Emilio, Brody, and Raven joined Josie in a hearty laugh as they recalled me taking off past them only to find me fighting for my breath on the ground. Trip was still glaring at me.
“It’s a good thing Ridge was there to save you, right, Camila?”
I didn’t even blink before sassing back. “That’s right, Trip.”
Trip’s lips curled up into a smile. “Maybe your papa will give him a reward when he finds out. What do you think?”
“You wouldn’t,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I would, and I will, if you even think about becoming friends with that boy. I saw the way you were looking at him.”
Trip’s threat was clear, detonating the anger that had been building in my head and chest. I lifted my glass and threw the contents at his face. Water and ice smacked him, causing his jaw to fall open in surprise. His shirt and hair were soaked, and everyone in the restaurant stared back at us.
I had just imploded, and it felt amazing—until Trip’s eyelids snapped open and his gaze landed on me. Fury was all I could see, sending red flags to every nerve ending in my body.
I jolted from my seat and tore out of the establishment, leaving my pizza behind. After yanking my bike off the rack, I hopped on and pedaled away as fast as my legs would take me. My friends didn’t have a chance of catching me, but I still rode quickly through town and took the dirt-and-gravel off-road that led to my home.
The last thing I wanted was to make any more trouble for Ridge than he was already dealing with, not that he’d told me much. After his mother’s disappearance, moving to a new town, and getting wrapped up in a ridiculous rivalry by default, he hadn’t had a welcoming start in Telluride.
Later that night, I called Trip and made him a deal. I wouldn’t befriend Ridge if he promised to leave him alone.
I lied. But so did he.
5
Ridge
I liked to rise before the roosters crowed, when the sun had yet to dawn, and when I still had enough moonlight to guide my way. After dressing for my day on the farm, I pulled my orange notebook from beneath my mattress and quietly closed the door to the ranch house to avoid waking my father.
My father. Such an informal word to use for a man I’d been estranged from for my entire life. I was more surprised than anyone else when Harold Cross requested to take me in following my mother’s disappearance six months ago. After I’d moved into the spare bedroom in his ranch house, it immediately made sense. He needed help on his farm. Who better to help than his fifteen-year-old illegitimate son who he doesn’t have to pay?
And I wasn’t exactly sneaking around. Harold didn’t mind that I crept out before sunrise. Perhaps the fact that he hadn’t been the one to raise me provided me the luxury of loose rules, almost like I was a guest staying in his home for the short term. Or maybe he was afraid of my reactions if he were to be strict after being nonexistent for my entire life.
Either way, I didn’t mind, especially since I got to watch the sun rise from the old twisted tree at the top of the hilltop cliff—the one Camila had revealed to me two months ago.
I’d strategically managed to avoid the strange girl until our run-in on the mountain trail the day before. By the time she started her sneaky journey through the cornfields in the late afternoon, I made sure to be long gone. Sometimes I would be tending to my various duties on the farm when I spotted her darting through the field, then when she was out of sight, I would conveniently move to a section of land where she wouldn’t be able to spot me from the cliff if she dared to look down.
Avoiding Camila just felt like the right thing to do. While she seemed nice enough, Harold had made it clear numerous times to beware of the Bell family across the creek. He hadn’t given too many details, but from what he did say, I got the picture.
I first moved to the farm in springtime, and Harold sowed the seed of fear that quickly grew to my reaction when I’d spotted the young Bell girl crossing the bridge.
“You keep your eye out for any mischief coming from the woods over there, y’hear, son? I don’t need any more trouble than I’ve already got.”
At the time, I’d had no clue what Harold was telling me. I just knew I wasn’t safe, and I didn’t like that feeling one bit.
“You take this just in case.” Harold shoved a worn brown hunting shotgun with a scope at me. “Someone comes onto our property, they’ll run right back to where they came from.”
My hands had started to shake the moment the weapon touched my skin. I was no stranger to guns. As descendants of hunters and gatherers, plenty of men on the reservation carried them, but I’d never held one myself. My mom had never allowed me to go on cattle-hunting trips with my friends and their dads. She said I wasn’t old enough, but she was trying to protect me from the shame that came with being the “white-skinned boy” on the reservation. I was forced to navigate that same criticism while growing up on the rez.
Someone from the Ute Mountain Tribe conceiving a baby with an outsider didn’t happen every day. Some people considered it a treacherous act. My father owned the land my ancestors were violently driven from in the 1800s. A Telluride settler was the worst kind of an outlander to the Utes and vice versa. Two centuries and two decades later, the wounds were still fresh. And to my peers, I was a reminder of that pain.
I didn’t belong on that reservation. And when I held Harold’s shotgun, I knew I didn’t belong on his farm either.
“No, thank you.” My reply was soft, but I tried to give my eyes the conviction buried down deep inside me. My mother wasn’t physically there, but her strong values for nature and human life had been ingrained in me.
Harold accepted my response—or so I thought. The next day was a different story.
He took me into the woods, slammed the gun against my chest, and pointed at a thick tree in the distance. “We ain’t leavin’ ’til you hit that tree.”
I definitely couldn’t argue with Harold. He saw life one way, with the heart and mind of someone who had to work hard to protect what was his. The instinct to fight to survive was built into his bones. I could see it and feel it in his way of life. He bent for those around him, working hard and following the rules, as unfair as they were. I’d only been on Cross Farm for a short time, but I could see it all so clearly.
In the end, I accepted the shooting lessons to appease my old man. For all I knew, shooting lessons were his way of bonding. And since we’d had a lifetime without it, everything felt awkward, forced, and wrong. But they could never feel right when the one person who had always protected me was gone.
As I sat up on the hilltop, watching the morning sun lift over the horizon, I thought about my mama and the reality of her disappearance. She wasn’t the first indigenous woman to go missing without a trace, and the odds of her turning up alive were smaller than any shred of hope I had left. Mama was young, with so much life yet to live, and what a courageous one she lived.
I scribbled some of my thoughts into my journal, wanting to commit her memory to paper in every way I possibly could, from lessons she’d taught me to wisdoms she’d passed on. Her view on life and the challenges we all faced had always breathed so much inspiration into me. She made me feel like I could do anything.