Chapter 8 #2
We sit in silence, each lost in thoughts we don’t share.
The sun angles lower, painting the peaks gold. Beautiful. Harsh. Unforgiving.
Like truth, perhaps.
Eventually, Mara stands. Tests her weight. Nods.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Ready.”
We continue climbing.
I guide us higher, following paths that appear in my mind like recalled memory. The settlement pulls at me now—not like the earlier call, but steady. Constant. A compass pointing home.
Home.
Is it home? I don’t remember it. Can’t picture it clearly.
But my body knows. My instincts recognize it.
Perhaps there, I’ll find answers.
Perhaps there, someone will know who I am. What I am.
And perhaps there, I’ll finally understand what Mara is hiding. What those operatives represent. What the pull connects me to.
The pieces will arrange themselves eventually.
They have to.
Because the alternative—that I’ll remain lost in this fog of questions without answers—is unacceptable.
I need to know.
Who I am. What I am. Why my body responds to distant calls without my permission. Why holding this woman’s hand feels both foreign and inevitable.
The sun drops toward the western peaks. Wind picks up, cold enough that Mara shivers despite the vest I gave her.
I find what I’m looking for as dusk approaches—a shallow overhang, more shelter than cave, but defensible. Good sightlines. Single approach.
“Here,” I say. “We stop for the night.”
Mara nods, too tired to argue.
I build a fire while she rests. Gather wood. Check the perimeter.
And I watch her.
Watch the way firelight catches in her hair—blue bleeding to dark at the roots. The way she moves with unconscious grace despite exhaustion and injury. The quick intelligence in her eyes.
She’s beautiful in ways I have no context for. No comparison point.
Yet I know.
I know because something in my chest responds to her presence like recognition. Like my body remembers what my mind has forgotten.
Dangerous territory.
I force my attention back to practical matters. Wood. Water. Food, if I can find any this high.
But my awareness keeps circling back to her.
The fire crackles, but Mara’s still shivering.
She’s trying to hide it. Curling tighter against the stone, pulling the vest closer. But I see the tremors running through her frame. Hear her teeth wanting to chatter despite her efforts to still them.
“You are cold,” I say.
“I’m fine.”
“You are lying.”
She huffs out a breath. “Okay, yeah. I’m freezing. Happy?”
I’m not. The admission bothers me more than it should; this fragile female struggling against elements I barely register.
I move before fully thinking it through. Settle beside her, pull her against my chest. She stiffens.
“K, what—?”
“Be still.” I wrap the cloak around us both, tucking it snugly across her shoulders. Then my arms follow, holding her firmly against my warmth.
She relaxes by degrees. I feel the moment tension bleeds from her muscles, replaced by something closer to surrender. Her body fits against mine in ways that feel inevitable. Predetermined. Like puzzle pieces finding their natural arrangement.
The scent of her fills my lungs… soft woman. Something floral. Bright. Living. It does something to the hollow space in my chest, filling it temporarily with sensation that isn’t loss.
“This is very chivalrous of you,” she murmurs against my shirt. “Very ‘damsel in distress.’”
“You are in distress.”
“Fair point.” Her voice carries that particular lilt I’m learning means humor. “Though I prefer ‘badass survivor’ to ‘damsel.’”
“You can be both.”
“Flatterer.” She shifts, finding a more comfortable position tucked under my chin. Her hand rests against my chest, palm flat over my heart. “You’re basically a furnace. How is that even possible?”
I have no answer, so I say nothing.
My body knows how to hold her. The realization strikes without warning—where my hand should rest at her hip, how to angle my chin so she fits perfectly beneath it, the way my arm curves around her waist like it’s traveled this territory before.
Muscle memory divorced from memory itself.
I should move. Put distance between us. This intimacy is unearned, built on nothing more than circumstance and cold mountain air.
I don’t move.
“This doesn’t mean anything, right?” Mara says after a long silence. “Just practical survival stuff. Body heat and all that.”
“If that is what you need to believe.”
She stills. I feel the shift—the way her breathing changes, shallows. She’s no longer simply accepting warmth. She’s aware. Of me. Of the space between us that isn’t space at all.
Her fingers curl slightly into my shirt. Testing. Or claiming. I can’t tell which.
“K…” She sounds uncertain. Searching.
“Sleep, Mara.” I keep my voice even, though something in me wants to tighten my hold. Wants to ask what she feels, this strange pull between us that has nothing to do with survival. “You are safe.”
“That’s what worries me.” The words come out so soft I almost miss them.
I don’t know if she means the operatives below or something else entirely. Something building between us despite the impossibility of it. Despite the fact that I don’t even know who I am.
Her breathing evens out as sleep claims her, but I feel the way her hand has curled into my shirt. Unconscious. Trusting.
I sit very still, hyperaware of every point where our bodies meet. The weight of her against my chest. The rise and fall of her breath. The heat we generate together in this small shelter against the mountain cold.
My mind should be on practical things. Routes. Dangers. The operatives still searching below.
Instead, I’m absorbing the exact texture of her hair where it brushes my jaw. The way her pulse flutters against my forearm. The small sound she makes when she settles deeper into sleep—contentment, almost. Safety.
It feels right. Natural. Like my body can remember what my mind can’t access.
I’ve held someone before.
The knowledge arrives with absolute certainty, accompanied by a hollow ache beneath my ribs. Not pain, exactly. Something closer to absence. A space where memory should live but doesn’t.
Who?
I close my eyes, searching for the shape of her. Try to pull detail from the void.
Rain. And ash.
The scent slams into me—so vivid I taste smoke on my tongue, feel cool droplets on my face. Phantom sensations that make my chest constrict.
I held someone who smelled of rain and ash.
Someone whose—
The image wavers. I reach for it desperately, but it’s like grasping mist. The harder I try to hold it, the faster it dissipates.
Gone.
The word echoes through the emptiness where the memory should be. Definite. Final. Not lost or missing but gone.
The ache sharpens, becomes almost physical. Loss so profound my chest can’t contain it.
I force my eyes open, force myself back to now. To Mara’s weight against me, her steady breathing, the mountain cold I barely feel.
Not her. Mara smells… alive.
The woman in my memory smelled of endings.
I don’t understand what that means. Don’t know if the memory is real or manufactured by a mind desperate to fill its own blanks.
But the hollow ache remains. Proof of something. Evidence of loss I can’t quantify.
Whoever she was—if she was—she’s gone.
And somehow, impossibly, I’m still here.
Holding someone else.
The guilt that follows is irrational. Mara is not a replacement or consolation. She’s simply a woman who needs warmth, and I’m providing it.
Nothing more.
Yet my body knows how to hold her. Knows where to place my hands, how to curve myself around her, the exact pressure needed to offer comfort without constraint.
And that knowing feels like betrayal of something I can’t remember.
I look down at her sleeping face. Peaceful in firelight. Trusting in ways she probably shouldn’t be.
What am I doing?
I don’t know anything about myself. Don’t know if the pull I felt earlier connects me to something dangerous, something that could threaten her simply by proximity.
I should wake her. Should maintain distance until I understand the nature of my own wrongness.
Instead, I adjust my hold slightly. Make sure the cloak covers her completely. Let my hand rest where it wants to—protective, possessive, wrapped around her hip like I have every right to touch her this way.
Outside, wind howls across exposed rock. The fire burns low, but steady.
And I keep watch.
Not just for threats approaching from below.
But for answers I’m not sure I want to find.