Any Trope But You

Chapter 7 Margot

7 MARGOT

Inconvenient Fact Number One: It’s impossible to stay mad at someone who’s carrying you down a mountain.

From my vantage point against his left shoulder, my gaze catches in the side of Forrest’s beard and follows it up to where a fine sheen of sweat illuminates his high cheekbone. He’s been carrying me without a break for what has to be half an hour now. Is he going for some kind of world record? The Small Woman Long-Distance Carry? Gaze focused forward, he adjusts me in his arms, and the hand gripping my thigh tightens as he navigates some rocky terrain.

Inconvenient Fact Number Two: Being carried down a mountain by someone you’re actively trying not to be attracted to has the exact opposite effect. Honestly, they’re facts I really could have lived without. But my impartiality never stood a chance against the barrage of sensory stimulation that comes with being held by him. Somehow it even drowns out the throbbing pain in my ankle. I’m staring at his mouth in a trance, registering every rise and fall of his chest, and trying to discreetly snort his musky, tree-adjacent scent into my memory palace when he breaks the silence with “Ready for a breather?”

His question startles me from my ogling.

“ Me? ” I say doubtfully. “Pretty sure you’re asking the wrong guy here.”

He steps around a large boulder that bisects the path, his breathing labored. “Maybe I don’t want to admit my arms are about to fall off.”

“Uh-oh. Are you trying to impress me?” I tease, wincing as my ankle is lightly jostled by a steep step downward.

“Depends. Is it working?” he asks.

“Not anymore, spaghetti arms.”

He chuckles breathlessly but then says, “Maybe I just don’t want you to worry about getting dropped,” and it’s like I’ve swallowed an ice cube whole. Up until this moment, despite the quickly sinking sun and the treacherous terrain, I’ve felt safer than I usually do in my cabin. Forrest’s hold on me is so secure and his footing so confident that another accident hadn’t even occurred to me as a possibility.

“Now I’m definitely not worried,” I tell him.

“I appreciate the confidence,” he says, gaze trained on the ground in front of him.

“So there’s this thing people occasionally use? It’s called sarca—”

My word is cut short when he takes another step downward and I feel his foot slide on some ice. I can’t help my gasp or the way I grip his coat like a life raft. My whole body tenses, and pain lances up my leg from my ankle. But then we’re back on more level ground and I exhale. He stops next to a lichen-covered rock face that borders the trail. “You okay?” he asks.

I nod, surprised my fingernails haven’t sliced holes in his jacket.

“Here, I’m going to set you down,” he says. Forrest carefully lowers my legs but keeps a hold on me while I balance on my uninjured foot and lean back against the rocks. When I’m settled, he lets go of me but doesn’t back away. His breathing is still heavy as he unclips the small blue drinking tube attached to his shoulder strap and brings it to his mouth, sucking down water in deep gulps that put his close-range throat muscles to work. The throbbing in my ankle reaches new heights from standing upright, but somehow, it’s not the number one thing occupying my mind.

“Here.” He gestures when he’s done, holding the silicone tube out to me.

I eye the wet mouthpiece before my gaze jerks unwillingly toward his also wet lips. Frankly, I’ve never been so thirsty in my life. It’s just the forced proximity getting to you, I tell myself. If I can recognize the trope, it means I can be aware enough not to fall for it. Firmly ignoring the missed-step feeling in my stomach as I take the valve from him, I put it into my mouth and bite down, swallowing the inrush of cool water. Forrest averts his eyes while I quickly finish up, wishing I didn’t feel like we just made out by proxy.

“Hope I don’t get your cooties,” I say, trying to diffuse what is likely one-sided tension.

“Too late for that,” he says, clipping the drinking tube back onto his shoulder strap. “They’re a clinical certainty now.”

“Well, if I’ve got yours, then you’ve got mine.”

Forrest closes his eyes and rolls his shoulders, stretching his neck slowly to the right as his breathing slows. “You climbed a mountain today,” he says. “There are worse cooties to be had.”

“Even if the cooties fell on their ass and need to be carried down the mountain?” I say, mildly horrified when the question doesn’t come out like a joke but more like a quiet plea for validation. The embarrassment I’ve been nursing since my butt hit the ice blooms up to my face, heating me unpleasantly.

