Page 56 of Charm and Conquer

Clover makes a sound like she's hurt and I pause to inspect her gait, but she's not limping. She's moving pretty slow, but she doesn't look like she's in pain, so I guess that sound was for me.

I don't want her to hurt for me.

"Looking back now, I realize how stupid it was, but he scared me with a bull frog once and it just stuck with me. My fear of them is a primal thing I can't get past."

I can still remember the sound of my father's laughter when I screamed. He didn't comfort me or hold me. No, he just shoved that bullfrog at me and chased me around the house with it until I wet my pajama pants. Mom hadn't been home and still doesn't know what happened. She thought I peed the bed and my father let her believe it.

She doesn't know he'd spent weeks building up to that night, telling me stories about a bullfrog monster who ate up bad children like they were flies. She doesn't know he waited until after dark, when I was just falling asleep and put a bullfrog on my chest. She doesn't know that the nightmares I had for weeks before and after were about that bullfrog.

And I never told her, because I was four and I hated it when my parents fought. I didn't want her to get mad at my father because I didn't know a father could be better than the asshole I'd gotten.

Now, I know better because I have my step-dad, and he taught me how a real, loving dad should treat his son. And I'll never tell my mother what my father did, because it would only hurt her.

"That's awful," Clover says. "It makes perfect sense you're afraid of bullfrogs. Your father deserves to have his bed filled with snakes to scare the crap out of him."

I chuckle, imagining the scene. My father's a doctor in another town a few counties away, outwardly respectable. He'sclean now, but he's still an asshole and I rarely see him. "Maybe some day I'll do that."

"You really should."

We fall into silence and keep running, one foot in front of the other, up and down hills. When we've run for an hour and still seen no sign of the road, I begin to worry we've gone off trail.

"Hey, Empress. Shouldn't we be seeing asphalt by now?"

She keeps jogging, but there's a hitch in her step that's becoming more pronounced the longer we go. I've asked her several times if she wants to stop, but she's refused, saying she's not hurt, just tired. "Soon."

"You still doing okay?"

"Fine," she says, still going.

"It's starting to get dark and I only have my phone for a flashlight. Why don't we check the map again?"

She lifts her hands to her face, but keeps going. "At the top."

There's a hill ahead, but the trail is narrow and hard to make out. It doesn't look like a National Park trail. "Let's just stop before we get to the uphill section."

She ignores me and keeps plowing ahead, so I follow. She slows to a walk when the hill gets particularly steep, but she doesn't stop moving.

At the top, she keeps her back to me, digs out the map from her running belt and hands it over, still turned away and jogging in place.

I move to stand in front of her. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her face is damp. It's hard to tell what's sweat and what's tears, but I know what a crying woman looks like. I also recognize pain.

"How bad is it?" I ask. "And no bullshit this time."

A tear leaks over the bottom lid of her right eye and rolls down her cheek. "Bad. I'm afraid to stop moving, because if it stiffens up, I might not be able to go on."

I've had enough injuries to know what she's talking about. Movement keeps the blood and fluids moving, oiling the joints. Once you stop moving, especially if there's swelling, it can be hard to start again. If her knee hurts that bad, though, she's not going to last much longer even with her leg moving.

And it's getting colder. We're both wet with sweat and if we stop moving and cool off too much, we could become hypothermic.

I peer down at the map, turning it this way and that, but I can't make any sense of it because I have no idea where we actually are. I only know we've been on this trail way too long. "I think we got off course somewhere," I say. "This looks like a deer trail to me."

Clover looks around and then moves, jogging all around the top of the rise. "Whatever trail we were on, it's ended. There's a pretty good view of the valley here, so it's either a deer trail or a side trail made by tromping humans looking for a view."

I peer into the gray light around us, hoping for a sign of a trail or another human. Anything. I pull out my cell phone to get a GPS coordinate I can give Grant so he can map our location, but I've got no signal. I can still get GPS coordinates, but I've got no fucking clue what to do with them.

"Do you have a signal?" I ask.

She pulls her cell phone from her running belt and curses. "My phone's dead. Shit. I forgot to charge it this morning."