First, my fiancé had never loved me.
Second, his brother Travis had not hit me by accident.
And third, if I stayed where I was—in the bottom of a dry wash outside Gila Bend with a split lip, a twisted ankle, no phone, and one half-empty bottle of water—they would not need to come back to finish the job.
The Sonoran Desert would do it for them.
The sun was still high enough to turn the rocks white with heat. The air shimmered. Every breath felt thin and sharp, like I was inhaling through hot metal. Above me, the sky was so clear it almost looked fake, one endless blue dome over mesquite scrub, saguaro silhouettes, and the winding dirt track where Blake’s black truck had just vanished with all the certainty of a coffin lid closing.
I pushed myself up on one elbow and immediately saw blood on my forearm.
Not much. Just enough to remind me that the fall had been real.
