Nicole reached for the bottle, leaning across Walter and momentarily distracting him with a boob pressed to his forearm. Pretending to be oblivious to the way his eyes followed her when she straightened, she filled her glass to the brim, bending to suck when the champagne flowed over the lip of the flute. “I can’t get over that he wanted to do this with you.” She wiped a hand across her foamy upper lip. “I think it’s sweet.”
“Of course you do,” Lily said, “because everything turned out okay.”
Beside her, Leo leaned back in his chair, sliding his hand across her shoulder, fingers digging with unconscious familiarity into the hair at the nape of her neck. “Feels weird to be even a little grateful to Bradley and Terry, though. If they hadn’t dragged us there, we never would have known.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table.
More than anything—more than the crime, the sheer magnitude of the treasure, or the unlikely band of misfits who managed to pull it all off—the media loved discussing how her dad hid everything he unearthed back in Telluride, the city where Butch Cassidy robbed his very first bank. Bills, coins, jewelry, documents. What a rascal, she’d thought with a sharp laugh, and then it had broken into a terrible sound. She’d crumpled down right in the middle of the bank after that nice man took her hand, realizing that Duke really had found the money years ago, years before his stroke, certainly before he sold the ranch. And then the safety-deposit box had swung open and the letter fluttered onto the marble floor at her feet.
Fifteen million dollars in today’s currency. The number still didn’t feel entirely real. After negotiations with the authorities, a chunk of it went to the national parks, historical societies, and Southwestern tribal lands. The rest of it was divided between them. Walter was looking at places but still weighing his options, noting there were 1,500 Petco locations across the continental US, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Lily was hoping he’d been waiting to see where Nicole ended up, and she, of course, used her money to buy the ranch next door.
The rest of the money allowed Leo and Lily to buy Wilder Ranch back from Jonathan Cross, but it was the media attention that already had it booked solid for the next three years. And just because she was wise enough now to know what she wanted didn’t mean she wouldn’t still honor her dad’s wishes—however misguided. The interest was what they would use to travel. First up: a trip with Cora to Japan to meet relatives she and Leo had never known.
“What a crazy story,” Walt said.
He could be talking about Butch, or Duke, or what they’d all gone through in May. But when Lily looked at Leo, she thought the craziest story might be this one—that she fell in love when she was nineteen and lived through a decade of loneliness and scrabbling only to wind up right back here, saved by the history she’d figured was her curse, living blissfully with the man she’d convinced herself was lost forever.
They finished the bottle, and another, and then the beer came out—along with the playing cards. There was shouting （Nicole） and wrestling （again, instigated by Nicole）， and it all devolved into laughter and chaos and drunken pledges of lifelong friendship. They planned their first new-group trip, and Nicole teased Walter for claiming to be wearing his “dressy” T-shirt. They harassed Nic and Walter to just kiss already—and they did, Walter’s cheeks turning the color of a sunrise over red rock as their lips met under the celebration of their friends’ obnoxious cheering.
But when the small hand on the clock hovered around the two, Leo gave Lily that look, the one that told her he was done sharing for the night. He stood and pulled her up off the floor, guided her to their bedroom.
Back down the hallway there were hoots and hollers—which weren’t wrong. Lily would tell them to shut the hell up, but secretly she liked showing it off: this ranch and this man and this bright, insatiable love she’d once thought was only for other people. Leo told her happiness was her best accessory. Security didn’t come easily—she was a work in progress, and that meant she spent just as many days wondering when it would all fall apart as she did realizing the dream was real—but tonight, she wanted to skywrite this feeling, wanted to shout her euphoria into the serpentine echo of the Maze.
Leo peeled away her clothes in the pitch black of their middle of nowhere paradise and kissed his way up her body, from knees to mouth, arriving over her with a smile he fit against hers.
“Did you give Bonnie the grain?” he asked. “I left the bag on the barrel in the tack room.”