Chapter 29
Alec
Brooklyn
Alec! This is an INTERVENTION. You’ve ignored us for a month.
Dante
Bro’s up in Alaska probably making fire with rocks and talking to moose.
At least tell us you’ve showered.
Reese
I tugged his hair for you, Alec.
Dante
Please, fighter, you wanted to do that
Frankie
HELLOOO get a fucking room, this is a PG CHAT.
Brooklyn
Focus. Stone Times article said you’re signed up for some competition.
Who’s the ballerina in the photos?
Alec
been busy. she’s the granddaughter of the guy we bought the lodge from
Cameron
Coverage said you froze mid-wall. You good?
Alec
Rope got stuck. I’m fine
Frankie
U sure?
Looked like u were dangling like a muppet!!!
ANYWAY. I wanna come watch the comp.
October 3rd??? I’m booking the jet
Alec
Don’t
Cameron
we’re free that weekend.
Daphne
There's some yarn stores there I've had bookmarked forever!
Frankie
DIBS on the biggest room.
Get me a race car bed.
Oooo & also set me up a sim rig.
Alec
no need to come
Frankie
Already booked hehehe
Brooklyn
Keep ignoring us and we’ll come early
Alec
i go quiet when i train. u know that
Brooklyn
You’re not dangling from a cliff right now. So text more…please
Daphne
Send me your new lady friend’s measurements
I’ll knit us all matching beanies!!
Frankie
Found her Insta.
Alec
i'm turning my phone off
The gravel parking lot of Chugach State Park is empty when we pull in, tucked at the edge of a trailhead that doesn’t show up on AllTrails.
It’s from Bill’s old trail journal, dog-eared, water-warped pages circled in red ink and labeled in his sharp, all-caps handwriting: Best overnight trip with Margaret. 10/10.
I’m trusting that it’ll be a great overnight trip with Clementine too.
It’s another overcast day, the September mornings growing chillier by the day. Even with the sun crawling up behind the jagged slate peaks, our breath ghosts white in front of us. Clouds sag low over the ridgeline like bruises, reluctant to clear.
Not everyone loves hiking in this weather, but I can’t resist the smell of wet earth, rain-soaked pine, petrichor, and moss.
This trip is to get Clementine used to hiking for multiple days after sleeping on a thin foam pad. There are no showers, no cell service, and hopefully I can put off talking about Finn for another day.
“How’s your body after yesterday?” I tighten the straps on her pack. She could do it herself, but she lets me.
“From the hot spring?” Her beautiful, sleepy eyes blink up at me, pink blooming across her cheeks from the cold. She’s fresh-faced today, except for her grapefruit lip gloss. God, I want to taste her again. “What do you think we would’ve done if Mozart hadn’t barged in?”
“Clementine,” I scold.
She brushes her fingertips over my jacket zipper. “Admit it, you dragged me out here at dawn for an excuse to spend the night together. If you weren’t such an obsessive planner, I might’ve believed you ‘forgot’ the tent.”
I clench my jaw. Every nerve in me is screaming to forget the damn trail, to pull her in and kiss her until neither of us can breathe. But that’s the problem—I want her too damn much, for the wrong reasons. She doesn’t deserve to be the distraction that shuts off my brain for a few minutes.
“We actually need to sleep tonight,” I grit out. “Tomorrow’s push will be harder. You gotta get used to three days back-to-back.”
“I haven’t slept through the night in months. I don’t think that’ll be an issue.” She laughs, but there’s a darkness ringing her eyes that I don’t find funny. I’d trade an hour of my sleep a dozen times over if it meant she’d wake up rested for once.
“I need to know how you’re feeling, Clem, so I know how hard I can push you today.”
“I’m sore but manageable. No blisters. Are you sure Finn—”
Thankfully, my watch buzzes, and I turn before she can finish. “Keep up.”
We pass a warped wooden trail sign covered in thick moss, Blu Peak scrawled in old fading letters. I pat my pockets—map, bear spray, pocketknife.
A few bends later, we pass a pond that spreads out in a clearing. “I like walking behind you,” Clementine says.
“Because you don’t want to navigate?”
“Because it’s the best view on the trail.”
I glance over my shoulder. “Are you catcalling me?”
Her grin is unapologetic, bright as the pond water. “Don’t act like you don’t love it.”
“I don’t,” I lie. We pass over a wooden bridge, and on the other side, large boulders jut out of the ground amid thickets of buckbrush. “Careful up here. The bush is overgrown.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind overgrown bush.”
