Chapter 5
TREYTON
I said yes on a Wednesday, and we left before dawn the next morning after I'd spent all night trying to convince myself it was just about checking the runoff.
The high meadow was the best place on the whole ridge to see the wide variety of wildflowers.
Soleil had been asking me about it for two solid weeks.
She was going to go up there with or without me, and the runoff was bad enough this season that going with her was less stupid than letting her go alone.
I wasn't going to mention that I'd been awake since two, or that I'd put on a clean shirt, or that I'd packed a thermos with two cups instead of one, or that I'd done all of that before I'd asked myself why.
She was already on her porch when I came down the road at five.
Her headlamp was on, she had a day pack at her feet, and she appeared to be wearing real hiking boots instead of her usual pink sneakers.
A small sketchbook stuck out of the top of her pack, and a long braid hung over one shoulder.
The corner of my mouth tried to lift, but I put a stop to it before she noticed.
I’d take her to the high meadow, but I wasn’t going to let myself enjoy it.
“Good morning.” Her tone was way too cheery for this early.
“Morning. I brought coffee.”
“For both of us?”
“Yeah.”
She caught herself before she gave me a full smile, but her eyes lit up. I appreciated her not making a bigger deal out of me bringing coffee than it was. I handed her one of the cups. She took it with both hands.
Biscuit jumped down off her porch and stood between us.
“Does he get to come with us?” she asked.
“Yeah, but he'll move faster than either one of us. Don't try to keep up with him.”
Soleil glanced down at my dog and smiled. Was he still actually my dog? I wasn’t sure but didn’t want to waste the time or energy trying to figure it out yet. “Got it.”
“And don't feed him anything.” Last time he’d followed me up to the meadow, I’d given him some jerky that didn’t agree with him. I didn’t want Soleil to clean up after him when we got back. Because inevitably, he’d be spending the night with her again. Fucking traitor.
“Okay, boss.”
I didn’t like the teasing tone she’d used when she called me boss, because boss was the last thing I wanted to be to the curvy blonde who talked to flowers. But I let it go, and we started up the ridge.
The first half hour was easy walking. Pre-dawn light came up the east face, mist rose from the creek, and the chill in the air chased the last bit of sleep away.
Biscuit ran ahead and circled back and ran ahead again.
Soleil sipped her coffee and didn't talk, which I hadn't expected.
I'd been bracing for her to fill the silence and instead she walked beside me drinking coffee and watching the light come up the ridge in a way that suggested she was taking it all in.
I kept three feet of space between us.
When we reached the creek crossing, I stopped.
The water was higher than it had been last week, which meant the snow on the peaks Gibson had asked me about had run down faster than it should have.
The current sent water racing over the rocks.
I could see the stones we needed to step on, but the second one was wet halfway across the top, and the third one had a sheen on it that meant it was going to be slick.
“It’s higher than yesterday,” she said.
“Came up overnight.”
“Should we —”
“No. We're fine. I'll go first. Step where I step. Don't think about it.”
I made it across without slipping and looked back.
She stood on the bank with her cup in one hand and the other tugging at her braid.
I reached back without saying anything, and she took my hand.
Her fingers were cold, but her grip was steady.
I kept my eyes trained on the far bank, aware of every point of contact between us in a way that made the creek crossing the least dangerous thing I'd done all morning.
I'd figured her hand would feel small in mine. I'd spent two weeks knowing it would. But knowing it and feeling it were not the same thing, and it hit my chest before it hit my hand.
I let go on the far bank. She didn't thank me or seem to be affected by the physical contact at all, just adjusted the weight of the pack on her shoulders and continued on. Biscuit was already a hundred yards up the trail.
The second switchback was where the runoff had cut a new channel across the path.
I saw it before she did. Three feet wide, maybe six inches deep, the water moved fast enough to carry gravel.
Crossing shouldn’t be a problem, but the bank on the upslope side was loose and the bank on the downslope side dropped about ten feet before it leveled out.
“Take my hand.” I reached for her again, bracing myself for how I knew it would feel this time.
“Treyton, I can —”
“Don’t argue, just do it.”
She let out a huff but took my hand.
I crossed first because the upslope side was easier to land on than to leave from. I turned around and held both her hands when she stepped across, and she didn't need both of mine, but she took them both and didn't let go. Crossing took two seconds and we both stood on the upslope side.
I should have let go, but I didn't. Neither did she. She looked up at me with expectation in her eyes. I knew exactly what I wanted to come next, but I let go of her hands instead and kept walking.
