Chapter 45
Alec
I wake to a buzz on my nightstand and flip the phone open to see a message from Rob.
Rob
Weather window opened on Matanuska if you’re up for a climb.
Hangar at 3 a.m.
I’ll drop you before sunrise.
I shoot up before I can second-guess myself. This may be my only window before Wild Trails. I’ve been carrying a doubt for weeks that if I don’t stand on real ice before the competition, I’ll freeze on the rappel again and let Clem down.
If I can stand on Matanuska without Finn beside me, I’ll prove something to myself: that I’m still a climber, still a man who knows his body, still someone worthy enough to push off the shore next to Clementine.
I need that proof.
Three hours up, one hour down.
I can be back before Clem’s afternoon stretches. Back before the steak dinner we have at Daisy’s tonight to fuel up for tomorrow’s race.
Alec
b there in 2 hrs
I type out a message for Clem, but my screen dims and then flips black. It’s dead. Fuck. I search my room for a charger but can’t find one.
I’ll write a note instead.
I pull my notebook from the drawer; there’s still glitter stuck in the spine from Clementine’s birthday performance last week. I brush it off, flip open a page, and scrawl:
Sorry to miss the walk. Back before dinner. Promise.
I stare at it until the letters blur. It feels too impersonal. I tear the page out and start again.
Don’t worry. Just a quick climb. Training before Wild Trails. I’ll be back soon. Save me a smile for when I get in.
Still sounds like I’m trying too hard. Like I’m begging her not to worry when I already know she will. I rip out the page and try again.
Weather looks good on Matanuska. Couldn’t waste it. I’ll be back before dinner. I want to earn that steak. Trust me.
I let the words sit on the page. They feel plain, like something she can hold. The way I want her to hold me when I walk back through her door. This note, I keep. I fold it slowly, crease by crease, until the sheet turns into a tulip.
Then I move, quietly grabbing my pack and boots and heading out the door.
Finn and Yura will be tied up in Anchorage with Mozart’s checkup, so no one will ask where I’ve gone.
Clementine’s house rises out of the dark in front of me. I crouch, slide the tulip under the welcome mat, and let my palm rest there. This is proof that I can do two things at once: leave but not disappear.
Because maybe healing isn’t a single summit. Maybe it’s a string of these small ascents. Writing the words instead of saying nothing. Folding them into a tulip instead of crumpling them up. Letting someone worry about me.
The real climb is waiting, but this was the first ascent of the day.
Each swing of my hooks is a test, like pressing two fingers to the glacier’s throat. Alive or hollow, solid or about to give.
Ice never lies.
The silence on Matanuska is meditative. I drive the front points of my crampons into the brittle blue, two at a time, feeling each tooth find purchase.
My breath fogs in front of me, like smoke curling into the late morning air.
The pick of my axe lands with a perfect, swallowed thunk—no dinner-plating, no splintering. Just honest placement.
I’m not naive. Matanuska is no K2, but she is not gentle. Every few seconds she creaks with the rising sun. A hundred meters away, an entire ridge collapses.
I’m 3,500 feet up, alone. Solo roped. Just me and the wall.
There’s no Finn yelling below me. No Clementine beside me. No one to save me if I screw up. That’s the point. This is where I prove I still have it. That K2 didn’t strip this out of me.
That I can climb clean, methodically, unbroken.
That I’m still worth a damn.
I screw another anchor in, hand steady, run a sling, and clip in.
The carabiner is a promise, and I treat it like one: deliberate placements, redundancy where I can build it, eyes always scanning the next ten moves.
I don’t romanticize it; I count it. Pick, step, torso close to the wall, so my center of gravity stays neat.
Good stance, good balance, keep the load on the tools.
Clementine lingers in my thoughts the entire climb. A flicker at the edge of my vision, a flash of orange hair like a fox darting through snow. For a beat, I almost turn my head, almost call her name into the wind.
I miss her. I do.
But the ache is different here. This ache feels stronger, cleaner, something I can carry. It’s not a weight pulling me down, it’s something to climb toward.
That’s the difference. I’m not clawing at the wall to prove I can still cling to life. I’m climbing because I want to go home to her. Because I finally know what it feels like to want more than the summit.
God, this is where I belong. Climbing through the silence now so I can go back to the life awaiting me. I belong here because it reminds me of who I am. And I belong there because she reminded me of who I could still be.
Glacier climbing is a different muscle than alpine climbs or rock.
