Except there was one thing between him and the ground.
Me.
So when I say he “hit the ground,” I really mean maybe 20 percent of him hit the ground—and the rest landed right on top of me. Like a sonic boom.
If I’d had any expectations, they’d have been for him to scramble back up awkwardly as fast as he could. But that wasn’t what happened. He landed, and his whole body tightened, and he pressed his forehead into the crook of my neck and seemed to hold his breath.
“Walker?” I asked, after a minute.
He lifted his head, tilted it back, and sucked in a big breath, only to shove it back out again as he said, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck—that hurts.”
“Did you land on your broken leg?” I asked then.
“Torn meniscus,” he corrected, his face still wincing tight against the pain.
Thiswas real. No matter how much I doubted my ability to read Walker’s emotions and motivations correctly ... there was no doubting this.
When Walker hit the ground just now? It really, really hurt.
Simple.
And so my reaction was simple, too.
I felt an impulse for human compassion, and so I just ... gave in to it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, patting his shoulder. “I can tell it’s bad.”
But he didn’t seem particularly comforted. Maybe he had too many layers on to register the human contact.
At that thought, I brought my hand to the back of his head—to a better place of contact, where I could stroke his hair.
At my touch, Walker opened his eyes and looked down at me, like he needed to confirm what was happening.
I froze like I’d been caught breaking the rules. But I didn’t take my hand away.
I couldn’t tell you how long we stayed there like that—half lit by firelight, half hidden in spring-snowstorm darkness—but it was long enough.
Long enough for me, at least, to register thatWalker—the last guy on earth who should be doing this—was lying on top of me and looking straight into my eyes like a lover would. Long enough to feel all the possibilities and implications of that idea echoing around in my body. I couldn’t feel his apology, but I could feelthis—whatever this was. The fact that we were each wearing ten layers of clothing was the last thing that mattered.
What mattered was that his whole body had relaxed as soon as he felt my hand on his neck.
We hovered there, just like that, outside of space and time, until another clatter outside startled us back to reality. Walker remembered what he’d been setting out to do, and he started to push up—but I threw my arms around his chest to clamp him still.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking down.
“I’m not letting you go,” I answered, looking up.
“Don’t you want me to find out what’s happening?”
I shook my head.
“You woke me up, but now you don’t want me to go?”
“I changed my mind,” I said, keeping my arms clamped tight.
“Why?” Walker asked.
“Because if you get mutilated and eaten by a bear, that’s a problem for me. In terms of survival.”
