Chapter Fifteen
Sienna
I woke before sunrise with a vivid round of Remember When.
Between the wolf and bear encounter and the way Carson looked at me by the fire, like he was trying to solve a puzzle he already knew the answer to? I’d barely slept a wink.
Thanks, brain. Perfect timing.
I unzipped my tent as quietly as possible. The air that hit my face was sharp but still warmer than last night. The sky held that pale violet shade that meant dawn wasn’t far away.
Carson’s tent was zipped and unmoving.
Good. I didn’t want witnesses to my reflective spiraling.
I slipped on my boots, grabbed my jacket and hat, and headed toward the small lake just west of camp that was tucked away near a pocket of water ringed with thin pines. I’d stopped there on past hikes, usually late spring or early fall, when the wind shimmered across the surface in silver ripples.
Now it looked frozen around the edges, a perfect circle of glass fractured with delicate spiderweb cracks. When I reached it, I stood at the shoreline and wrapped my arms around myself.
I didn’t come out here because of the cold or the sunrise.
I didn’t even have the need for space after spending half the night listening to Carson breathe through the nylon wall between our tents.
I came because my emotions were misbehaving.
Yesterday had shaken something in me. The wolves. The moment on the bridge. The way Carson had stepped in front of me before he even consciously chose to, like some part of him was wired for it. For protecting. For shielding. For being steady.
I wasn’t used to steadiness.
I wasn’t used to someone reading danger faster than I did, either.
Alaska had sharpened me. Toughened me. I’d stared down storms, climbed ice-slick ridges, wandered alone for days without fear. I’d talked to Mortimer the moose and barely blinked.
But yesterday?
The wolves weren’t even aggressive. Just curious.
And still, something in me had cracked open.
Not out of fear of the wolves, but from the feeling afterward. When Carson looked at me like he could tell I wasn’t okay, or the way he could see deeper than anyone else ever bothered to look.
The lake was quiet except for a few tree branches creaking. I crouched and touched the thin ice with a gloved fingertip.
“I don’t get rattled,” I whispered to myself.
Except… I did.
Not by animals.
Not by danger.
By him.
Maybe that was the real problem.
The more intrigued I became by Carson, the more I could feel myself closing off.
Putting up walls as if curiosity was a threat and attraction was the enemy.
I didn’t want to need anyone. I didn’t want to depend on a man to feel safe.
I’d done just fine for myself, a lifetime of handling things alone.
I didn’t need Carson Reed stepping into my space and making me wonder what it would feel like if someone actually matched me, not just in skill but in steadiness.
I hated that part the most.
I stood and brushed ice crystals from my pants. The wind picked up lightly, blowing cold air over my cheeks. I turned to head back to camp, and my boot hit an icy patch.
It wasn’t catastrophic, but slick enough that my foot slid out from under me. My arms pinwheeled, my heart leapt into my throat, and I caught myself with no screams, drama, or flailing.
Just a clean pivot and a controlled recovery.
My breath came fast for a moment, but it faded quickly. My heartbeat steadied. My pride stayed intact.
“See?” I muttered. “Still a mountain gazelle.”
I didn’t need Carson to catch me every five minutes. I didn’t need anyone to.
I brushed off my coat, spun around to head back—
And froze in place.
Carson was walking toward me.
Through the snow-dusted pines, he walked all straight and sure and warm despite the cold.
He had a metal camp mug in one hand, steam rising from it in lazy curls.
His other hand was shoved in the pocket of his jacket.
His hair was slightly mussed from sleep, like he’d run his fingers through it or had been dreaming and turned once too hard.
And he was staring at me.
Not in a creepy way.
In a concerned way.
In a focused way.
In a way that made the ground feel unsteady even without ice.
He stopped three feet from me and held out the mug. “Brought you coffee.”
I stared at the mug as if it might explode. “You made coffee?”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
He raised one eyebrow. “I don’t usually drink two cups at once.”
The heat in my cheeks had nothing to do with the temperature.
I took the mug, and our fingers brushed for half a second. It was ridiculous how much sensation my nervous system packed into that half-second.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
“Reflecting,” I said, which sounded far more dramatic aloud than it had in my head.
His eyes flicked over me, assessing in that calm way of his. “Reflecting.”
“Yes.” I lifted my chin. “It’s a perfectly valid wilderness activity.”
He stepped closer.
Close enough that I felt the heat of him against the cold morning air, and that I noticed how my pulse shifted into something uneasy and electric.
“What were you reflecting about?” he asked softly.
Oh no.
He was using the quiet voice.
It was the one that made my bones melt, and my walls tremble.
“Wolves,” I said too quickly. “And, um—bears. And snow. Hoping it melts soon.”
His eyebrow lifted slightly. “Snow.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very reflective subject. Lots of depth.”
He didn’t smile, but something flickered at the edge of his mouth.
“And yesterday,” I added, quieter. “How you… handled things.”
He tilted his head. “How we handled things.”
That word, we hit harder than it should have.