There’s a logic to moving up a vertical sheet of ice: the axes are variables, my feet are coefficients.
I read the ice better than I’ve ever read people’s faces.
A ripple of meltwater means softness; a shadow may hide a hollow.
Every decision is small and exact, which is exactly what I need right now.
Tiny certainties in a world that has given me too many big, ugly unknowns.
I move higher. Flick my wrist and secure my axe before driving another screw into the glacier, making sure it has hold before clipping in.
I have a lifetime of ice under my boots. A thousand climbs etched into my bones.
My watch chirps a storm warning, and I feel the hair rise along my neck. I’m moving slower than I want. Rob warned me a front was coming; if I stay efficient, I can top out this line and be tucked back into lower snow before a storm folds over the ridge.
I haven’t felt this free since the accident. Not since guilt sank into me like frostbite.
Trust the gear. Trust your body.
The last push is steeper. My quads fire, lungs pulling cold air. Snow crystals against my jacket.
I reach the top and mantle the lip. Fifteen years on ice taught me how to pull with my whole body instead of letting one muscle fight the rest. I drag my weight up and roll until I’m standing, both axes buried in the hardpack, and the world opens.
The sky is a hard blue dome. My chest is heaving, and the urge to howl up at that wide sky comes from somewhere ancient.
I howl and cheer and scream and let go of everything I have been holding on to since Finn’s accident.
My voice scours itself against the valley, echoing back to me.
The sun strikes the ice, and a thousand little flecks wink.
In that dizzying blue, I see her everywhere. Freckles scattered like specks of dirt locked in the ice. The curve of her laugh traced in a ridge where the sun carves light into shadow. And her hair—god, her copper hair—is the horizon itself.
The thought hits me like an avalanche in my chest, tearing through every layer of armor I’ve built.
I love her.
It rips out of me raw. The mountain doesn’t need to hear it. She does.
I wanted to shield her from my storms, keep her from worrying every time I clipped in. But maybe this is the point: the blessing is having someone who will worry. Someone who waits. Someone who loves me back.
Suddenly, all the instincts that have kept me climbing for years—the hunger for summits, the drive to stay on the wall longer than anyone else—flip inside out. For the first time in my life, I want off the mountain more than I want up it.
This time, the summit isn’t the goal. The goal is down. Home. Her.
I’ve never wanted to get off a mountain faster.
“Rob, I’m coming down. See you at the bottom,” I say into the radio.
“Alec wa—” The walkie cracks, then goes to static.
“Repeat. You’re cutting out.”
“Behind you.”
I turn around and see a blizzard speeding toward me. Fuck. The horizon dissolves into white. A wall of snow tumbles down faster than I can move. I need to hurry.
I settle into the harness, crampons locking into the frozen wall, and descend. Each motion is exact, practiced, and for a moment the edge of fear fades—I am present, the nightmares held at bay. I unscrew my first anchor and pick up the pace.
Anchor. Unclip. Kick. Drop.
A cold current sweeps down. The chill that hits my right cheek is so harsh it’s like a dragon exhaling ice along my face. A gust tears at my rope. I hear a pop, and then I’m falling.
I feel nothing and everything all at once. The harness cinched hard across my hips, the rope biting into my hands like a living thing, my crampons scrabbling uselessly against nothing.
I slam into the ice. The pain is instant, spread across my back, and knocking the air clean out of me.
My ribs compress, and the breath tears from my lungs in one hot, animal gasp.
Snow and ice explode into my face, needles that sting like a dozen thrown pins.
My head throbs as I hang there. The harness is a godawful snugness across my pelvis, but I’m alive.
I spit out blood and realize that I’m dangling from an anchor that has held.
Adrenaline detonates. My body shakes wildly with it.
Every vision of my girl hits harder than the fall. And I know—I know—I cannot die on this wall. Not with her humming “The Swan” through my head. Not with Finn’s grin, Mozart’s stink. Not with Wild Trails tomorrow. Not with my whole life ahead of me.
It takes everything—strength I didn’t know I had—but I right myself, crampons finding ice, axes digging in above me.
I’m raw, cut, and burning where rope sliced my skin, but I am moving. Down.
Beneath every placement, every strike: her. The race. The life waiting below.
I will not vanish into this wall. I will not leave her wondering.
If I make it down, I’ll never climb solo again.
If I make it down, I’ll tell her I love her.
If I make it down—no, when I make it down.