Chapter 3 The Canopy Split #3
"There's a secondary crossing!" Ryan has to shout to carry over the water and the rain. "Go there! We'll meet you at the reconnect point—the shelter coordinate!"
Erica's voice now, slightly breathless but recognizably her, calls out next, "And Nora—stay safe! Both of you!"
"Go!" I shout back. "We'll see you soon!"
They go, moving along the far bank, Ryan's arm still steady under Erica's, until the rain and the canopy take them, and there's nothing left but the sound of water and the bridge slowly giving up on itself in front of us.
Santi is still holding my arm.
I look down at his hand. He follows my gaze and releases it, slowly, like he's only just noticing he hadn't let go.
"Sorry," he says. He doesn't sound very sorry.
"Don't be," I reassure him. "You were right. I wasn't thinking."
He looks at me for a moment longer and then says, "Downstream."
"Downstream." I agree.
We turn from the failing bridge and start along the bank, the rain easing slightly under the deeper canopy here, the ground a treacherous, uncertain texture under every step.
I am aware of him beside me, remembering the way he didn't let go until he was sure.
The way I'm not watching you find that out the hard way sounded closer to a vow than a logistics call.
I find the narrow channel before he does—a place where the ravine narrows roughly to four feet, low banks, the water moving fast but shallow enough to see the rock bed beneath it.
"Here," I say.
He looks at it. Looks at me. "Together," he says. "Same time. If one of us goes, the other's already moving to catch them."
It is, I think, possibly the most romantic thing anyone has said to me in a Venezuelan jungle during a structural emergency, and I am fully aware of how low that bar currently is, and I do not care.
"Together," I agree.
We cross.
***
I have no cell signal on the other side, but thankfully, the rain has softened to a more persistent heavy drip, working its way down through the layers of the canopy.
I mentally dig through my pack as I walk, wondering how long it will take for Alex and Channelle to get back and send help, hoping we won't end up lost out here for days. I know I have my emergency kit, protein bars, a map, and my notebook.
"We're off the marked routes," I say after we've walked in silence for a good while.
"We are."
We stop for a moment under a wide buttress root, the closest thing to shelter we've found since the second crossing. Out of the direct drip, the rain feels more ambient than immediate. I lean against the root and close my eyes for a second to stop processing input for one breath.
When I open them, Santi is closer than he was.
"You're shaking," he says quietly.
He reaches out and tucks a piece of wet hair back from my face, his fingers brushing my temple. My breath catches in my throat.
"Adrenaline," I say.
He doesn't move his hand away from my face, just cups my cheek and looms over me, his dark gaze a physical thing, a pulsing need between us. I can't breathe. I can't think. What is this?
The rain drips somewhere off to the side. The jungle is very loud and very far away all at once. His thumb grazes my cheekbone, and I feel boneless all of a sudden.
"Nora, I—"
A howler monkey drops directly onto the buttress root above our heads with a crash of wet leaves and a shriek that could strip paint.
We both jump back so fast I nearly go down.
Santi's arm shoots out to catch my elbow on pure reflex, and the monkey looks down at the two of us from approximately four feet away with an expression of personal offense, as though we have deeply inconvenienced it by existing in its jungle, under its root, at this exact moment.
It shrieks again. Closer. Furious.
"Okay," Santi says, slightly breathless, putting himself very deliberately between the monkey and me. "Okay. We're moving."
"That was—" I'm half-laughing, half still catching my breath from an entirely different reason. "That was extremely rude."
The monkey shrieks a third time, swings up to a higher branch, and glares down at us with the unmistakable energy of a creature settling a dispute in its own favor.
"It's a howler," Santi says, recovering his composure with visible effort. "They do this. Territorial display."
I look up at it. It looks back at me with total contempt. "Look at its face. It knows exactly what it just interrupted."
Santi looks up at it too, and the ghost of a laugh crosses his face. "And what did it interrupt, Nora?" His voice is like gravel.
I open my mouth and then close it again, feeling a blush crawl up my neck.
The monkey settles itself on the branch, looks at us one more time with magnificent disdain, and then turns and starts moving in an unhurried fashion, branch to branch.
We watch it go.
"Well," Santi says.
"The shelter Ryan mentioned is north," I say. "The monkey is also going north."
He's grinning now. "What do you propose?"
"We follow the monkey," I say grudgingly and hold up a finger. "Don't make it weird."
His grin widens, and then he pretends to zip his mouth shut and throw away the key.
I start walking without waiting for a response, mostly because if I look at him for one more second, I'll think about the two inches that didn't close between us just now, and I need at least one functioning brain cell for the next forty minutes.
He falls into step beside me.