Chapter Nine
ARIS
My fingers find cold nylon where Nash should be.
In the disoriented haze of morning, I reach out, my hand searching for the body that has become my anchor in this frozen world. My fingers brush cold nylon and then nothing. His sleeping bag is gone. His pad is bare, flattened into the tent floor. He didn't just leave—he took his kit with him.
He didn't come back in last night.
It all returns in one humiliating piece: two almost-kisses in one night, my cowardly retreat into the tent, and him choosing the bitter dark over the small space beside me.
I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest. The air inside the tent is frigid, lacking the shared body heat that kept us comfortable during the storm. My breath plumes white in the silence.
I am a scientist. I deal in data, in observable phenomena, in cause and effect.
Cause:
Prolonged isolation with a physically attractive, unexpectedly emotionally intelligent male who saves my life on a daily basis.
Effect:
Compromised judgment and a dopamine response that has absolutely no place in a professional expedition.
It's textbook. It's predictable. So why does it feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff without a harness?
I dress quickly, layering my misery under merino wool and Gore-Tex. When I unzip the tent flap, the blinding brightness of the Alaskan morning hits me like a slap.
Nash is by the sleds, re-lashing the equipment cases.
He's moving the way he does when something has gotten under his skin, every tug on a strap a little harder than necessary, every knot cinched tight enough to cut.
He looks like he hasn't slept; the shadows under his eyes weren't there yesterday, and his jaw is set in a line hard enough to break granite.
His sleeping bag is rolled and lashed to the top of his pack, dusted with ice crystals from a night outside the tent.
"Morning," he says without looking up. His voice is gravel and distance.
"Morning." I feel awkward, ungainly in my heavy boots. "Did you … did you sleep out here?"
He finally glances at me. His hazel eyes are flat, the warmth from last night completely iced over. "I hollowed into the drift on the north side. Storm did most of the work. Warmer than you'd think."
It's a lie. Or if it's not a lie, it's a deflection. He slept in the snow to stay away from me.
"Coffee's in the thermos," he adds, gesturing to the camp stove where a battered metal flask sits steaming in the snow. "Oatmeal's ready. We need to move in twenty. If we want to catch the herd grazing, we need to be on the ridge by eight."
He's back to being The Guide, the employee, the man who gets the job done and nothing else.
It should be a relief. It stings like frostbite.
"Right," I say, grabbing the thermos. "Twenty minutes."
The ride to the observation ridge is silent, my grip on his waist light and rigid, his driving a notch faster than usual, as if speed can outrun what's sitting on the seat between us.
By the time we've snowshoed the last half-mile and set up in the dwarf spruce overlooking the valley, yesterday's magic of discovery has hardened into the grim determination of data collection.
"There," Nash whispers, pointing.
I raise my binoculars. The herd is there, a few hundred yards downwind. And in the center, unmistakable with his hooked brow tine and massive build, is Waldo.
Seeing him again punches through my internal drama. He really is magnificent. He moves through the deep snow with a power that defies the harsh conditions, breaking trail for the three cows and the younger bull following him.
I start typing furiously, documenting the behavior. Nash watches me for a second, and I catch him trying not to react.
"What?" I ask, pausing.
"Waldo," he says, shaking his head slightly. "I still can't believe you guys call a seven-hundred-pound survival machine 'Waldo.'"
The corners of my mouth pull up, first time today. "It wasn't my idea. Thaddeus named him."
"Let me guess," Nash says, adjusting his scope. "Latin root? Some obscure mythological reference?"
"No. Literally the guy in the striped sweater and beanie."
Nash lowers his binoculars, looking at me with incredulity. "The children's book? Where's Waldo?"
"Thaddeus had a … specific sense of humor.
" I check the camera settings, capturing a sequence of Waldo digging for lichen.
"The first year we tracked him, he was impossible to find.
We'd get a satellite ping, fly out, and he'd be gone.
Just vanished into the landscape. Thaddeus spent three weeks staring at aerial photos, cursing, until finally he slammed a map down and yelled, 'Where is he?
It's like playing Where's Waldo with a four-legged ghost! '"
Nash chuckles, the sound low and rusty, like something he hasn't used in a while. "So the name stuck."
"It stuck. Thaddeus put 'CHIEF WALDO SPOTTER' on his email signature for the last five years of his career. Said it was for solidarity."
Nash is grinning now, a real grin that reaches his eyes. "I like him. Your Thaddeus. He sounds like he didn't take himself too seriously."
"He took the work seriously," I say softly. "But he knew that if you couldn't laugh at the absurdity of freezing your ass off to find a deer, you wouldn't survive the season."
"Smart man." Nash looks back through the scope. "Though I gotta say, looking at that bull … he doesn't look like a Waldo. He looks like a Tank. Or a Brutus."