Forrest opens his eyes to look down at me. “Better to fall on your ass climbing a mountain than to never climb it at all,” he says with such matter-of-factness that I almost believe him. His gaze takes a tour of my face like there are suddenly new things to see within my features. “Your sister was right about you,” he says at last.

The mention of Savannah is a surprise hit of serotonin followed quickly by the need for more information. “What do you mean she was right about me? Did you talk with her? What did she say?” I demand.

Forrest shakes his head. “I didn’t talk to her. I got my own note explaining her plan for your letters.”

“Ah,” I say, easily able to imagine Savannah penning a masterpiece of persuasion to convince Forrest of her scheme. “And were you flattered, guilted, or threatened into doing what she wanted?”

The corner of his mouth hitches up. “Mostly guilted. But should I be worried about a horse head showing up in my bed if I screw this up?”

“More likely a moose. Savannah loves a theme.”

Forrest lets out a disbelieving laugh, visibly shuddering. “Siblings. Always wished I had one, but now I’m not so sure.”

“I think in general they’re pretty hit or miss.”

Another smile, but softer. “Sounds like you lucked out, though.”

His words summon the lump that, ever since I left my sister, has been constantly waiting to form in my throat. My voice comes out a little choked. “You have no idea.”

Forrest looks at me like he’s reassessing a conclusion he thought was set in stone. For a week now, it’s been nothing but bickering and avoidance with a heavy dose of side-eye between us, but a shift is happening that doesn’t feel entirely under my control. It’s scary, and my gut tells me I need to change the subject if I want any hope of maintaining my emotional distance from this man. I look around at the pristine wilderness surrounding us and ask the first question that I can think of.

“Was it hard moving away from all this? When you went to school, I mean?”

The question seems to surprise him, and he rubs the side of his beard with a coarse scratching sound. “In some ways. Bullwinkle definitely missed me.”

I laugh, and he returns it with a smile that’s almost sad. “But mostly I was excited. Mom and Dad were too.” He pauses while I get hung up on the word “Mom,” knowing he calls Jo by her first name. I wonder if Forrest’s mother and Trapper separated and, if so, where she is now. Then he says, “Everything I wanted was in L.A.”

“And what about now?” I ask before fully thinking it through.

He looks at me, eyes flickering to my mouth for a moment so brief, I probably imagined it. “There are a few things I miss,” he admits.

I swallow. “Do you ever wish you could go back?”

I can see the answer in his guarded eyes. “No point wishing for the impossible.”

“Right,” I say, mouth dry. “No point.” I adjust my one-legged stance against the rocks and wince.

“You okay?” he asks, concern drawing his dark brows together. “That ibuprofen should have kicked in by now.”

“I’m fine,” I lie, but he gives me a look that makes me feel like a squeaky-clean windowpane.

“Let’s get going,” he says, glancing at the low-hanging sun like a normal person would look at a watch. “Ready to board?”

“Would it be easier if I tried fitting in the backpack?”

He smiles without a trace of his earlier melancholy, and my heart does not do a backflip. Nope.

“Might work if we cut some leg holes,” he suggests.

I can’t stop from snorting at the visual he’s painted. “You didn’t happen to pack a Baby on Board sticker, did you?”

A deep, handsome laugh escapes him, and I’m transfixed, a small animal caught in his high-beam smile. But then he crouches low, scooping me right off my feet, and I suck in a breath as he pulls me close.

“You’re sure you had enough of a break?” I ask.

“Are you asking if I’m going to drop you?”

“You’re free to infer what you wish,” I say delicately.

He starts walking, his hold on me firm and secure. “I won’t let you fall, Margot.”

No, I think. I’m not afraid you will . Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of falling I’m really worried about.

My eyes are closed, and I’m almost drifting off from the rhythmic movement of Forrest’s endless walking when the word “Finally” escapes him.

Startled, I look ahead through the trees and see a cabin in the deep blue of falling dusk. It’s the same one we passed as we walked to the trailhead, and relief washes through me. After three more quick breaks to radio Jo and increasingly tense silence as it got darker and darker, we made it off the mountain . Forrest picks up his pace, clearly headed for the snow-covered cabin ahead of us, and a small jolt goes through me. I expected to be taken to the lodge, or my own little home away from home, but this place is neither. This cabin must be his . My suspicions are confirmed when we reach the door and he doesn’t hesitate to walk right in.