The high meadow stopped her. I'd known it would. I'd only brought one other person up here in nine years. Gibson hadn’t been impressed and asked whether I'd ever fished the upper creek. But Soleil walked into the meadow and stopped. She didn't even take her sketchbook out.
She walked into the blooms… paintbrush and columbine and the small white pearly everlasting growing out of the rock at the south edge.
Then she reached out and traced the edge of a petal with one finger, standing so still for so long that I almost said something.
I didn't. Biscuit came up next to me and sat down.
Even he understood that some things weren't his to interrupt.
After a while, she crouched. After another while, she pulled the sketchbook out.
She worked for almost an hour, and I stood there and watched, telling myself I was keeping an eye on her for safety reasons.
The creek could flood. The weather could change.
A bear could wander through. The truth was I had walked into the high meadow on more mornings than I could count and I had never once looked at it the way I was looking at it now.
When she stood, she came over to where I sat on a flat rock with the empty coffee thermos by my side. She sat down on the ground in front of the rock and leaned up against it, her back resting next to my leg, close enough to touch.
“Have you always lived this quietly?” she asked.
“For the most part.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. Before Soleil showed up on my ridge, my life had been one long silent stretch followed by another, and I’d liked it that way. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Why?”
“I like things simple.”
She thought about that for a minute. “Hidden things are still there. Even if no one talks about them.”
She wasn't looking at me when she said it. She was looking at a purple bloom.
I didn't answer. Couldn't. The line had landed in the same wrong part of me that careful had landed. I was sitting on a flat rock in my own high meadow with a woman leaning against my leg and a dog sleeping at my feet and I had no defense against any of it.
After a long beat, she got to her feet. “We should head down. The sky looks weird.”
I looked up. She was right. The west edge of the sky had gone a color I knew, the kind of color that meant we had maybe forty minutes before it got serious. I'd missed it because I'd been watching her work.
“Storm’s coming. We need to head out.”
She closed her sketchbook and slid it back into her pack. We made it as far as the old lookout on the descent before I knew we weren't going to make it home.
The bench was still there. I'd built it four years ago when I'd been overstocked on cedar and undersupplied with reasons to be in town.
I'd set it on the flat at the lookout and bolted it into the rock because the wind up there could throw a free-standing bench into the next county.
The bench had a good view east on a clear morning, and it had absolutely zero shelter from anything moving in from the west.
But the bench was the marker. Half a mile past the bench was the old miner's cabin. It wasn’t much, but it had a roof, four walls, and a fireplace that still worked.
I'd ducked into it twice over the years when weather had come up fast. It was the closest thing to shelter between the high meadow and home, and the way the sky was moving, it was the only option we had.
Soleil sat down on the bench while I checked the runoff channel on the north side of the clearing. She set her hand on the wood and slid it along the underside of the seat, the same way she'd touched the side table in the workshop.
Her fingers stopped. She didn't look at me, just sat with her hand resting on the underside of the bench for a long beat, her thumb moving slow and light.
The carving was a columbine, a two-inch bloom with five petals and the spur on the underside that columbines have.
I'd done it on a slow afternoon four years ago and I'd never come back to look at it because there was nothing about looking at it that would have been useful to me.
But she'd found it. Instead of acknowledging it, she stood and gave me a small, easy smile like nothing had happened. “Ready?”
I picked up my pack and turned away. I didn't trust my face or my voice to not give away what I was feeling inside. I'd been letting her see the carvings for weeks and now she'd found the one I hadn't shown her on purpose.
I wanted to kiss her. Standing right there by the bench with the wind blowing and a storm coming in, I wanted to kiss her so badly I could almost taste her lips. Fuck, I couldn't have any of that.
The wind shifted. The sky cracked open about thirty seconds later. The first drops hit my pack and then the temperature dropped ten degrees in twenty seconds.
“We’ve got to get to the cabin,” I said. “It’s half a mile. Run.” I grabbed her hand and didn't let go this time.
Biscuit was ahead of us, smart enough to know where shelter was without being told. Soleil kept up as pea-sized hail fell around us. The cabin came up on the left. I slammed the door open with my shoulder. Biscuit was already inside.
I pulled her in behind me and shut the door, then stood with my back against it for a beat while the hail bounced off the roof.
She stood in the middle of the dirt floor with her braid coming undone and her cheeks red from the cold, clutching her pack against her chest like she was trying to keep it safe.
Our eyes met. The only light came through the one window that wasn't boarded over. The hail hammered the roof. In the corner, Biscuit had already curled up and closed his eyes, settling in for the long haul.