Chapter 7 First Heat
SEVEN
First Heat
EVIE
The crevice is smaller than I remember.
Or maybe it just feels smaller with Riot pressed against me, his body a wall of heat in the narrow space.
We're sitting with our backs to the rock, legs stretched out, shoulders touching because there's nowhere else for shoulders to go.
The granite is cold through my fleece, but everywhere he touches me is warm.
Too warm.
"How long do we wait?" My voice is low, barely above a whisper. Sound carries in canyons.
"Until the search moves on. Could be a few hours. Could be longer if they're thorough."
I'm hyper-aware of every point of contact between us.
His arm against mine. His thigh parallel to my thigh, not quite touching but close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him.
The adrenaline from the climb is still singing in my veins, a frantic, electric hum that makes every sense feel dialed up to ten.
"They'll assume we went around eventually. By the time they figure out we didn't, we'll be over the top and gone."
"A few hours, then…” I shift, trying to find a more comfortable position in a space that doesn't allow for comfort.
His leg brushes mine. Neither of us acknowledges it. "In a crack in a cliff. In the cold. With cartel soldiers searching for us below."
"Romantic, right?"
He laughs—quiet, surprised. "Not the word I'd use."
"What word would you use?"
"Insane. Improbable. The plot of a bad action movie.
" He turns his head to look at me, and even in the dim light filtering into the crevice, I can see the humor dancing in his eyes.
"If someone told me this morning I'd be hiding in a crack in a rock face with a kindergarten teacher who free solos cliffs for fun, I'd have questioned their sanity. "
"And now?"
"Now I'm questioning my own." But he's smiling. "In a good way."
Below us, voices echo off the canyon walls. Spanish, mostly. Commands, questions, frustration. They're searching the canyon floor, the approaches, the places people usually go when they're running for their lives.
They're not looking up.
"They really can't see us?" His voice drops even lower.
"Not from down there. The angle's wrong—the crevice looks like a shadow on the rock face, if you can see it at all.
I've spent hours in this crack, watching climbers on the opposite wall, watching hawks circle the thermals, watching the light change as the sun moved across the sky.
I've never seen anyone even glance up here.
It's invisible unless you know exactly where to look. "
"And you're sure about that."
"I've sheltered here in thunderstorms. Eaten lunch here while groups passed below. Taken naps." I pause. "It's my spot. Has been for two years."
He's quiet for a moment, processing. "Your spot."
"Everyone needs a place where no one can find them." The words come out more honest than I intended. "This is mine."
Something shifts in his expression. The humor fades, replaced by something more thoughtful. More tender. He looks at me with a raw kind of focus, his gaze dropping to my hands—still dusty from the granite—then back to my eyes. He’s looking at me like I’m the rescue, not the other way around.
"Thank you," he says. "For sharing it with me."
The sincerity catches me off guard. I expected jokes, deflection, the easy charm he wears like armor. Not this—this quiet acknowledgment that I've given him something real.
"You're welcome." My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
The voices below grow fainter. Moving on, searching elsewhere. We're safe—as safe as we can be, a hundred and twenty feet up a cliff face with killers below.
The temperature is dropping. I can see my breath now, faint puffs of vapor in the fading light. The adrenaline that kept me warm during the climb is fading, and the cold is seeping in—through my fleece, through my jeans, into my bones.
I shiver. Try to hide it. Fail.
"You're cold." It's not a question.
"I'm fine."
"You're shaking."
"It's just—" Another shiver cuts me off. Harder this time. My body is betraying me.
He doesn't ask permission. Just shifts, wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulls me against his side. The heat of him is immediate and overwhelming—like stepping from a freezer into a warm room.
"Better?"
I should pull away. Should maintain some kind of professional distance, some boundary between rescue and rescued. But he's so warm, and I'm so cold, and the solid weight of him feels like safety in a way I don't want to examine too closely.
"Better," I admit.
We sit like that for a while. His arm around me, my head slowly gravitating toward his shoulder, the warmth between us building into something that has nothing to do with survival. The light fades from gray to blue to the deep purple of mountain twilight.
The tears come without warning. Not sobs—just a quiet overflow, leaking down my cheeks, impossible to hide in this small space. He doesn't look away. Doesn't make a joke. Just brushes the tears away with his thumb and watches me like I'm something worth seeing.
"I don't—" My voice breaks. I try again. "I don't know how to do this."
"Do what?"
"This." I gesture between us, at the narrow space, at his hand still cradling my face. "Whatever this is. I'm not good at—I don't know how to—"
"Evie." He says my name like it means something.
He pauses, his eyes flicking instinctively toward the opening of the crevice, checking the perimeter even now.
The soldier in him is calculating the risks, the extraction time, the kill zone below.
I can see the flicker of professional hesitation in his jaw—the logic that says keep your head in the game.
"We don't have to do anything. We can just sit here until the cold forces us to move. That's fine. That's more than fine."
But that's not what I want. That's not what my body wants, pressed against his, hyperaware of every point of contact. That's not what the ache in my chest wants, the one that's been building since he walked through my bedroom door and told me to trust my gut.
"What if I don't want to just sit here?"
The words come out before I can stop them. Before I can think about the wisdom of saying them. His breath catches—I feel it, a hitch in the steady rhythm of his chest.
His eyes drop to my mouth, then snap back up to mine. He looks torn—one hand resting on the grip of his holstered weapon, the other tangled in my hair. He’s caught between the mission and the woman who just saved his life on a vertical mile of rock.
"Evie." His voice has dropped. Gone rough at the edges. "We're a hundred feet up a cliff with people trying to kill us. I'm supposed to be protecting you. This is—"
"Insane. Improbable. The plot of a bad movie." I throw his words back at him, and something sparks in his eyes—the soldier losing ground to the man. "I know all of that. And I still—"
"Still what?"
"Still want you to kiss me."
The silence stretches. One heartbeat. Two. Three. He looks out at the canyon rim one last time, a brief, sharp professional flicker of the eyes, acknowledging the danger, the protocol, and the sheer stupidity of what he’s about to do.
Then he looks at me, and the mission vanishes.
"If I kiss you." His voice is barely a whisper now, rough and wrecked. "I'm not going to want to stop."
"I know."
"Do you? Because I'm trying very hard to be a gentleman here, and you're making it impossible.”
"What if I don't want a gentleman?"