Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
CONFESSIONS
AVA
The hike to Widow's Peak was everything I'd trained for and everything I'd feared. The kind of terrain where precision kept you alive and ghosts kept you distracted.
We moved fast, the storm's brief lull giving us a narrow window. Griffin led, breaking trail through chest-deep snow, his movements efficient and powerful. I followed in his wake, my mind already running through extraction protocols.
But part of me, the part still feeling his hands on my skin, his mouth on mine, couldn't quite shift into professional mode.
Focus. Someone's life depends on you.
The job snapped into place, slamming a wall between my skin and what had happened in that loft.
We reached the coordinates in ninety minutes. The hiker had taken shelter behind a boulder formation, hypothermic but conscious. Griffin handled the immediate medical assessment while I evaluated the terrain.
Bad. Really bad.
The slope above us was loaded with fresh snow, the kind that could release with the slightest provocation. We'd have to move fast, stay light, and pray the weather held.
"Ava?" Griffin's voice in my ear. "What's the call?"
I studied the approach routes, calculating angles and risk factors. There, a narrow corridor between two avalanche paths. Tight margin, but workable.
"We go up the spine. Single file. Minimal conversation. Any sound could trigger a slide." I turned to him. "I'll take point. You bring the hiker down behind me. If anything starts moving, cut him loose and get clear."
Griffin's jaw tightened. "I'm not cutting anyone loose."
"If the slope goes, you don't have a choice. Save yourself."
"Not happening."
We stared at each other, the old trauma sparking between us. Him holding on when he should've let go. Me letting go when I couldn't hold on.
"Griffin." I touched his arm, gentle but firm. "I need you to trust me. Can you do that?"
Something in his expression cracked. "Yeah. I can."
The extraction took two hours. Every step calculated. Every movement deliberate. The hiker was in rough shape, with severe hypothermia, frostbite on his fingers, but alive.
We were fifty feet from safety when I heard it.
That sound. The one every mountaineer dreads.
A deep, rumbling crack.
"Move!" I screamed.
The slope released.
Everything happened in slow motion and too fast all at once. I grabbed the hiker's harness, hauling him toward the safe zone. Griffin was right behind us, his hand on my pack, pushing me forward.
The avalanche roared past, missing us by inches. Snow and ice and debris thundering down the mountain in a white wall of destruction.
We stumbled into the safe zone and collapsed.
Hands shaking, lungs burning, the kind of adrenaline crash that leaves you dizzy.
For a moment, no one spoke. Just gasped for air, hearts pounding, adrenaline screaming through our veins.
"Everyone okay?" Griffin's voice was rough.
The hiker nodded weakly. I checked him over quickly, cold but stable.
"We're good," I managed. "Let's get him down."
The helicopter met us at the lower staging area. Rafe was there, coordinating with the med team. He took one look at us, snow-covered, exhausted, eyes still wild from the near miss, and nodded.
"Good work. Both of you." He clapped Griffin's shoulder. "Get back to the lookout. Storm's coming back in. You're grounded until tomorrow morning."
I expected Griffin to argue. Instead, he just grabbed our packs and headed for the trail.
GRIFFIN
The hike back was silent.
Not the comfortable silence we'd found before. Something heavier. Darker.
Ava moved like she was on autopilot, her body executing the motions while her mind was somewhere else. I recognized the signs, post-rescue crash, adrenaline fading, reality settling in.
We reached the lookout just as the wind picked up. Inside, the fire had died to embers. I rebuilt it while Ava stripped off her wet gear with mechanical precision.
"You should eat," I said, pulling out rations.
"Not hungry."
"Ava..."
"I almost got you killed." The words scraped out of me before I could stop them. Her voice was flat. "That slope was more unstable than I calculated. If we'd been ten seconds slower..."
"We weren't."
"But we could have been. And then you'd be dead because I made a bad call." She turned to me, and I saw the guilt written across her face. The same guilt I carried every day. "That's what I do, Griffin. I make calls and people die."
I crossed to her in two strides. My hands framed her arms before my brain caught up.
"Stop."
"It's true..."
"No. It's not." I gripped her shoulders, making her look at me. "You made the right call. The only call. We got that hiker out alive because you knew what you were doing. The avalanche wasn't your fault. Mountains are dangerous. Sometimes they kill people. But not today. Not because of you."
"You don't understand..."
