the cabin for some bottles of water. Or maybe filled a jug.
God, I was so stupid.
I went back to Gabe and did what I could to clean his forehead.
“God, I hope I’m not giving you some weird flesh-eating disease from the creek.”
Gabe didn’t answer.
He didn’t even groan.
I made quick work of cleaning up his face, even though I had to go back to the creek three times to rinse out the blood. When I was down, I folded the second strip of my shirt and wrapped it around his head, tying it off in the back, and gently rested his head against the log.
A chill swept over me, making me acutely aware I was only in my bra, and for some reason that made me feel extra vulnerable and cold. With only minutes to spare before the darkness settled in I lifted Gabe’s shirt and what I found had me sucking in a stuttered breath. There wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t purple, black, green, red or some combination or variation of the four. Welted. Inflamed. Bruised. And upon seeing the evidence of just how badly he’d been tortured I could no longer hold back my tears. Blood had soaked through the bandage on his shoulder. So much blood it was leaking from under the tape and streaming down his chest.
I gathered what was left of my shirt, folded it, then pressed it against his chest. With my other hand, I pulled the gun from where I’d stowed it in the back of my jeans, dropped to my hip, and pressed as close as I dared into Gabe’s side.
Then I waited. And I waited some more. I waited so long with only Gabe’s occasional groans to cut the awful silence. I was scared to death. I was scared of bears, and wild cats, and bad guys coming to find us. I was scared Gabe was going to die and there would be nothing I could do to save him. I was scared of everything.
“We’re gonna get through this, Gabe,” I whispered.
Gabe didn’t say anything.
But his heart was beating.
That was all I had to give me hope.
And there in the cold dark with nothing else to do, I pondered my life. All that I had accomplished but mostly what I hadn’t. And as I had done my whole life, my pondering turned into analyzing every decision I’d ever made. My mind took me back to when I was ten and I read my first Encyclopedia Brown book. When I was a kid my family wasn’t rolling in it, nor were we poor, but my parents still felt it when one book turned into all twenty-nine. After that, with my love for reading obvious and there being no end in sight, my mom got me a library card. And that was when I devoured Nancy Drew. Between Leroy Brown, boy detective, and the Clue Club I fell in love with a good mystery. And from then on I knew who I wanted to be when I grew up. Only, my ten-year-old self had no clue about the dangers that lurked. If I had, maybe I would’ve wanted to be a chiropractor. Maybe if I’d known that my love of a good mystery would mean that all these years later I’d be in the dark next to the man I loved near death, I would’ve found a way to curb that thirst.
But if I hadn’t looked into Kalee’s disappearance, I never would’ve met Gabe. I pressed closer and listened. Labored, wheezing breaths filled the silence. How was it in such a short amount of time, I could love someone so thoroughly? Two weeks ago I was in California surrounded by a million people yet I was so lonely and miserable I couldn’t see my way out of it. But then I met Gabe and it was like everything clicked. He didn’t complete me in some sort of romantic-comedy-hero-sweeps-heroine-off-her-feet way. It was so much deeper than that.
Kismet.
Magic.
And for once in my life, I wasn’t deliberating all the choices I made that led to regret and missed opportunities, and instead, I was comforted in the knowledge I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I was with Gabe.
We’d get through this. We had to. We had a life to share. A relationship to grow. I had to call my boss and tell him I was moving to Maryland. I had friends in Riverton I needed to say goodbye to. I had parents I needed