"Waldo is incognito," I defend, enjoying the banter. "He's blending in. That's his superpower."
"If you say so." Nash shifts his weight, and his knee brushes mine.
The contact is accidental, minor, meaningless.
It stops the conversation dead.
The laughter evaporates, leaving us sitting in the snow, shoulder to shoulder, with the ghost of last night hanging between us.
Nash doesn't pull away this time. He stays there, his warmth seeping through our layers, a steady point of contact in the vast whiteness.
"Aris," he says. He's not looking at me. He's looking at the caribou, but his voice is focused entirely on me.
"Yeah?" My pulse kicks up, traitorous as ever.
"About last night."
I tighten my grip on the tablet. "We don't have to talk about it."
"I think we do." He turns then, shifting in the snow so he's facing me.
The playfulness is gone, replaced by that intense, hazel-eyed seriousness that makes my mouth go dry.
"Because I left last night, and I gave you the cold shoulder this morning, and neither one was fair.
I told myself I was giving you space. I wasn't. I was scared. "
"Of what?" I ask, quiet.
"Of what I want. Of what I'll do if I let myself have it. So tell me what was going on for you in that tent, because I've been guessing since three AM and none of my guesses are good."
"It was … panic," I admit. "It was me realizing that I am in the middle of nowhere with a man who is confusing the hell out of me, and I have a job to do, and I promised a dead man I would finish it, and I can't … I can't mess this up."
"You think this"—he gestures vaguely between us—"messes up the work?"
"Doesn't it?" I look at him, pleading for him to understand. "Nash, you're the guide. I'm the client. When this is over, I go back to Seattle. I go back to a tenure-track review and faculty meetings. You stay here."
"I know where I stay," he says, quiet.
"So what are we doing?" The question comes out sharper than I intended. "Are we pretending that we aren't … that there isn't …"
"Chemistry?" he supplies. "Attraction? The fact that I wanted to kiss you so bad last night I had to go sleep in a snowbank to stop myself?"
The admission hits me in the chest. He wanted to. He did want to.
"You slept in a snowbank?"
"Figuratively. But it was cold." He holds my gaze. "I'm not blind, Aris. And I'm not made of stone. I know something is happening here. But I also know you're right."
He looks back at the valley, where Waldo is calmly chewing lichen, oblivious to the human complications observing him.
"You have a mission," Nash says. "That caribou down there? That's the priority. That's the promise. Anything else … anything else is a distraction."
"A distraction," I repeat, the word tasting bitter even though I know it's true.
"We need to get that collar off him," Nash says. "We need to get your data. And then I need to get you home safely. That's the job."
He looks at me again, and for a second, the mask slips. I see the longing, raw and unguarded. "And if I start something with you out here … if I let myself have what I want … I'm not going to be able to do the job. Because I'll be too busy worrying about you to keep you safe."
I take a deep breath, the cold air stinging my lungs. He's right. Of course he's right. Thaddeus would say the same thing. Focus on the data, Aris. The variables.
"Okay," I say. I force my voice to be steady. "Okay. You're right. The mission comes first."
"Friends?" Nash asks. He holds out a gloved hand. It's a peace offering, a boundary line drawn in the snow.
I look at his hand. I know that if I take it, I'm agreeing to put the genie back in the bottle. I'm agreeing to be colleagues, partners, friends, and nothing more.
"Friends," I say.
I put out my hand, and he shakes it.
It should feel like closing a door.
Instead, as his fingers close around mine, strong, warm, protective, it feels like a lie, necessary and survival-based, but a lie, nonetheless.
"Good," Nash says. He releases my hand a fraction of a second too slowly. "Now. Look at the herd. The young bull is moving up. I think he's going to challenge Waldo for the best patch of lichen."
"Right," I say, lifting my binoculars with hands that are shaking again. "Dominance behavior. Recording."
We watch and we work. We talk about caribou ethology and snow conditions and wind direction, and we joke about Waldo's various aliases—Tank, Brutus, and the day Nash tried out Sir Hoof-a-lot.
But every time he moves, I feel it. Every time our eyes meet over the equipment, the air snaps tight.
We've agreed to ignore the fire. But as I watch Waldo trudging through the snow, keeping his head down and moving forward against the wind, I have a feeling that ignoring the fire doesn't put it out.
It lets it burn hotter, deep down where you can't see it until it's too late.
"He's moving again," Nash says. "Heading for the basin."
"Let's follow him," I say. "Where's Waldo going now?"
"Hopefully," Nash says, packing the scope, "somewhere easier to handle than where we are."
I look at the set of his shoulders. He won't meet my eyes. I think. Unlikely.