"I understand perfectly." My voice went rough. "I understand what it's like to replay every decision, wondering if you could've done something different. I understand the guilt that eats at you until you can't sleep, can't breathe, can't imagine ever trusting yourself again."
Her eyes shimmered. "Then you know why I can't, why we can't..."
"Can't what?"
"This." She gestured between us. "Whatever this is. I can't be responsible for someone else I care about. Can't watch another person..." She stopped, shaking her head. "I can't lose you too."
Her voice cracked on the last word, raw enough to punch through every one of my defenses.
The admission hit me square in the chest.
"You're not going to lose me."
"You don't know that. Nobody knows that. The mountain takes who it wants, when it wants." Tears spilled over. "And I can't, God, Griffin, I can't survive watching you fall."
I pulled her against my chest, holding her while she shook. "Then don't watch me fall. Watch me hold on. Watch me stand. Watch me choose you every single day despite the risk."
"It's not that simple..."
"It is. It's exactly that simple." I tilted her chin up. "You think I'm not terrified? You think I don't lie awake at night imagining all the ways I could lose you? But I'd rather have one day with you than a lifetime of being too scared to try."
She stared at me, tears tracking down her cheeks. "When did you become so brave?"
“The second you walked into that storm of a town hall.”
She kissed me then, desperate and needy and tasting like salt and snow. I kissed her back, pouring everything I couldn't say into the contact. She was shaking, whether from cold or emotion, I couldn't tell.
"Come here." I led her to the couch, wrapping us both in blankets. She curled into my side, her head on my shoulder, and I held her while the storm returned with a vengeance outside.
"Tell me about them," she said quietly. "Your teammates. What were they like?"
I didn't want to. Didn't want to dredge up those memories. But she'd trusted me with her story. I owed her the same.
"Marcus was thirty-two. Had a wife and a baby girl. He was supposed to retire that season, move to Colorado, take a desk job." My throat tightened. "Jake was twenty-five. Cocky as hell but solid when it mattered. He wanted to start his own guide service."
"What happened?"
"Wind. We were crossing a ridge when it hit, katabatic event, sudden and severe.
Marcus lost his footing. Jake tried to catch him, but the force pulled him over too.
" I closed my eyes, seeing it play out again.
"They were both on my line. I braced. Held for maybe thirty seconds.
Felt like hours. And then the anchor ripped and the rope went light. "
Her hand found mine, lacing our fingers together.
"I dream about it," I admitted. "That feeling. The weight disappearing. Knowing they were gone and I couldn't stop it."
"It wasn't your fault."
"I know, but the guilt doesn't care about logic." I looked down at her. "That's why I stopped leading teams. Why I came to Bitterroot. Figured if I kept my head down, worked alone, I couldn't be responsible for anyone else."
"And then I showed up."
"And then you showed up." I brushed hair from her face. "Competent and beautiful and absolutely terrifying."
"Terrifying?" She almost smiled.
"You make me want things I thought I'd given up on. Like partnership. Like trust. Like..." I stopped, the word too big, too soon.
"Like what?"
"Like a future that doesn't involve me hiding in the mountains alone."
She was quiet for a long moment. "I came to Bitterroot to disappear. To find some remote place where no one knew me, where I could just, exist without the weight of what happened."
"Did it work?"
"No. Because the weight comes with you. Geography doesn't fix trauma." She shifted to look at me. "But then you happened. And for the first time in months, I felt something other than guilty. I felt..."
"What?"
"Safe. Seen. Like maybe I could be more than the worst thing that ever happened to me."
I kissed her forehead. "You are. You're brilliant and brave and so goddamn strong it scares me."
"I don't feel strong."
"That's what makes it real." I pulled her closer. "Strength isn't not being afraid. It's being terrified and doing it anyway. You proved that today."
We sat in silence, watching the fire, while the storm hammered the lookout. The world outside was chaos. But in here, wrapped in blankets with this woman in my arms, everything felt still.
"Griffin?" Her voice was soft.
"Yeah?"
"If we do this, if we try for real, I need you to promise me something."
Her fingers tightened on my shirt, like she was bracing for impact.
"What?"
"That you'll let me be scared sometimes. That you won't expect me to be fearless all the time." She looked up at me. "Because I'm going to mess up. I'm going to have bad days. I'm going to wake up at three a.m., terrified that something's going to happen to you."
"I promise. As long as you let me be scared too."
She nodded against my chest. "Deal."
Outside, the wind howled. Inside, we held each other.
For the first time since that rope went light, I believed something might hold again.