I click my teeth at her. “Never do.” I dig out my axe and cut us a path. There will be no scraped thighs on my watch. When a clear trail opens up, I stop. “You take this stretch. Set the pace, I’ll time us. If match day’s trail has this much elevation, we’ll need to move faster.”
She arches her brow. “You’re really handing over control?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
She pecks my cheek before darting ahead, quickening her stride. I inhale once. My control is hanging on by a thread of floss at this point.
Her pace doesn’t falter, even as the incline kicks up.
Groves of evergreens appear beside us. Geese honk overhead.
On the trail I clock moose tracks, caribou, and even a bear pad pressed into the mud.
I point things out because it’s easier than staying quiet.
She stops to inspect a cluster of mushrooms alongside blooms of bellflowers and cow parsnips.
Truth is, I’m watching her more than the trail.
Clementine looks at the world like it’s brand new, like even fungus deserves her full attention.
We cross a river where otters spin in the current, slick rocks bracketing the banks.
The mountains rear higher. Not that long ago, Finn and I would’ve waited for the whole range to ice over, pitched camp for a week, and seen how high we could get.
I wish I’d known K2 was our last climb. Maybe I would’ve savored everything, even the base camp stink, a little more.
Two hours in, blueberries spill across the slope beside a cairn.
I call a break, and she immediately eats the berries straight from the bush, juice streaking her chin.
My fingers itch to clean the drop of indigo that lingers on the side of her lips.
Or, better yet, a quick swipe of my tongue, and she’d be spotless.
I check my watch instead.
“Good job,” I tell her. “We’re twenty minutes ahead.”
She leans against a boulder. Her breaths come out in short, rapid pants. “After dragging me up here, are you finally going to talk about it?”
I freeze. “Talk about what?”
“You got weird last night, and you can’t avoid me bringing it up any longer.”
“I’m not—”
“Was it seeing Finn?”
I should’ve told her everything yesterday.
“Part of it,” I say. She bites her lip, waiting for more. She’s good at waiting. “He wants me to stay here.” I pause and stare down at my boots. “And I haven’t told him I don’t want to.”
Her hand brushes my arm, steadying me enough that I push a little further.
“On K2, while I was pulling him down, we promised we’d retire.
And I should want that. I almost lost him.
But climbing—” My throat closes. “It’s my whole life.
I don’t know how to set it down. And now it’s like—” I rake a hand through my hair.
“I just…I feel stuck. Like there was life before Finn’s accident, and now there’s this purgatory, where nothing’s moving forward because the person I’ve done everything with since I was five suddenly can’t. ”
She rubs her thumb along my skin, grounding me.
“It’s not just climbing,” I say, forcing the words out.
“It’s everything. We’ve always been in lockstep.
Same trips, same peaks, same risks. We made this unspoken commitment that it would always be both of us or neither.
And now…” The sentence collapses in my mouth because there’s no good way to end it.
“And now it can’t be both,” she whispers.
“If I go forward without him, maybe our friendship is over. And then what’s left? Just the habit of being friends? Just our history.” My voice cracks in a way I hate. “What if that’s all we are?”
Instead of answering right away, she squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back. “Yeah. That’s hard.” She doesn’t offer more than that. Instead, she tugs, coaxing me along the trail. Her steps are slow, like she knows I need movement more than I need a solution.
The silence between us is easy, allowing me to focus on my breathing.
We keep going up the muddy path until the hill crests and mist shrouds the entire valley, engulfing the trees and blurring the line between forest and trail.
It feels like only we exist here. Visibility is nonexistent, but still, we keep walking hand in hand, the only thing clear is the ground under our boots.
I keep checking my compass, adjusting us forward, but I never once drop her hand.
“It’s like walking blindfolded,” Clementine says.
“Yeah. You have to trust the map. Trust the man who drew it. Trust there’s something at the end worth finding.”
“Maybe that’s how it’s going to be with Finn.” Our gazes connect, and my pulse slows. She’s wise beyond her years.
I’ve spent my life needing to see every route before I took a single step—every hold memorized, every anchor placed twice, every variable accounted for until the margin of error felt almost manageable. Now here I am in the fog, pretending I know where I’m headed when I don’t.
This could be what holding more than one thing at once feels like. Not an easy, marked path where the outcome’s obvious. Just a strip of earth half-hidden, asking me to believe it’ll still be there when the mist lifts.
Avoidance has been my armor for so long. But with Clementine beside me, I can feel the edges giving way, hairline cracks forming where light may eventually get in.