It’s dark inside, but even so, I wouldn’t mistake this place for anyone’s but Forrest’s. For one, it smells like someone lit a scented candle in here called Cedar and Muscles, and it’s painstakingly neat. The space is bigger than mine, with a full kitchen, but the log walls and Scandinavian hygge vibes are the same. The real giveaway that this place is Forrest’s (apart from the home gym set up in the far corner) is the bookshelf. It looks new and slightly mismatched amid the other furniture, and it’s absolutely crammed with books and framed photos of his family. It reminds me of the shelves in my own home, and a pang goes through me at the realization that if I had to move, the prized possessions I’d bring with me would be the same as his.

“Here, keep your weight off that foot,” he instructs breathlessly when we reach the living room, where he lowers me in front of an armchair.

Bracing awkwardly against him, I gasp a little when he grabs my parka’s zipper and pulls it down. And maybe it’s because of what we just went through, but the muffled zzz and his labored breathing in the dark, quiet room seem to open more than my coat between us. He parts the lapels, sliding the thick garment off my shoulders, and my eyes fly up to his. But his sole intent is freeing my arms as quickly as possible, and that’s when I realize all the security and assurance I felt that we would make it down safely was completely one-sided. How didn’t I notice the anxiety rolling off him until now?

“I can take my own coat off—” I argue weakly, but in the next moment, I’m sitting in the armchair, and he’s kneeling beside me and his abandoned backpack, already untying my bootlaces.

“I can untie them,” I offer, wanting to show him I’m okay. He only brushes my interfering hands away and continues to pull the laces out of the holes with quick, anxious snapping sounds. Something I’m afraid to name squeezes my heart. He was quiet for so long on the last part of our journey, I mistook his worry for concentration.

“Forrest, I’m okay,” I say, despite my own growing anxiety about what we’ll discover once my boot comes off.

He continues to work, almost like he didn’t hear me. “This might hurt,” he warns before finally working the loosened boot off my ankle.

I groan and fall back in the chair, biting my lips together as all compression disappears and my ankle becomes an angry, throbbing bowling ball. Forrest’s warm hands begin to gently test my mobility, and almost immediately, a sharp stab of pain makes me sit up straight again with a gasp. He nods to himself and mutters something I barely catch. Letting go of me, he stands, turning on a lamp and shucking his own coat and boots before going to the kitchen. There, he pulls out a large pot and begins filling it with water from the sink.

“What does ‘vertical aversion’ mean?” I ask while he grabs two ice cube trays from his freezer.

To my surprise, there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips when he says, “I guess that works, too, but I said ‘lateral inversion.’ It’s the type of sprain you most likely have.”

My palms go sweaty on the leather armrests. “That sounds serious. Is it serious? Will I need an X-ray? Surgery?” I say, my voice getting higher with each new alarming possibility.

He shakes his head, popping all the ice into the water and shutting the tap off. He walks back to me with the sloshing, clinking pot, looking far more relieved than I feel. “It’s the most common kind of sprain. You’ll be fine in a few days,” he says, kneeling down and placing the pot at my feet, “but you need to ice it to prevent more swelling.”

I lean forward to look into the pot and then back up at him. “That looks really fucking cold.”

“It’s really fucking cold,” he confirms, pulling off his hat. The coarse dark cowlicks around his face are damp with sweat, and he looks exhausted. Not regular exhausted but I-just-carried-a-person-down-a-mountain exhausted.

“Alright,” he says. “Sock off.”

Swallowing hard, I carefully begin peeling off my sock and try not to cry again. While I’d never admit this to him, I feel like the world’s biggest idiot. For a moment at the summit, I thought I’d proved myself wrong. That I can do these excursions that have somehow become, after Savannah’s letter, inextricably linked with my ability to pull off my career reinvention. But after injuring myself and being carried like a baby for hours, my self-confidence has never been lower.

