The branch shifts again.
Then cracks.
“Oh no—no, no, no?—”
Before I can scramble higher or climb down, the limb snaps clean in two. My foot slips. My stomach drops. I lunge for the trunk, grabbing the nearest intact branch by sheer panic, and cling to it like a koala with anxiety.
The world tilts. My breath snags.
I’m stuck.
Halfway up a tree.
Dangling like an idiot.
I try to adjust my grip and immediately regret it. The branch I’m clinging to creaks in a tone that suggests it hates me personally.
“Okay,” I whisper, “we’re not moving. We’re just… hanging out. Literally.”
That’s when I hear it—a deep engine rumbling somewhere behind me.
A door slams. Boots crunch across the snow.
A man’s voice, low and incredulous, calls out:
“…Ma’am?”
Oh God. Oh no.
No, no, no.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Of course. Of course someone found me stuck in a tree.
“Please tell me you’re a hallucination,” I say weakly.
A beat of silence. Then a dry, unmistakably amused reply:
“Afraid not. Dispatch said something about a ‘woman trapped off the ground.’ Didn’t realize it was literal.”
My face burns. My pride shrivels. I don’t dare look down yet, but his voice wraps around me—warm, rough, a little teasing.
The kind of voice that’s attached to a man who’stoogood-looking to discover me like this.
I swallow hard.
“Well,” I mutter, “I don’t suppose you brought a ladder just for me?”
He snorts. “Ma’am, I bring my ladder for everyone equally.”
Of course he does.
Because of course my first human interaction in Swift Mountain is going to be with the most frustratingly attractive firefighter alive.
And I’m stuck. In a tree.
Boots crunch closer beneath me. “Okay,” he calls up, “don’t move.”
