“This tent is for two people,” I tell him. “I’m not trying to exchange body heat, as you so eloquently put it earlier. It’s just that I would feel better if you were in here when I get murdered by the cave troll.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Lennon?”
“I heard you.”
“Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
I wait, heart hammering. After some rustling, I hear a zipper, and then a silhouette appears outside my tent door. It zips open, and Lennon’s dark head pops inside. “Give me your pack.”
I pull it across the tent floor and shove it toward the door. It disappears and thuds nearby. I think he stashed it in his tent. Another zipping sound. Then my mesh door parts and something unrolls next to me. Some sort of foam sleeping pad. The one that stays rolled up, strapped to the bottom of his pack. It’s followed by a sleeping bag, which he throws on top.
Lennon crawls into the tent and zips the door to close it. And before I know it, he’s slipping into his bag, a flash of black boxer shorts below his T-shirt, muscular legs . . .
Then he’s lying next to me. The tent is suddenly so much smaller.
“Happy?” he says, sounding vaguely sullen.
I smile to myself. Yes. “That depends. Did you bring your hatchet?”
His sigh is epic. “I’ll just have to choke the life out of the cave troll. Good enough?”
“Yes, that’ll do, pig,” I say in my best James Cromwell. “That’ll do.”
The hood of his sleeping bag looks fluffier than mine is, and he punches it around until it makes a pillow. Then he lies on his back, one arm over his head. Facing him, I curl on my side and stare in the murky light until my eyes adjust to him, my own gaze tracing over the sharp, straight line of his nose and the spiky fringe of hair over his brow.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I whisper in the dark.
“I needed you,” he whispers back. “It was so terrible, and I needed you.”
An image of his father fills my head, and then unexpectedly, I think of my birth mother. Her face. Her laugh. How empty I felt when she died. I know exactly how Lennon feels, and that makes it all so much worse. Because I’d never in a million years want him to hurt that badly.
A strange, stifled noise fills up the space in the tent, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s crying. Lennon never cries. Never. Not as a kid, and not when we got older. The sound rips my heart to shreds.
On instinct, I reach out for him. When I lay my hand on his quaking chest, he seizes it with steely fingers. I can’t tell if he’s about to push me away, and for a brief moment, we’re frozen midway between something.
A tense sort of twilight.
He turns toward me, and I’m pulling him closer, and he buries his head against my neck, sobbing quietly. I feel hot tears on my skin, and my arms are circling him. The scent of him fills my nostrils, shampoo and sunniness and wood smoke, the tang of sweat and fragrant pine needles. He’s harder, stronger, and far more masculine than he was the last time I hugged him. It’s like holding a brick wall.
Gradually, the quiet crying stops, and he goes completely limp in my arms.
We’re in a strange cave, slightly lost. Off plan and definitely off trail.
But for the first time since we left home, I am not anxious.
19
* * *
We’ve been walking for several hours now, and we’ve only just made it past the valley below our cave. My back and legs hurt, despite the ibuprofen Lennon gave me at breakfast. He had it laid out for me on a bear canister when I woke up, along with one of the blue coffee cups. I’m not sure how he got out of the tent without me knowing. All I know is that every time I woke during the night, his arm was still wrapped around me. And then sometime around dawn, I was vaguely aware of being a lot colder. By the time I fully emerged from sleep, he’d already started a fire and was readying everything for our breakfast, last night’s roller-coaster emotions exchanged for the promise of hot coffee and a new day.
Not a bad way to wake up. Except that my body feels as if I’ve been hit by a truck that’s backed over me several times out of spite.
Hiking hurts.
It hurts even more when we crest over a steep hill. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m eager to see where we’re going. Lennon made another map. He drew it inside his journal this morning and recalculated our route while I tried not to stare at the dark stubble growing over his jaw, because it gives me inappropriate feelings about him. After taking that wrong turn yesterday inside the cave, he said we’re going to stick to a more established trail that I’ll like better: It’s marked on the official King’s Forest map and leads to not only a ranger station but something scenic along the way—only, he insists on that scenic thing being a surprise.
He knows I hate surprises but talks me into accepting it. I tell myself that I’m relenting because of what he revealed last night, but it’s probably the stubble. It’s really good stubble.
We are at a crossroads where two trails diverge. A signpost tells us that the larger path in front of us is Emperor Trail. And through a break in the cedar trees, we are now staring at white-capped mountains that glitter in the bright sun.
“Oh, wow,” I murmur.
“Right?” Lennon says. “The brown peak on the left is Mount Topaz and the gray jagged one on the right is Thunderbolt Mountain. So many climbers die up there.”
It doesn’t look deadly. In fact, it looks beautiful. Majestic. Yes, I definitely see why people say that about mountains. I stretch out my arms and fill my lungs with clean air. Something stings. I slap my arm.
“Oh, we’re entering mosquito territory,” Lennon says, turning around and pointing at his pack. “Dig around in the second pocket. There’s a small bottle of insect repellent.”
I unzip the pocket and slip my fingers inside, finding the bottle in question. We take turns anointing ourselves in citronella-scented oil that makes my eyes water. Once we’re slathered up and mosquito-proof, we set out on the trail that cuts through a cedar grove. It doesn’t take long for two things to happen: (1) we see other hikers ahead of us, and (2) we see them walking up a towering set of granite stairs that’s been carved into the mountain.
“What the hell is that?” I say.
“Emperor’s Staircase,” Lennon says, waggling his brows. He’s wearing a slouchy, black knit cap with a skull on it, and the spiky ends of his hair stick out from beneath it. I wish I had a hat to cover up the disaster that is my mass of frizzy curls. Nature is unforgiving.
“We’re going up those rock stairs?” I ask.
“Not just rock stairs, Zorie. It’s nature’s noble staircase,” he says in a grand voice. “More than eight hundred steps carved into the granite cliffs in the late eighteen hundreds. Three men died building them, and nearly every year since then, someone’s died on these stairs. Fifteen in the last decade. This is the currently the deadliest trail in all the US national parks.”
“What?” I say, alarmed.
He grins. “Don’t worry. The people who die are generally just idiots who fall over the side trying to do stupid things. You’ll understand why when we get farther up. If Brett were here, I’d give him a fifty–fifty chance of surviving, because he wouldn’t be able to resist the call of death. Which almost makes me wish he were still with us.”