I follow.
I don't have a plan, and Owen might be right. The last thing she might want right now is one of us on her trail.
I pull my collar up and keep moving.
She's maybe three minutes ahead of me. The snow is still reading her prints clearly, each one punched clean into the crust, and the trail bends east into the older growth where the canopy cuts the wind and the light goes blue and quiet. I slow down when I hear her, before I see her.
She's in a small clearing where the trees open up enough to let sky through. Standing still. The vapor from her breathing is visible and too fast, short shallow pulls that aren't getting enough air. Her back is to me. Her shoulders are high and locked.
I stop at the edge of the clearing and watch.
She bends down. Picks up a stone. It fits the palm of her hand. She closes her fist around it and straightens, and her knuckles go white immediately, the tendons standing out across the back of her hand, and she squeezes. Hard.
I recognize what she's doing.
I was sixteen, standing behind a bodega in Queens with my knuckles split open after I smashed them against a brick wall, watching the blood well up . Everything else was noise. At least the blood was something that was happening because of me, a thing I could see, a thing that made sense when nothing else did.
She's standing with her fist at her side and her eyes closed and she is somewhere else that isn't this clearing. Her jaw is set so tight I can see the muscles working from fifteen feet away. The rapid breathing hasn't slowed.
"Maya."
Nothing. The vapor keeps coming in those short white bursts.
"Maya." I keep my voice low and even. The voice you use for something hurt in the woods. No sudden movements. No pressure.
Still nothing. She's gone somewhere I can't reach with words.
I cross the clearing. The snow compresses under my boots and I know she can hear me coming but she doesn't turn, doesn't flinch, doesn't react at all. I stop behind her, close enough to feel the tension coming off her body like a frequency. I put my hand on the back of her neck.
Her whole body startles. A full-system jolt that runs through her shoulders and down her spine and into her legs. But I don't let go. My hand stays where it is. Firm. Present. The back of her neck is freezing under my palm, and I can feel her pulse under my fingers, rapid and hard.
I turn her gently until she's facing my chest and I pull her in. Her face against my jacket. My arms around her. I hold.
She's rigid. Every muscle locked. Her fists are between us, still closed, and she's shaking in a way that isn't from cold.
"Breathe with me," I say. I make my own breathing slow and deliberate and loud enough for her to hear it, loud enough for her to feel my chest rise and fall against her. Slow. Steady. "Come on. With me."
She resists. Her body fights the rhythm like giving in to something, even oxygen, is a concession she isn't willing to make.
Then I feel it shift. One shudder that runs through her whole frame. And her breathing starts to follow mine.
We stay that way. Her breathing slows. The rapid white clouds settle into a longer, quieter rhythm. I can feel her hands between us, still closed into fists. I don't reach for them yet. I keep my arms where they are and let her body do the work of deciding whether it's safe to come back.
Snow slides off a branch somewhere behind us and hits the ground with a soft concussion. My chin is resting on the top of her head.
After a while her stillness changes. The locked rigidity softens into something heavier. She's coming back.
I loosen my hold enough to look at her face.
The tears are already there. Running silently, tracking down her cheeks in clean lines, and her expression hasn't changed. Completely still. No sound. Just tears moving down her face like she doesn't know they're happening. Like her body is doing something her mind hasn't authorized.
I don't say anything. I bring both thumbs up and wipe them away, one side and then the other, my hands framing her jaw. Her skin is cold and damp under my fingers and her eyes are grey-green and wet and looking into mine.
I take her right hand in both of mine. It's still closed around the rock. Her knuckles are white at the ridges. I bring her fist to my chest and hold it there between us. Pressed against the front of my jacket. Against the heartbeat underneath.
I wait until she looks up at me.
"Let it go," I say.