My breath fogged in the air. The lake gleamed behind me in thin morning light. The world felt hushed, as if everything around us were waiting for one of us to make a mistake, a choice, or a confession.
He stepped closer again.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
And it wasn’t just the question.
It was the tone as if he genuinely cared about the answer.
He wasn’t asking out of politeness or obligation but because something in him needed to know.
I swallowed. My throat felt too tight. “Yeah. Just… thinking.”
He studied me for a long moment, eyes steady, unreadable but softer than last night.
Then he said, “You don’t always have to be the one who’s fine.”
The words slipped right under my ribs.
I turned away, pretending to look at the lake, because looking at him felt too raw. “I know that.”
“You don’t act like it.”
“I don’t need.” I stopped myself before the next words could escape.
But the sentence hung there anyway.
I didn’t need anyone.
A gust of wind pushed across the lake, and Carson stepped closer, instinctively trying to block it. His presence wrapped around me like a second coat.
Dangerous.
Too comfortable.
Too tempting.
And like Midwestern weather always did, it changed in a new direction, and the first snowflakes began falling suddenly from a perfectly clear sky.
Little flecks of white drifting lazily.
I stared upward. “Was this predicted?”
“No,” Carson said.
He stepped right beside me, close enough that our arms nearly brushed. His warmth radiated through my jacket. The snow fell gently and steadily, clinging to his hair, sparkling on his eyelashes.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t want to move and ruin the moment.
I also didn’t want to acknowledge how badly I wanted to lean into him, just for a second.
A stronger gust cut across the clearing.
The snow thickened. Big, wet flakes now, swirling harder. It wasn’t dangerous weather, but it wasn’t nothing either.
Carson’s jaw tightened.
“We should head back,” he said.
I nodded once, clutching the warm coffee to my chest like a shield.
As we turned toward camp, I glanced at him again.
He was looking straight ahead.
But his hand, fingers flexing once at his side, told a different story.
He had been standing too close.
He knew it.
And he didn’t trust himself.
Neither did I.
And as the snow kept falling, unexpected and quiet and strangely ominous, I felt a shift inside me:
A warning.
A pull.
A question.
Whatever was building between us wasn’t slowing down.
It was speeding up.
And the storm that was coming, weather or otherwise, wasn’t going to be easy to outrun.
The snow thickened faster than I expected.
By the time we reached the edge of camp, the flakes had grown fat and heavy, clinging to branches and weighing them down in soft arches.
My coffee, somehow still warm, sloshed against the mug as I walked.
Carson kept a half-step ahead of me, scanning the trees like he expected something else to emerge from them.
He didn’t say it, but I could feel it.
This didn’t feel like a normal flurry.
When we got back to the tents, he paused, brows drawn. “We should pack up quickly. If this keeps dropping the way it’s dropping, visibility will tank.”
I nodded, but my attention drifted to the ridge behind us. The wind picked up again, whipping across the clearing and sending a spiral of snowflakes into a small vortex that dusted our boots.
He saw me watching. “You okay?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. Just… I don’t know. I’ve hiked in weird spring snow before, but this feels—”
“Off,” he finished.
I blinked at him. “Yes. Exactly.”
His gaze held mine too long. Long enough that the world around us blurred at the edges. The snow. The cold. The breath between us. It all fell away for a second.
I broke eye contact because if I hadn’t, I would have done something wildly unprofessional, like kiss him before sunrise.
“Let’s get moving,” he said quietly.
We packed in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. If anything, it felt charged. Each motion was deliberate and careful, and each zipper too loud.
I could still feel his nearness from the lake, the warmth of him pressed into the cold air, the way he stepped closer as the snow started to fall. My body remembered it even if my brain tried to pretend it didn’t.
When my pack was secure, I turned to him and said I was ready.
He was already watching me.
And that look made my heart swell, no matter how much I wished it hadn’t.
“What?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“You came out here this morning,” he said, tone low, “to make sense of what scared you yesterday.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “That was the plan.”
“And now?”
Now?
Now I wasn’t thinking about wolves or bears or my legs giving out under me.
Now all I could think about was how close he’d been, how his voice had softened just for me. How his presence steadied me in ways I didn’t want to need.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Everything feels… different.”
He didn’t move.
Neither did I.
The snow fell between us in slow, deliberate flakes, settling on his hair, his shoulders, his lashes. He blinked against it once, and for a split second, I wondered what it would feel like if he brushed a dusting from my cheek.
A sound cut through the clearing.
Not an animal this time.
Something lower.
A deep, distant rumble that vibrated faintly through the ground.
We both stiffened.
“What was that?” I asked.
He turned toward the ridge, eyes narrowing. “Not thunder.”
My heart knocked hard.
“Then… what?”
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t, because the rumble came again—closer now, louder, rolling through the snow-covered earth beneath our boots like something waking up.
Something shifting.
The breeze went still.
The snow stopped falling for a beat, hanging suspended in the air like the world had paused.
Carson stepped closer to me without thinking.
“Sienna,” he murmured, his voice low and steady in a way that made every hair on my arms rise.
I looked up to see the bear and her cubs.
“We need to move.”