When my toes are free, I wiggle them experimentally and see Forrest’s eyebrows pull up at the sight of my bright yellow gel pedicure. For the first time in hours, something like a smile pulls at my lips because it’s so like him to disapprove of anything whimsical. I cross my arms over my sweater. “Is there a problem with my nail polish that you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”

He’s still kneeling and sticks a hand in the pot to swirl the ice around. “Having a problem would suggest having an opinion about nail polish.” He pulls his hand out and rubs it over his neck, massaging overworked muscles. “Which I don’t.”

I blink away from his wet skin, suddenly parched. “Tell that to your left eyebrow, if it ever comes down from the stratosphere.”

“That’s my ‘surprised but not enough to care’ eyebrow,” he says, lowering it.

“And it’s surprised by what? That colors exist outside of the flannel spectrum?” I ask, looking around his painfully tidy cabin.

“Maybe it’s surprised anyone would consciously choose to paint their nails the color of stomach bile.”

“Or maybe your operating system is simply unable to process all things fun and adorable.”

I wiggle my toes again to further illustrate my point, and he looks away from them, faint color rising above the line of his beard. If I were flirting, I’d tease him for it and definitely bring up foot fetishes. But I’m not flirting, and there will be no flirting. My flirt broke years ago, and I have no interest in repairing it—especially not with men who have a disturbing knack for making me feel cared for. I remind myself firmly that Forrest is the excursion leader: helping me up the mountain—and then carrying me down it—was just his job.

“I’ve got no problem with your toes,” he says flatly, “but I do have a problem with stalling. Get them in the water.”

“Fine,” I say nonchalantly. Like stalling isn’t exactly what I’ve been doing this whole time. Like I stick my feet in ice baths all the time to relax. Locking eyes with him, I plunge my foot into the icy water. A second passes, and then—

“ Shit! ” I yelp as the pain in my ankle rockets from ten to a thousand. I start pulling my foot out of the pot.

“Nope,” Forrest says, leaning in close and putting a heavy hand on my leg to keep it in place. He squeezes my thigh, and my eyes jerk up to his. Apparently, even excruciating pain can’t keep my body from lighting up at his touch. “You need to keep it submerged. You’ll get used to it in a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?” I cry. “How many, exactly?”

“Fifteen to twenty,” he says, and I can’t stop my whimper. His grip on my thigh tightens, and all my nerve endings do a stadium wave. “You can do this,” he promises.

There is no dimension in which this is true.

“No, I can’t, ” I force out, scrunching my eyes shut. “I won’t have a foot if I keep it in here for twenty minutes.”

“Margot, look at me.” Reluctantly, I open my watering eyes to meet his steady ones. “When we started our hike today, I fully expected to turn back early with you. I never thought we’d actually reach the summit.”

My chest constricts with hurt, despite how low my own expectations were. His lack of faith in me seems like confirmation that I don’t have what it takes to live up to my sister’s belief in me. I lower my pricking eyes, telling myself the tears are from the searing pain in my ankle. But then his thumb starts circling against my inner thigh, like he knows his touch is the only thing that could possibly get my attention through the radiating pain. My gaze stutters up to his, and his eyes are startlingly dark in the dim lamplight.

“I don’t like being proven wrong,” he admits in a low voice. “Can’t fucking stand it.” He takes a breath. “Except for today. You proved me wrong on that summit, and I—”

He looks like he wants to say more but stops himself and looks down at where his hand rests on my thigh. I blink at him, unsure how to respond, until I remember what he said on the walk down.

“What did you mean earlier, when you said my sister was right about me?” I ask, almost in a whisper.

He hesitates a moment, then lifts his eyes to mine again. “She said you’re the strongest person I’ll ever meet.”

My breath catches as I’m swept into a riptide of love and longing for my sister. It swirls and churns with fledgling pride for myself and gratitude for Forrest’s willingness to change his mind about me.

“Which is why,” he continues, “you’re going to keep your ankle in this bucket, so it doesn’t swell up and make a bad situation even worse. I feel fucking awful enough as it is.” His voice is tense with regret, and in his worried eyes, every slippery step he navigated and every minute of anxiety he masked for me is suddenly laid bare.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I say, surprised by how quickly the need to reassure him tumbles out of me. “What you did to get me back down… it was right out of a novel. I haven’t even said thank you.”

