Chapter 24 The Present
THE PRESENT
AMELIA
The sun hung high in the sky, casting elongated shadows that danced across the forest floor like ghostly figures. Sounds of rustling leaves and distant animal calls filled the silence, but the tranquility felt like a cruel joke in the face of our grim reality.
Caiden and I had been walking for miles, our footsteps echoing in the stillness. Hours slipped by without a word being spoken between us, both too stubborn to break the silence.
It was as if we were caught in a standoff, too afraid to unravel the tension that had been simmering between us for years.
It had been almost a full day and a half since we began wandering, lost and disoriented, with no clue how to find our way back.
Caiden insisted he could navigate us out of this mess, but my faith in him was as low as the trenches of a darkened sea.
He stomped confidently through the underbrush, his pace almost too quick for me to keep up. My legs dragged wearily behind him, my hair sticking to my forehead with sweat.
A deep, rumbling noise erupted from my stomach, a reminder of just how dire our situation had become.
I couldn’t sustain this much longer.
“Come on, Amelia. Pick up the pace,” Caiden grumbled, never bothering to adjust his speed for my dwindling stamina.
“Maybe if you could slow down, we could avoid tiring ourselves out too quickly,” I retorted, glaring daggers at his back.
“I’m not interested in slowing down. I’m interested in getting back to civilization.” His tone held no room for debate, but I bit back anyways.
“How do you expect to get out of here alive? We have no supplies. Nothing to help us.” If only we had thought to pack essentials before kayaking into this nightmare. If only I had listened to that persistent voice of anxiety that warned me against it.
“I’ll find a way. I was in the military.”
A daunting thought clawed at my mind. What if he decided to leave me behind to save himself? Or worse, what if he turned on me? I shook my head, desperately trying to rid myself of those terrible images. He wouldn’t do that. Would he?
“When did you join the military?” I asked, trying to fill the silence with conversation. It was better than spiraling into my dark thoughts.
His body was tense, rigid as if horrid memories were playing in his mind. “Around nine months after graduation. I stayed for a little while after you left, but I had to get the hell out of that town. Most importantly, away from my asshole father.”
“What did your father do to you exactly? I’ve heard rumors, but it was always different things I would hear.” I saw an opportunity to dig into him, so I took it.
He stopped and spun around, anger swirling in the depths of his eyes. “I’m not talking about my father. Don’t make me go there.”
I shrank back at his intensity. “Sorry. You brought it up. I figured I could understand you a little better since we’re stuck out here.”
“Well, stop trying. I’m not discussing the horrors of his actions with you.” He took a deep breath, frustration etched across his features. “Only one thing is on my mind: escaping from this goddamn wilderness.”
And just like that, the door closed on that conversation. Curiosity nagged at me. I had a good idea of how his father treated him, but I wanted to hear it from his mouth.
Silence swept over us once again. A flicker of movement in the leaves would come and go, the call of a bird whistling through the windless air.
If only I’d chosen differently, I’d be sprawled on my sofa right now, the afternoon sun drifting through my living room windows. Instead, I stood on a dusty trail, my thoughts heavy as storm clouds.
Dark emotions churned in my gut, old memories rising like restless spirits: the pranks that once seemed harmless, the barbed insults, the careless cruelty, and the night Lillian gave up on us all.
My heart thundered, hot rage threatening to boil over.
I clenched my fists until my knuckles ached, forcing the anger back down into its cage.
Then Caiden’s voice cut through my turmoil. “We’ve got a problem.” He skidded to a halt so abruptly that pebbles skittered across the path.
My limbs already trembled with exhaustion. “What? Did you have an accident?” I snapped, my tone heavy with fatigue.
“Fuck you,” he muttered, dark brows drawing together. “No, there’s a ravine. Right in the middle of the path. We’ll have to go around it.”
A cold dread slid up my spine. I peered over Caiden’s broad shoulders. The trail ended in a ragged edge of cracked earth, plunging into a yawning chasm.
Sunlight glinted off jagged stones far below, and the wind whispered up from the depths, carrying dust and distant echoes.
“Looks like there’s no hope left,” I said, voice flat. “I’m just gonna sit here and wait for something to happen.”
Caiden’s irritated scowl deepened. “Wait for what?”
“For my knight in shining armor,” I shot back. “Or maybe a miracle.”
He turned away, scanning the ravine’s lip as if it held secret escape routes. Sweat beaded at his hairline, his chest rising and falling beneath his sweat-darkened shirt.
