Chapter 30
Sky Above Us, Earth Below Us, a Fire Within Us
Aria
An imaginary hook pulls at my navel and catapults me through the air at breakneck speed. A dizzying whirlpool swirls in my head. It takes a while for my mind to switch to emergency mode and stop the merry-go-round.
“What should we do?” I ask as quietly as the storm will allow. “I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Oh God, Wyatt. It’s going to eat us. It’s going to rip through our organs with its teeth and tear our bodies apart with its claws and…”
“Speak louder, Aria.”
“What?”
Wyatt lets go of me and begins to move his right arm in circles. He’s lost it. That’s the only explanation. Absolutely loony tunes. “Speak louder. It needs to hear us; otherwise, it will get spooked.”
“But then it really will go after us!”
“No.” First he stretches out one leg, then the other. “Have you forgotten what old Clearwater taught us every time she organized one of our high school camping trips?”
“I’m fairly certain she didn’t tell us to jump around like idiots!”
“Don’t run. Speak normally. Move your arms and legs at a normal pace. Then the bear won’t see you as a threat or a meal. Its hunting instinct will only be awakened if we run.”
“No doubt it’s hungry. I’m sure it’s not thinking that, just because we’re moving around, we’re no longer a tasty treat.” Beginning to panic, I start to whimper. “I don’t want to die, Wyatt.”
“Slowly move to the right. Arms up.”
I do what he says. Adrenaline is coursing through my body in such huge waves that it’s even chased the cold out of my limbs. “Where do you want to go?”
“You’ll see. We’re not far.”
“I wish I had a snowsuit on.”
“Me, too.”
“And some long underwear.”
“Yeah.”
“How much longer do we have to walk?”
“Just down the slope here.”
In despair, I see the mass of snow in which my legs are sinking.
Making progress is difficult. And suddenly I think of Wyatt’s father, who died in the mountains under an avalanche.
I wonder if he must be thinking about that, too.
I’m sure he is. I’m overcome by the urgent need to distract him, even though a damn grizzly wants to eat us.
“Is it still there?”
“It’s come a little closer.”
“What?”
“But it’s not running. All good, Aria. It’s just standing there. Keep going. A little more quickly.”
“I thought we were supposed to go slowly?”
“Yeah, but now I’m kinda freaked, too.”
I’m just about to ask how much farther it is when I bang into a huge tree with my shoulder. Wyatt runs into me. His quick breath brushes my cheek, and I can feel him lifting his head to look upward.
“All good. We’re there.”
“Where?”
“Come on.” He takes my hand. No idea how it’s even possible with a grizzly nearby, but I actually feel a kind of euphoric fireworks inside, pushing away the fear. What a mix. “We’re there.”
I blink against the darkness but can’t see a thing. “Wy, I am absolutely losing my shit right now. We’re being followed by a bear! What’s going…”
Before I can finish my sentence, I feel his arm around my butt. “I’m gonna lift you up now; reach for the rope ladder.”
“Rope ladder?”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, I feel my feet leaving the ground.
My arms outstretched, I try to reach for a ladder, but my fingers don’t encounter a thing.
The violent storm continues to batter us.
Wyatt staggers. I’m about to tell him that he must have made a mistake; there’s no rope ladder here when my gloved fingers close around a crossbar. Relief floods my body. “Got it.”
“Good. Hold on tight. I’m going to give you a push, and you pull yourself up until you find your footing, okay?”
“Okay.” I sound skeptical, and I think of the volleyball tournament, of the moment when I jumped into the net, and that there’s no way I can do this; I’ll never make it.
But the adrenaline seems to awaken unexpected abilities in me because when Wyatt catapults me into the air, my left foot lands unsteadily on the lowest strut.
It’s damn wobbly. The storm is blowing me in all directions, and I’ve got to use all my strength to pull myself up, but then my knees hit solid ground. I almost howl out loud with joy with the only thought that’s in my head: I’m not going to die.
My limbs are numb. My whole body is shaking. I can hear him groaning beneath me. Normally the jump wouldn’t be a problem for him because he’s tall—almost six two—and strong, but he can only hold on with one arm.
And then he’s next to me. He’s been swallowed by the dark, but I can hear him breathing. Then his iPhone flashlight illuminates everything.
We’re sitting on a small ledge; behind us there’s a crooked and crudely built cabin, held up by a group of ancient tree trunks.