Forrest cuts off my gratitude with a shake of his head. He’s staring at me not like I’m an inconvenience but like we’ve gone through something together. The sort of calamity that bonds you to someone. And with the slightest upward slide of his warm hand, he silently tells me what he won’t say out loud. That he’d do it all again to keep me safe. That maybe he’d do it all again just to keep touching me. And all at once, I can’t help feeling like more than just another guest to him.

“Forrest—” I say, my voice low.

The dense fans of his lashes drop and flutter twice at the sound of his name cloaked in wanting instead of barbs. His hand stills as he opens his mouth to speak. But he’s interrupted as the walkie-talkie he’s been communicating with Jo on beeps loudly. His hand leaps off my thigh like it bit him, and he stands abruptly. As he backs away, I can practically see his brain stamp CLASSIFIED on whatever he was about to say and shred it for good measure. Jo’s voice is loud and staticky in the quiet cabin when she says, “Did you make it back yet?”

Forrest pulls a hand down his face, looking as flustered as I feel. “Don’t take your ankle out of that bucket, Margot,” he warns like he’s reading my mind. Before I can even pretend that wasn’t my next move (it absolutely was, damn him), he hits the talk button on his radio. “We made it back, and I’ve got her in my cabin. Her ankle isn’t broken, but she’s got a pretty good sprain.”

The troubled look that crosses his face as he says this guilts me into keeping my mostly numb foot in the bucket. A few seconds later, a light on the walkie flashes, and Jo’s voice comes crackling in. “That’s great news! Glad you made it back safely. Oh—hold on. Ollie wants to say something.”

There’s a sound of rustling static and then, “Margot, are you there? It’s Ollie.”

Looking like he’d rather throw the walkie out the window than give it to me, Forrest reluctantly holds it close enough for me and hits the speak button.

“Hey, Ollie, I’m here,” I say.

“Margot, I am so sorry I didn’t come back for you,” comes Ollie’s repentant voice. “I just kept getting distracted, and the boulders were so epic—”

Not as epic as that eye roll, I think, stealing the walkie out of Forrest’s hand while his eyes are aimed at the ceiling beams.

“It’s okay. Forrest got me down safely, and it’s just a sprain,” I say, looking up at him again.

“Well, I’m still sorry, and I promise I won’t—”

“Okay, okay,” Jo’s voice interrupts. “Forrest, we’re about to eat dinner here. Are you and Margot on your way?”

Forrest takes the walkie back from me and looks away. “No. She’s still icing her ankle, and I’ve got food here. I’ll make sure she eats.”

“Okay, then,” Jo says with far more chipperness than when she spoke to Ollie. “Have a good night together. Over.”

Forrest puts the walkie down, and in the renewed silence, my stomach feels like a pancake that’s been flipped but missed the pan on the way down. We’re alone in a snowy cabin, and I can’t help feeling like I stepped right out of one trope and into another.

My stomach grumbles, and the corner of Forrest’s mouth lifts. “Fish sound okay?”

I sigh. Knowing him, he probably caught the fish in question with his bare hands while navigating raging rapids on his way to save an injured otter. If I had any sense of self-preservation, I’d demand to be taken to my cabin immediately.

But I’m starving, hurt, and half-frozen, so what comes out instead is “Fish sounds great.”

He nods, and then—as though he’s making doubly sure to obey Romance Law—he rolls up his sleeves before heading to the kitchen. As I drag my eyes away from him, I have the thought that if there is any mercy in this cold, cruel world, he’ll be a terrible cook.

But obviously, the world could give two otter shits about mercy. Obviously, Forrest hasn’t been on dish duty while Jo and Trapper churn out the five-star meals I’ve eaten every night in the lodge. Obviously, in addition to his advanced medical degrees, Dr. Forrest Wakefield, Carrier of Women Down Mountains, has also found time to attend culinary school and earn several James Beard Awards.

Neither of us speaks during the meal—we’re both too famished and awkward after our accidental glimpse beyond the blinders we keep up around each other. But the fire he started provides soothing background noise to our food shoveling, and when I come up for air, he’s already done, studying me like I’m a snag in his research.

“That was amazing,” I say to break the silence. “I have no idea what it was, but all other fish are dead to me now.”

A corner of his mouth turns up, and he looks down at his empty plate. I breathe. “It was halibut, and that’s just a five-hour hike talking. Chef Boyardee would’ve tasted just as good.”

