Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Debts Due

thursday. with the man she fooled.

The rain falls in a cold, steady silver mist, and the chill sinks through Addison's jacket and shirt and digs like claws into his skin. The rush of water that barreled down the length of the gorge subsided some during the night, but the river's current races, and Jude is glaring down at it and narrowing his eyes and furrowing his brow like he's in possession of a thing that might resemble a brain.

They need a way across, that's all. Swim it? But the current's too quick. Go around? But how far down will they need to ride?

[Name] was outlined in lightning, pale and cold and furious, and her eyes had been so wide, so frightened and shiny. She was nearly gone, and in that moment, all the earth fled. Now, Addison sits atop a horse that stands on nothing, and his stomach's sitting at the bottom of the gorge, held down by the current—drowning in branches and rocks and water as dark as mud. She's alive. She's alive but that's no more certain than a shape drawn in the sand.

He suffocates, and he can see only her. The shape of her smile; the gleam in her clever eyes. If he could but hold her. Hold her close to him, where she would be safe and well, and bury his nose in her hair, and feel the warmth of her—the shape of her—pressed against his skin.

He breathes, but his mouth tastes like nickels, and on the ground there lies a man with a hole in his head and a mess of flesh and blood where an eye used to be. His fingers are curling, and his knuckles are white and shaking and suddenly he tugs on Duke's reins because for all the bounty hunter's staring and squinting and looking about, Jude hasn't found a damn thing.

They were so close. So close.

"Where the Hell do you think you're goin'?" Jude barks. His eyes are darker than the mud sucking at the soles of his boots, and the scowl he wears is no kinder than a dog's snarl.

Addison whips his head back around and glares sharply at the beast of a man standing not but a few feet from him. The journalist's limbs are pulled so tight his bones ache, and he snaps, in a voice that's cold and sharp, "I'm off to find another way around."

Jude squints. There's nothing sitting behind those cold eyes of his, nothing save fury and menace, and Jude grunts, "You won't find nothin' that way."

The taste of nickels sinks like fangs into the flesh of Addison's gums, and a sharp pain cuts through his tongue, but he bites. He bites and shifts in his saddle and inquires, in a tone that's flat and short, "And why's that?"

The bounty hunter snorts. "This ain't just some lil' old flooded road what you can pick your way 'round, Mama's boy." Jude glowers, and his teeth are as sharp and crooked as a dog's. "You ain't gon' find nothin' but a broken neck."

The mist is gathering in Addison's eyelashes and beads on the surface of his glasses, but he blinks his eyes clear and gives his lenses a passing wipe with the side of his thumb, and then he dismounts from Duke. His boots squelch when they hit the mud, and he accuses, in a tone that snaps like the flames licking at his chest, "I'm sure you'd just jump for joy at a thing like that."

The rain's cold, but Addison's blood burns, and his breath condenses beneath his nose in a fog that shines like metal. He steps toward Jude, and his pistol's in the holster sitting heavy against his hip, but soon it'll be lighter than air, and steam'll curl like smoke off that gun's round metal lips.

Jude sneers, and the corners of his mouth curl up into a grin that's crooked and broken and looks no kinder than a coyote's. "Shit. I reckon I would." He bares his teeth like a dog, and his nostril's flare. "I know Ms. Little wouldn't lose no sleep over it."