Chapter 18 #2
She saw him in her peripheral vision, his motion fluid and decisive, reading the rock two steps ahead without seeming to think about it.
When they reached the top, he told her, “I’m not sure I managed that as well the first time.”
“It’d be easier on four paws. Kind of surprised humans manage it.” She blew out a breath. “Honestly, I’d be worried about any human doing a good part of this trail.”
“Yeah. Agreed — on all parts.”
“Do you ever string up humans?” she asked.
“Yeah. Do you know what a sweetbutt is?”
“I watched Sons of Anarchy.”
“Some of ours are human. Not many, but…”
He stopped talking, and it occurred to her he’d been about to share something he shouldn’t.
Something that fell on the wrong side of the line they'd drawn. She wanted to say something, but nothing that came to mind felt right. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?
Feeling so close to each other, with these damned walls we have to remember?
So she walked with him in awkward silence until he figured out how to finish the conversation within the rules.
“When you’ve butchered enough animals, you start reading bodies differently.
Weight distribution. How to stress a particular joint, tendon, or muscle.
Have to be more careful with humans, but yeah, I have occasion to, as you said, string them up. ”
His description hit her as possibly too honest. Way too honest.
“Most people wouldn’t actually say that out loud,” she noted, while considering how she felt about her live body being compared to a cow’s hanging carcass.
“I wouldn’t say it to just anyone. Was I wrong to share it with you?”
“No, and I’m glad you did. Thank you. It’s honest, and I’ll always appreciate truth.” Even when it was so fucking honest it made her need to step back and take a minute to be okay with it.
“Ditto.”
And then came a climb nearly straight up a mountain, scrambling up roots and rocks, holding onto trees for leverage. Switchbacks kept them from needing ropes to manage it, but just barely.
She stopped to appreciate the view at one point, and he told her, “We’re almost at today’s stopping point. This part of the trail gains around five hundred feet in elevation in less than a mile, but I promise the view at the top is worth it.”
Tuesday’s legs felt the climb, and she once again was in wonder that humans managed this trail. She was a wolf in good condition, and even she was breathing a little heavy. Her thighs burned, and she had to push herself up.
And then Knife made a right turn off the trail, and she followed him until the trees thinned, and the boulders and rocks they walked on came to a point with the view he’d promised, and he was right.
The climb had totally been worth it.
“Raven’s Point,” he told her.
Tuesday held onto a scraggly tree, stood with her toes near the edge of the point, and forgot to breathe.
The gorge spread below them, the ridge lines rolling away in every direction under an enormous blue sky.
The wind whipped and whistled, the kind of wind that lived up here and didn’t visit — and the proof of that was the gnarled, twisted trees that didn’t merely live here, they survived here, roots gripping the bare rock with what could only be called stubbornness.
All were stunted, many with missing or broken branches, scraggly evergreen poking out like manic tufts of hair.
Not a classical kind of beauty, and yet, she found them exquisite. Strikingly elegant in twisted, contorted defiance.
Knife came to stand beside her, close enough she could feel the warmth off him in the biting wind.
“You were right. Completely worth the climb.”
They stood in silence for a long time, but eventually she walked back and sat on a little rocky ledge, ten yards from the edge.
She’d pulled her water bottle out a few times to drink, but now she was hungry, so she pulled her two silicone ziplock bags of trail mix out. One for her, one for Knife.
He stared at them in her hand, rolled his backpack off, reached in, and pulled two silicone bags of trail mix from his bag with a smile.
“My wolf detests eating food out of plastic,” she told him.
“But glass isn’t practical on the trail,” he finished.
She nodded and opened one of her bags. He leaned to look inside.
“Your own recipe?”
She nodded, and he studied the contents.
“Pepitas?”
When she nodded again, he asked, “What are the orange things?”
“Candied ginger.”
He picked one out and ate it, and the slight widening of his eyes told her it’d surprised him.
“That’s… interesting.”
“It’s good.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He studied her bag again. “Dark chocolate chunks. Dried cherry pieces. A nice variety of nuts.” A pause. “Is that flaky salt on top?”
“Maldon. I add it at the end.”
He looked at her, and before she even thought about it, she told him, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
He lifted an eyebrow, and she added, “You were thinking something, and it seemed… harsh.”
“I was thinking,” he said carefully, “I would not have thought to do that, and I should have.”
Before she could apologize, he offered her his bag, and she breathed in the scent while looking over his choices.
“Smoked almonds, walnut pieces,” she said, studying his. “Raisins. Sunflower seeds. M&Ms.”
She pulled out a small handful and ate it, and he did the same with hers.
The two sat high up on a mountain, far from civilization, ate trail mix, and looked out at the gorge.
And Tuesday thought about all the large and small things she’d been not thinking too much about since she’d thrown her leg over his motorcycle hours earlier. It felt like it’d been days ago, so much had happened.
The experience of the ride, learning to move with him at first, and then just letting her body move with the bike, which just happened to be the same as moving with him.
And then the multiple cascades and waterfalls. The ancient hemlock. The vanishing creek. The skunk he’d handled without ceremony. The way he’d moved through the Fruit Bowl. The climb he’d done in silence until he felt she needed to know the goal would be worth it.
And now this — his own silicone bag of trail mix, made with care. Practical ingredients that worked. Nothing fancy, just tasty calories, and he’d made enough for two wolves.
And he hadn’t made fun of her fancier trail mix. He’d eaten it and enjoyed it.
She’d created a box for what this was between them. Fun sex. Adventurous sex.
Nothing more.
But today had been more. A lot more.
She didn’t know what to do with all of it. It didn’t fit in her neat and tidy box anymore.
The wind moved through the misshapen trees on the point, the gorge spread out below them, and she thought that some places had a way of making truth impossible to deny.