“I somehow doubt Mr. Boyardee would have poached his halibut in brown butter,” I say, narrowing my eyes. It’s not a compliment. It’s an accusation. “Where the hell did you learn to cook like this?”

He shrugs. “Right here. My, uh…” He frowns at his fork and nudges it into perfect alignment. “My mom was a chef back in the day. Taught me and my dad everything she knew. We’ve been cooking for guests ever since.”

In the quiet that follows, I have the sudden sensation that the heavy inner workings of a lock have turned open, but I can’t quite see what he’s set loose between us. He mentioned his mom on the walk down, but this time it feels different. He isn’t looking at me, and I’m afraid to say anything that might make his intangible vulnerability more solid. I don’t want things to get more personal between us. Things felt personal enough while I was pinned to his body on the mountain. While he was knocking down my fortress walls with every small stroke of his thumb before dinner.

“Anyway,” he says, and the unspoken thing between us is chased away, “I’m guessing you want your letter.”

“My letter!” I exclaim, all other thoughts banished. “Where is it? Do we need to go to the lodge?”

“No, I’ve got it here,” he says, standing to collect our plates.

“You said you were putting them in your dad’s underwear drawer!”

He shrugs. “Didn’t seem safe enough. You could’ve just asked for them nicely, and he probably would’ve given them to you.”

My mouth drops open in outrage. “So you let me sit there with my foot in a torture bucket without handing it over?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I was starving and injured!” And distracted , I privately scold myself.

“Well, you’re getting it now,” he says, setting the plates in the sink. “Hold on.”

When Forrest returns from his bedroom, he puts the envelope in my outstretched palm. I tear it open, hands shaking all over again, while he tactfully walks off to clean up the kitchen.

Inside is the letter, along with an old Polaroid photo. I pull it out to see Savannah and me, ages eight and eleven, respectfully. I know our ages because we’re in Halloween costumes, and it was the year Savannah wanted to be the princess from her favorite Grimm’s fairy tale, The Frog Prince , and please-please-pleased me into being the frog. I stifle an emotional laugh as my eyes move over my own gangly limbs and Savannah’s missing-tooth smile. It was the best night of that whole terrible year. With difficulty, I rip my eyes from the photo and unfold my letter.

Dear Margot,

If you’re reading this, it means you’re a badass. It means that you pushed yourself way (and I mean ALL the way) out of your comfort zone. And maybe it didn’t go perfectly. If I had to guess, I bet you probably earned a few bumps and bruises (and no, I’m not psychic, I’m just one of the many people who saw you slip and fall in horseshit that time I begged you to hike with me up to the Hollywood sign, sorry not sorry). But even if you are hurting and covered in poop right now, I also know there’s got to be a small part of you that’s feeling proud too. I know I am. You just did something really hard, and really scary, but managed to push through it. Just like you did when I first got sick.

Do you remember how quickly everything fell apart that year? How one second, it seemed like we could have been the family in a Wonder Bread commercial, and the next, I was practically living in the children’s hospital? How Mom and Dad stopped being able to walk past each other without fighting, and she took that second job to put a dent in my medical bills? Honestly, life before that year does feel like a Wonder Bread commercial to me. The memories are there, but they don’t feel like mine. I used to think it was because I was just too young to hold on to them. Or that maybe getting sick made all the pre-illness times feel like a fantasy. And maybe both of those reasons are a little bit true, but what I really think now is that our family had stress fractures all along, and my getting sick simply cracked them wide fucking open.

But just because everything was coming apart at the seams didn’t mean there weren’t silver linings. For one, I was allowed to consume all the TV and Kool Pops I wanted. Basically kid heaven. Mostly, though, I remember it being the year my impossibly cool older sister who never gave me the time of day suddenly became my best friend. How she’d sneak me copies of her Betty and Veronica comics, even though Mom said I was too young for them. How she’d turn down sleepovers to stay home and make me burnt toast and alphabet soup dinners when Mom was working late and Dad was too caught up in a painting to remember. How she started writing me bedtime stories about the perilous adventures of Super Savannah, the crime-fighting girl wonder, that made me believe—even if only while reading—that I was strong enough to do anything.

