Chapter 13
chapter
thirteen
MILES
I wake up warm. That’s the first thing I notice. Warm and comfortable and relaxed in a way that immediately feels suspicious.
Then the walkie clipped near my backpack explodes with static.
“MILES.”
I jerk awake hard enough to nearly fall off the cot.
Except, I can’t. Because Daisy is asleep against my chest.
One of my arms wrapped around her waist, as if at some point during the night my subconscious had fully given up pretending to be professional.
The radio crackles again.
“MILES ADLER IF YOU DON’T ANSWER THIS WALKIE I’M ASSUMING YOU DIED,” Taylor yells.
Daisy makes a muffled sound somewhere against my hoodie that suspiciously resembles laughter.
Very carefully—not moving my arm from around Daisy because I think removing it might kill me—I stretch across the cot and grab the walkie with my free hand.
“Taylor?” I croak.
“Oh thank God,” Jax says through the static. “We were two minutes away from assuming those assholes legit killed you.”
Daisy inhales sharply and jolts up, falling out of the cot on her ass for the second time.
I laugh on instinct and try to hide it. Thankfully, she starts laughing too, then groans as the sun hits her face.
“For real,” Maya pleads. “You guys okay?”
“We’re good. Everybody there okay?” I radio back.
“Yeah,” Maya says. “We spent the night at the ranger station. We got a tow situation figured out and we’re back at the Machine now.”
Relief crashes through me so hard my shoulders actually loosen.
Thank God.
From the floor, Daisy tilts her head up to look at me sitting on the cot.
Sleepy. Hair everywhere. Still wearing my jacket.
And there are literal pine needles tangled in the waves near her temple.
The sight hits me like I’m forming a core memory.
“You good?” she whispers.
The concern in her voice nearly kills me.
“Yeah,” I murmur back.
Without thinking, I reach down and brush the pine needles gently out of her hair.
The movement stills both of us.
Because I didn’t think about doing it.
I just… did.
Daisy’s eyes soften.
And suddenly I become hyperaware that my hand is still tangled near her hair and we’re both staring at each other like complete idiots.
Taylor’s voice explodes through the walkie again.
“You didn’t kill Daisy, did you?”
Daisy bursts out laughing and I let my hand drop, immediately missing the physical connection to her.
I drag the walkie closer. “Taylor, I’m muting you.”
“You can’t mute analog radio, you dork.”
“Watch me try.”
Maya, apparently the only functioning adult among us, cuts in smoothly. “What are your coordinates?”
I grab the GPS from beside the cot as Daisy rests her forehead against my knee, making my breath catch.
I read off our location while Maya cross-references routes.
“There’s a road about three miles southeast,” she says after a second. “Meet us there?”
I glance toward the window.
Morning light filters pale gold through the trees now while fog hangs low between the pines from last night’s storm.
“Yeah,” I say. “That works.”
“Cool,” Jax says. “Also, if Daisy kills you first, Taylor owes me $20.”
I lower the volume on the walkie, and silence floods the cabin again.
Then, very slowly, I look back down at Daisy as she peers up through thick lashes.
Her mouth twitches immediately. “Good morning.”
The words land soft and warm somewhere beneath my ribs.
“Morning,” I say quietly.
Neither of us moves.
That feels important somehow.
Outside, wind brushes softly through the trees while sunlight creeps slowly across the cabin floor.
And for one suspended second, everything feels strangely peaceful.
Then my brain restarts.
“Okay,” I say immediately. “Right. We should probably—”
“Hey, just chill. You’re allowed to have a minute here,” Daisy says sleepily, resting her head back on my leg.
“Am I?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” she laughs, then stands to sit next to me. She takes a breath, her shoulder bumping mine. “Thanks for last night, by the way. You’re… a good guy.”
“It was nothing,” I shrug, very aware that I don’t want to be just a good guy with this woman.
She grins. I’m in so much trouble.
The hike out starts easier than yesterday. The storm scrubbed the forest clean overnight. Pine needles glisten with leftover rain while sunlight breaks gold through the trees overhead.
Everything smells sharp, green, and wet.
Daisy walks beside me instead of behind me now.
“You know,” she says after about twenty minutes of comfortable silence, “you’re significantly calmer in the woods.”
“I like it out here.”
“You like being useful.”
The observation catches me off guard enough that I look over.
Daisy keeps walking beside me casually like she didn’t just hit something dead center.
“I think,” she continues, stepping over a fallen branch, “you feel safest when people need you.”
I open my mouth. Then close it again. Annoyingly, she’s right.