“The cabin tree house. Of course. But, Wyatt, we need a…”
“Key?” The light from his phone glints off the key he holds up and temporarily deprives me of sight. “I wanted to come here with you yesterday, remember? And today I forgot to give it back to William.”
“God, Wy. You just saved us from a bear; you realize that, right?”
He helps me up with a grin. “I’d strike it off my bucket list, but that won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would mean that there really was a grizzly and not just something I made up to get you here.”
I blink. “There wasn’t any bear?” When he shakes his head, I throw my arms into the air.
The snow whips into my face. I have to keep wiping it away to see Wyatt at all.
“Shit, do you realize how scared I was?!” He laughs and goes to the door.
I follow him. “We could have just walked back up the hill and taken the stairs that lead here from the other side!”
Wyatt opens the door and glances back over his shoulder. “But then it wouldn’t have been as exciting, Ari.”
“I hate you.”
“Never.”
The door swings inward with a soft squeak, and the wooden floorboards creak as we enter.
The cabin tree house is fifteen minutes from Silver Lake, on the side of Buttermilk Mountain.
It belongs to William. He built it a few years ago for tourists, and when I say he built it, that’s exactly what I mean.
I used to be afraid it would collapse as soon as the tip of my shoe touched the ground, but it’s actually stable… and gorgeous, damn gorgeous.
Wyatt places the phone on the back of a worn, olive-green leather armchair. I bend down to untie my boots while he walks to the fireplace next to the window. “Ha,” he says, “matches.”
We take a look around. Rustic eighteenth-century-style iron lanterns hang from the broad wooden trunks that form the supporting structure, and thick candle stumps are scattered around the room on decorated saucers.
Wyatt lights every single one of them before starting the fire, and suddenly the hut is filled with candlelight and warm flames flickering along the wood.
“I am…sooo…cold!” My teeth are chattering as I continue to stand by the door in my wet clothes, arms wrapped around my chest.
It’s a mystery to me why he hasn’t done the same. His movements even seem somewhat graceful as he strides across the room to the wooden chest by the bay window. “Blanket, blanket, potholder, who-knows-what, blanket… Ah, jackpot.” He pulls out a long, brown wool parka.
Wyatt laughs as I eye it greedily. He keeps on digging through the chest and finds a thick knit sweater, which I think used to belong to William, and a pair of wide gray faux-fur pants.
We turn away from each other as we change, my fingers itching.
I realize that he is naked. So am I. Our underwear is soaking wet from the snow.
I inconspicuously take a glance over my shoulder.
What I see takes my breath away. He’s already wearing his pants, but his broad, well-defined back is facing me.
The flames in the fireplace cast faint cones of light on his skin, and there, along his left shoulder and across his entire shoulder blade, is a long, white scar.
Trying to push his arm into his sleeve, he makes a series of soft groaning sounds.
Shocked, I turn to pull my parka over my head, but the lump in my throat doesn’t go away.
When we turn back around, his eyes wander down my body. The corners of his mouth twitch. “You look…stylish”
“And you look like a yeti.”
With an amused expression, he walks over to the basket next to the big couch, whose cover seems to be made of woven patches.
He digs about in the basket. “Sweet potatoes, pumpkin, zucchini, carrots…” His head pops back up, and he looks to the side.
“And what do we have here? Some oil. Spices. Wow. It’s like William had prepared for any emergency. ”
“There’s no way Will brought all that stuff up here.”
Wyatt grins, in one hand a zucchini, in the other a carrot. “Busted. I brought it all.”
Something is stirring inside me. I think about how Wyatt bought all these things for us and then brought them up here.
Warmth seeps through my body. I walk past the coffee table and explore the compartments of a wooden shelf.
“Oh, there’s a loaf of bread under the dish towel.
” I press a finger into it. “It’s soft.” My eyes wander over to Wyatt. “Also from you?”
Wyatt carries the basket with the vegetables over in front of the fireplace. He nods and points to two tin jugs by the shelf. “Take a look.”
I lift the lids and look inside. “Water. Perfect.”
In the light of the fire, his caramel-warm eyes shine. “Wanna make a soup?”
As if in answer, my stomach growls. “I can’t believe that after all that food I’m going to say yes. Absolutely. The path through the mountains wore me out.”