I guess the whole point of this letter is to return the favor. To remind you that you were strong enough not only to survive that completely shit year but to make it magical for me. That you were also strong enough to get through whatever wilderness excursion you just survived, and you’ll be strong enough to get through the next ones too. I know it’s asking a lot. I know. But I also know that doing hard things fires up creativity like nothing else, and for that reason alone, this manuscript is going to be your best yet—I just feel it.

Stay safe, but not too safe,

Savannah

There’s a soft pat sound as a drop of water lands on Savannah’s letter. It soaks into the paper, and with surprise, I realize it’s fallen from my face. Embarrassed, I glance at Forrest, whom I find absent-mindedly drying his hands and staring at me like I’ve confirmed something he didn’t necessarily want to know.

He puts the towel down. “Well?” he asks quietly. “Was it worth a sprained ankle?”

I look down at the letter and Polaroid and can only nod. It would have been worth a whole-body cast. Reading my sister’s perspective on that awful year was like going back in time and receiving a hug as my eleven-year-old self. But even with her reassuring words, all the old pain and anger linger, surfacing like a bruise as my eyes repeatedly catch on the word “Dad.”

“Want a drink?” Forrest asks. His tone is different. Softer, but careful too.

I look up at him from across the room. His posture is deceptive—I’d call it relaxed if it weren’t for his utter stillness. He’s holding himself like a man who’s waiting to see if I’ll come and join him over the line he’s just crossed, or yank him back toward good judgment. My eyes cut to the front door. I’m emotional. Lonely. Both excellent reasons to ask him to take me back to my cabin this instant.

“Sure” is what comes out instead. “But only if you have one too.”

He nods, opens a kitchen cabinet, and a few moments later, he’s beside me, filling two short tumblers with Scotch, neat. He sits down next to me so we’re sharing a corner of the table, and the light of the fire catches on all his outlines—his messy hair, the architecture of his nose, the blunt corner of his square jaw. He’s looking at the Polaroid out of the corner of his eye, and after taking a burning sip that tastes like a campfire, I set my glass down and push the picture over to him. “Go ahead,” I wheeze as the alcohol starts a cozy fire in my belly. “Laugh. My pride’s somewhere back on Eagle’s Point, anyway.”

A closed-mouth chuckle. “So this is the evil mastermind behind the letters.” He frowns. “Didn’t think she’d be so tiny.”

Despite myself, I smile. “They said the same thing about Napoleon.”

“Which is why she’s the princess and you got stuck as a warty amphibian?” he asks, taking a drink. His tongue brushes the whiskey from his lips as he lowers his glass, and my stomach drops like a yo-yo.

“I think you mean I’m a tragic literary figure, and I’ll have you know my Frog Prince raked in a solid pound of Reese’s Cups that year.”

“Your personal favorite?” he asks, his eyes skimming over me. His body has loosened, taking up all the space it needs, and mine responds like a mirror.

“Hers,” I admit, picking up my glass. The second gulp goes down smoother and seems to bloom up and up, softening edges as it goes. Softening the part of me that should be building barricades, until all I can hear is the low roar of the fire.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he murmurs.

His eyes are on my mouth when he says it, and this time, when I take a sip, the whiskey blooms lower. My legs press together, carefully avoiding his beneath the table.

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who isn’t ‘invested in the situation,’?” I air-quote him from the beginning of our hike.

Slowly, almost casually, he rests his forearms on the table and draws in closer, caging his drink behind his large hands. He raises his eyes to mine right as his now-familiar scent wallops me in the face like a dictionary of romance hero smells. Cedar, whiskey, and bad decisions.

“I guess that was until I had to carry the ‘situation’ down a mountain,” he says, and his gaze feels like a towrope dragging me in.

My pulse is the whole percussion section of an orchestra. At some point, one of us is going to stop this. Stand up and walk away.

I lean forward in my seat, almost closing the distance between us. “So I’m a ‘situation’ now?”

In the leaping firelight, his eyes make me think of deep green pools of water reflecting a wildfire. Steady amid the chaos.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he replies, his deep voice hitting all my most neglected parts like gongs.

