28. Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EVIE
Three months later, I was cold, filthy, and lying flat on my stomach in grass that had spent most of the morning working its way beneath my clothes.
My elbows were damp despite the waterproof layer under me, the wind kept finding the narrow strip of skin between my gloves and sleeves, and my thighs had gone stiff from staying in the same position for too long, but I was also having one of the best days of my career.
The puma had appeared along the lower slope shortly after sunrise, moving through yellow-brown grass slowly enough that I'd had time to settle the long lens onto its support instead of trying to photograph her with shaking hands.
She wasn't particularly interested in us, which was exactly what we wanted.
The wind favored our position, we'd kept plenty of distance, and Mateo had spotted her before anyone started shifting equipment around.
For nearly twenty minutes, I'd watched her cross the slope.
She stopped once to watch the guanacos farther uphill, her ears turning toward sounds I couldn't hear over the wind, then continued beneath a low ridge where the morning light reached the side of her face.
That was the photograph I'd been waiting for.
The frame on the back of my camera showed her in profile with one forepaw lifted above the grass, her eye sharp and her attention fixed somewhere beyond us.
Nothing cluttered the background, and the light caught enough detail in her coat without washing anything out.
I enlarged the image, checked the focus around her face, and grinned until my cheeks hurt.
“That's the one?” Mateo asked from several feet away, keeping his voice low as he crouched beside his spotting scope and tucked his gloved hands near his chest whenever he wasn't adjusting the equipment.
“That's the one.” I told Mateo as I checked the photograph once more before lowering the camera carefully into my lap, making no attempt to hide how pleased I was.
“You said that yesterday.” Mateo reminded me as a smile appeared above the scarf covering the lower half of his face, the wind tugging continuously at his hood.
“Yesterday's one was a different one.” I explained to Mateo as I protected the camera beneath my coat long enough to change the battery, fumbling once because my fingertips had gone numb despite my gloves.
“So today is the real one?” Mateo asked me as he lifted an eyebrow, apparently having spent enough time around photographers to know there was never going to be one final favorite.
“Until tomorrow.” I admitted to Mateo as I secured the battery compartment and settled the camera against my lap again, smiling when his laugh disappeared beneath another gust of wind.
That had been most of Patagonia: cold mornings, brutal wind, pumas that rarely cared about anyone's schedule, condors flying high enough to make my neck ache from looking up, and entire afternoons spent around guanacos that managed to look annoyed in almost every photograph.
I'd loved the work even when the actual conditions made me miserable.
There had been days when rain made fieldwork unpleasant, mornings when nothing appeared no matter how long we waited, and one particularly bad week when equipment problems happened at the same time the weather refused to cooperate.
I'd eaten enough field meals to become deeply unreasonable about wanting fresh food and spent more evenings cleaning gear than I cared to count, but none of it made me regret taking the assignment.
The final collection was stronger than I'd hoped.
I'd photographed wildlife I'd never worked with before, learned more about tracking in open terrain, spent time with researchers and guides who understood the region far better than I ever could after one assignment, and filled several drives with photographs I was genuinely proud to put my name on.
Wild Terrain was happy with the work, and so was I.
I hadn't spent three months waiting to leave.
I'd worked, laughed with people over bad food, complained about the weather, spent long evenings sorting photographs, and fallen asleep exhausted after hauling equipment around for most of the day.
Falling in love with three men in a rainforest hadn't suddenly made the rest of my life less important.
I had missed them, though.
Malek usually came to mind at night when camp finally became quiet. I missed knowing he was nearby even when neither of us was talking, along with cedar, his purr against my back, and the patient way he'd work tangles from my hair while I sat between his legs.
Tavian came to mind whenever something stupid happened, which meant I thought about him more often than was probably healthy.
A fox had gotten into part of the camp supplies one evening, and I'd known immediately that he would've found the entire situation entertaining.
The first time a guanaco spit near one of the field staff, I'd laughed hard enough that two people stared at me because I could already imagine Tavian demanding to know why I'd never warned him animals could weaponize saliva.
I missed his talking, the casual touches whenever I was within reach, the little things he'd find and decide belonged to me, and the fact that eating around him occasionally required defensive measures.
Luca came to mind whenever some minor practical problem started getting on my nerves after a long day.
He would've noticed the fraying camera strap before I did, remembered exactly where I'd put the replacement, and then asked before doing anything about it anyway.
The fabric wrap he'd made for my charging cables had survived three months of fieldwork without a single problem, which meant I was going to be unbearable when I finally got to tell him.
The sandalwood-and-herb scent had faded from the fabric fairly quickly, but I thought about him each time I untied it.
Malek's shirt held his scent longer because I'd kept it sealed whenever I wasn't using it, protecting an oversized charcoal shirt with considerably more care than I was willing to admit to anyone.
Whenever I had enough privacy, I made a small temporary nest with my own clothing and whatever bedding was available.
Malek's shirt stayed near my pillow, softer clothes went around me, and Tavian's spiral shell remained safely inside my camera bag because putting something barely larger than my thumbnail into unfamiliar bedding seemed like an excellent way to lose it.
The familiar objects helped my Omega relax after long days, but that was all they could do. Malek's shirt wasn't Malek. Luca's cable wrap didn't give me Luca sitting nearby while I worked, and Tavian's shell definitely didn't provide the running commentary its owner would've supplied.
There was no direct way to contact them from Patagonia either.
Their radios worked locally around the sanctuary and surrounding forest; that was the limit of what they were meant to do.
I could handle work messages, contact my mother, and use my laptop whenever I had access to a connection, but none of those options reached Malek, Tavian, or Luca.
More than once, I'd finished a day with something I wanted to tell one of them and realized there was nowhere to send it. Then morning came, and I went back to work.
By the end of the assignment, I'd decided only one practical thing about the distance: I didn't want three-month absences to become our automatic arrangement just because I'd always accepted jobs based only on what worked for me.
That didn't mean refusing every long project.
It meant there were people I cared about now, and how long I disappeared mattered in a way it hadn't before.
The details could wait until there was another actual job to discuss.
I spent two nights at my apartment after getting home because three months of cold-weather gear didn't need to follow me back into a rainforest. I washed everything, dealt with accumulated mail, answered work messages, slept in my own bed, and discovered that the apartment felt exactly the way it always had—comfortable, useful, and mine.
I wasn't unhappy there. I simply knew where I wanted to go next.
Two mornings later, I got on another plane.
By the time the narrow boat turned into the familiar stretch of river, the heat had already worked through my shirt.
I sat beneath partial shade with one camera case braced between my boots and my personal bag against my leg, watching the vegetation thicken along both banks.
After weeks of cold wind, my body had apparently forgotten what this level of humidity felt like.
Moisture gathered along my spine before we'd traveled half the distance to the station, loose strands of hair started sticking to the back of my neck, and the smells of river water, damp soil, leaves, and thick vegetation became stronger every time the boat rounded another bend.
Bird calls came from both banks. Some were familiar immediately, while several animals farther inside the trees were close enough for me to understand bits of conversation among the ordinary forest noise.
A capuchin somewhere deeper in the vegetation was loudly insisting that another monkey had stolen his fruit.
Two birds were arguing about a branch. Something small near the water kept warning anything willing to listen about a snake beneath the leaves.
I smiled and kept listening.
The first time I'd traveled this river, I'd been watching for subjects, access points, routes, and anything that could affect six weeks of work.
Now I knew which section of trail held water after heavy rain and where the kingfisher usually worked the slower edge of the stream.
I knew a loud scarlet macaw would probably discover my return before I made it halfway to the temple.
More importantly, I knew who was beyond the station.