I guide her toward the inside of the trail as the path narrows near a steep drop-off.
One hand briefly against her lower back. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until she glances at me.
She rolls her eyes. “You keep doing that.”
“What?”
“Making sure I don’t die.”
“That feels like a low bar.”
“I’m serious.”
Heat crawls slowly up the back of my neck.
I clear my throat and focus forward again. “The cliff edge is unstable.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It’s a legitimate safety concern.”
“Miles.”
“What?”
“You moved me without even looking.”
I nearly trip over a rock. Smooth.
Meanwhile Daisy smiles to herself beside me like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. Which feels unfair at this point.
We hike in comfortable silence again for a while after that. The kind of silence I’m not used to having with people outside the crew.
Eventually Daisy looks over again. “Can I ask you something?”
“Depends.”
“Do you ever worry you’re wrong?”
She’s not asking casually.
I stare ahead at the trail for a long second before answering.
“About humans not being alone? Never. About this particular case with Bigfoot? All the time.”
Her brows lift. “I thought you were gonna say never, period.”
I laugh under my breath. “God, no.”
“Then why keep doing it?”
There it is. The real question underneath everything. Why build your whole life around a maybe? I exhale slowly.
“Because I’ve seen enough strange and unexplainable things that I can’t walk away from it.”
She looks thoughtful.
“But?” I glance over at her.
“But I also know grief makes people vulnerable to making meaning,” I admit. “And this point?” I laugh once under my breath. “I don’t know where the line is anymore.”
The confession hangs between us.
“Am I someone who sees patterns other people miss?” I say finally. “Or am I someone who needs there to be something out there because I built my entire identity around it?”
Saying it out loud feels awful. Like peeling skin back.
But Daisy doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t reassure me either.
Which weirdly helps more.
“I think it can be both,” she says after a second.
I glance over.
“You don’t have to be delusional to really care about something,” she says. “And honestly, even if Bigfoot never walks out of the woods waving ‘hello,’ the work you guys do is still real.”
I blink.
“The missing persons stuff. The environmental documentation. The way you built this team.” She shrugs. “That matters, whether the end result of this case is a seven-foot woodland man or not.”
That’s the thing I’ve been terrified nobody would understand. I know Maya, Taylor, and Jax get it, but hearing it from someone with an outside perspective is more validating than I want to admit.
This was never just about proving something.
It’s about keeping something alive. My family. The crew. Hope. All the wonder people lose when they grow up.
Daisy bumps her shoulder against mine as we walk. “You’re not crazy, Miles.”
The words land somewhere I didn't realize was still bruised.
I don't know what to do with them.
I've spent so many years bracing for the laugh that comes after telling people what I do, waiting for the polite smile that says, “There he goes again.” I've gotten good at answering the questions before they're asked. At explaining myself before anyone can decide I'm worth dismissing.
Somewhere along the way, anticipating rejection became muscle memory.
And now… this woman doesn't ask me to prove anything. She doesn't roll her eyes or tell me to be realistic.
She says it like it’s obvious. Like the thought that I might be crazy never crossed her mind. The strangest part is how badly I needed to hear it.
Before I can stop myself, before my brain can overanalyze or panic, I look at her.
Really look at her.
At the woman who came out here expecting viral content, only to sit through my conspiracy theories and existential spirals and stay anyway.
“You know,” I say, “I don’t think you are either. For what it’s worth. I couldn’t do the same thing for ten years without needing something different. It’s why we’re always switching up cases.”
“Makes sense,” she says, nodding. “I do feel a little crazy though.”
I smile faintly. “Because of us?”
She laughs. “Because of me.”
That catches me off guard enough that I slow our pace.
Daisy keeps her eyes forward as we walk, boots crunching through the pine needles.
“The podcast started as something real,” she says after a second. “I was young and broke and kind of a disaster. I thought talking about sex and relationships openly would make me feel less alone, I guess.” She laughs under her breath, eyes dropping toward the trail for a second.
“I built this whole career around being the girl who says the wild thing first.” She gestures vaguely. “Sex. Dating. Relationships. Female rage. All of it.”
“You’re clearly very good at it.”
Her mouth twitches. “Thanks.”
“I mean it.”
“I know,” she says quietly.
We step over a fallen branch together.
The woods are quieter here. Sunlight filters gold through the pines while the trail narrows near the ridge.
Daisy exhales slowly.
“The thing is…” She shrugs one shoulder. “At some point, people stop listening for anything underneath the persona.”
I feel that.