying to kill us. We needed some peace to know what we wanted from our futures before we could put them together. We needed to figure out who we were before we started new lives. Leaving was the right thing to do. Finish the mission.
Except I was leaving her in Rocky Start. Anything could happen here.
I’d done what I could, set her up with a safe space in the woods where she could think and read and make art. A safe space in the woods, Max? In Rocky Start? Well, Fernanda would watch out for her.
And Marley was moving in, that was decided. Marley . . . Marley’s a high school kid. Yeah, Marley was a high school kid like I was a retiree. They’d do fine with Marley, although I might have to threaten him with death if he made a move on Poppy. Of course, if he made a move on Poppy and she didn’t want it, she’d threaten him with death. Really, no reason to stay at all.
I stood and picked up my ruck and looked at Maggs and jerked my head toward the door.
Maggs looked back, not moving.
“C’mon,” I whispered.
Maggs looked back and snuggled deeper into my side of the bed.
I was leaving a place where I had a side of the bed. And a woman who cared about me, risked her life for me. Friends I could trust. Kids who might need me. And for what? To finish a damn mission?
Well, yeah, I had to finish the Trail. But now that leaving was real, not something I was just saying but actually going out the door . . .
I put the ruck down and considered the situation.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70 (Reading here)
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73