It’s been so long since I wasn’t careful. In her letter, Savannah practically named the day I stopped expecting life to pull its punches. But today I climbed a mountain and stood on the windswept summit with fucking eagles and felt like a different person. A brave person. Now the feeling’s back, except I’m inches away from a man who makes all my boundaries feel like terrible ideas. It’s why my uninjured leg is sliding beneath the table, searching until—

“Margot.” He says my name like a warning, but I watch his pupils dilate and feel like I’m being swallowed. My leg rests against his like a trillion volts of electricity aren’t surging through our point of contact. I wait for him to pull back, but he’s stock-still against me. The air between us might as well be flammable.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing how you handle me,” I say, the words striking the empty inches between us like a match.

And then his hand is on my jaw, tilting it up as his thumb strokes where my dimple would be if I smiled. A breath shudders out of him, and all the heat coiling in my body expands at once, sparking in every erogenous zone I possess. My mouth parts, soft and pliant for him, but just when I expect the first brush of his lips, he freezes.

He pulls back a critical inch, and his eyes do one panicked circuit over my features before he closes them hard. “Shit,” he curses hoarsely, turning his head away from me and accidentally brushing my face with his curls. Abruptly, he’s pushing his chair back and standing, leaving me hot, bewildered, embarrassed, and angry, all in quick succession.

“I can’t do this,” Forrest mutters, more to himself than to me. “I never should have—”

“ Seriously? ” I cry in disbelief, as every mayday signal I’ve been ignoring is cranked up to full blast. “You started it!”

My accusation, which was honed to perfection sometime around the second grade, stops his pacing. He stares at me, eyes wide. “ I started it? You’re the one playing footsie—”

“That wasn’t footsie! It was an accident!” I lie, my cheeks getting hot. “You’re the one who implied you wanted—”

“I never implied anything—”

“You grabbed my face!”

At this, he stops and runs his hand through his hair for the third time in under a minute. Exhales. “Look. I’m sorry. I’m not interested in getting involved with guests. I never should have—” he starts again, but I cut him off.

“You seemed pretty interested a second ago,” I say sharply, looking pointedly at his crotch. Before he can respond with more than an embarrassed flush and a hasty adjustment of his pants, I push back and stand on my one good foot. Humiliation and defensiveness snake through me, raising my own temperature by a thousand degrees. I don’t need a coat. I’ll melt all the snow in Alaska simply by limping outside.

“Don’t try to walk yet,” he snaps, running a hand through his hair again. It gives him an electrocuted look that shouldn’t be attractive on anyone, but naturally, he pulls it off. “I’ve got a pair of crutches.”

“Why do you have—” I begin asking, then shake my head. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m going back to my cabin now.”

I grab my letter and photo and begin hobbling pitifully toward his hiking pack to wrestle my smaller one out of it. Forrest curses again and quickly heads to the bedroom. I’ve managed to retrieve my pack and am limping toward the front door when he returns with the crutches.

“Here,” he says, handing them to me after I get my coat on. I grudgingly accept them without a word because I have never been more upset with myself. I swore I wouldn’t give in to Forrest, and here I am playing footsie with him, even if I’ll claim plausible deniability for the rest of my days.

“I can walk you back,” he says gruffly as I finish getting my boots on.

“Oh, that’s okay.” I smile. “I’d rather freeze to death.”

“You don’t know how to get back from here,” he points out as I awkwardly maneuver my crutches and fish out Ollie’s headlamp that I packed in case of an emergency (if this doesn’t qualify, I don’t know the meaning of the word).

“I know this cabin is just a little farther down from mine on the same trail,” I say. “Just tell me if it’s a left or a right out of here.”

“It’s a right, but Margot, listen—”

“No, Forrest, you listen. You gave me every indication that you were interested. I thought maybe we could have a little fun in this godforsaken place, but since that’s obviously not something you’re capable of, I’m happy to find it somewhere else.” I open the front door with a swirl of cold air and pull on the headlamp. Outside, it’s pitch black and terrifying, but getting away from Forrest to nurse my wounded pride is currently sitting above oxygen on my pyramid of needs.

“Thanks for carrying me down a mountain and making me dinner. I know you were just doing your job, but how about next time you don’t almost kiss me and then claim you’re not interested . I’ll see you around.”

With that, I limp out into the bitter cold, leaving him to stare after me in utter silence.