The drive back to the suburbs of Phoenix felt like moving through a dreamscape.
The desert heat was the same, the dry asphalt was the same, but the woman behind the wheel of the battered Jeep was fundamentally altered.
Bella Moreno didn't just feel alive; she felt brand new. She felt like she had swallowed a spark of the lightning that had danced over the canyon walls, and it was currently burning holes through her cynical exterior.
When she pulled into her driveway, she didn't trudge to the door with her head down. She hopped out of the vehicle with a lightness in her step that hadn't been there in years. The weight of the world—the weight of being a "miserable" guide with no future—had been replaced by the sheer, terrifying thrill of being seen by a man like Nuel Arturo.
She burst th