Every muscle in his arms and shoulders stood out, taut like coiled ropes. My gaze flicked over the rigid planes of his back, the sinew of his neck.
My pulse skipped. Heat flushed my cheeks. Why was I even noticing this?
Did I just check out Caiden Baxter? Hell. I needed to snap out of it.
I pushed myself upright. The gravel crunched underfoot. Caiden glanced back. “Princess done marinating?”
I leveled him with a mock-courtly bow. “Madam is refreshed and ready for duty.”
He rolled his eyes, impassive. I swept my gaze across the broken trail, peering for any narrow ledge or fallen boulder we could use as a makeshift bridge.
My stomach growled, probably from hunger, or the adrenaline, or both.
“Maybe we can skirt the edge,” I suggested, voice steadier than I felt. “Ravines don’t go on forever.”
He crossed his arms. “I’m not wasting time on some fairy-tale detour.”
“Since when did you get to call all the shots?” I shot back, chest tightening.
“I did,” he said sharply. “Because I know how to navigate the wilderness better than you.”
I feigned an epileptic swoon, clutching my chest. “Oh dear, my intelligence and abilities insulted, what shall I do?”
“Knock it off, Amelia.” He threatened.
“Am I annoying you? Did I hit a nerve? So sorry, your highness,” I paused and scowled. “Not sorry.”
He ignored me, then abruptly barked, “Found something.”
My heart lifted. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he said, voice wary, “but you might hate it.”
We edged a few steps down a narrow berm, the air growing cooler as shadows gathered in the ravine’s crevasse.
Before us lay a massive fallen fir, its roots ripped up like the skeletal hands of some buried giant.
The trunk spanned the abyss, though it stopped short of the far side.
Its limbs curled down into the void, gnarled fingers brushing the rocky wall.
“This?” I echoed.
He nodded. “We’ll shimmy along the log, then climb the last stretch of the cliff face.”
I stared at that moss-speckled wood suspended above a drop that made my knees go weak. My heart hammered. Every instinct screamed no. No heights, no risk, no trial by tree trunk that might snap underfoot.
But there was no other choice. My pulse thudded in my ears as I swallowed hard. The journey wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
“You’re insane,” I said, the words spilling out in disbelief. The thought of navigating that treacherous path exhausted me further.
“Now is not the time to be stubborn,” Caiden said, his voice low against the roar of the wind slicing through the ravine.
I pressed my arms across my chest, feeling the coarse weave of my jacket dig into my elbows. “I’m not being stubborn,” I shot back, jaw tight. “I’d rather conserve what little energy I have, and keep my life, than risk it all trying something I’m not capable of.”
His brow lifted, a single dark hair arching in silent disbelief. “You really don’t have much faith in yourself.”
A bitter laugh escaped me as I glared at him. “Yeah. I don’t. Sorry to burst your bubble. Must be from all those years of abuse and degradation.” I tasted blood in my mouth, an old wound reopening.
“Don’t play the pity card,” he snapped, his voice rough with memory. “I’ve endured plenty of abuse too, from my father. But I’m not going to stand here whining about it. If you can’t believe in yourself, believe in me. We’re getting across.”
I turned to stare down into the maw of the ravine: sheer rock walls, twisted roots clinging to shale, and a narrow strip of light at the bottom where the forest floor lay bathed in shadow.
I swallowed. “Well, I don’t have faith in you, so what’s left?”
His answer was soft, but it hit me like a hammer. “Staying alive.”
We stood in ragged silence. Our argument had begun to circle like vultures, voices rising and accomplishing nothing. My lungs constricted; I breathed in a shaky, ragged hiss before nodding once.
A silent truce.
Caiden stepped forward first. I watched his boots scrape against the bark, sending a few grains of moss fluttering down like green snow.
He leaned back and slid along a thick horizontal branch, body angled, arms tight around the trunk.
The branch groaned but held him, its surface dark with damp and lichen.
I held my breath, willing the world to freeze so I could memorize every nuance: how his weight distributed evenly, how his thighs pinched the bark, how his fingertips curled into the wood’s deep grooves.
If I failed, it would be on me. No one else.
Halfway down, he paused, looking up with eyes cold and steady. “I suppose you should come on down. I’ll stay here in case you slip.”
My throat tightened. “You think I can’t do it?”
His exhale was a wounded sigh. “If you don’t want my help, fine. I’ll keep going without you.”
A vicious knot of guilt and fear twisted in my gut. I swallowed. “Fine.”