I open my mouth. Something comes out. Small and thin, barely a sound.
"Louder," Reid says. "You can do better than that."
I try again. Bigger. My ribs expand around it.
"More."
Something gives way.
Something that has been sealed for so long I forgot it was there, and suddenly it's open and everything that's been behind it is coming through. I scream at the valley and the scream gets bigger and I let it get bigger and it's coming from the place where I put everything I couldn't afford to feel. The classroom. The phones going off simultaneously. The faces turning toward me. Being fired. The legal process and its failure. My mother's soft words and the months I spent making myself smaller and smaller trying to disappear from a life someone else destroyed.
The scream builds.
Then the words come up through it like something that has been waiting a long time for air.
"Fuck you!"
The valley takes it.
I pull in a breath.
"FUCK YOU."
The mountains don't flinch. They just hold it and let it go, and from somewhere I didn't know still existed, from somewhere beneath all the careful management and the small safe life I've been building out of what was left:
"YOU DIDN'T WIN! I WIN! I AM HAPPY!"
The last word tears out of me and the valley takes that too and I'm out of breath and my face is wet and my hands are shaking and the wind is cold on my cheeks and the light on the valley below is gold and moving and the sky above is that deep impossible blue.
I turn around.
Reid is looking at me. Not with pity. Not with the careful softness of someone managing a fragile thing.
He's looking at me the way he looks at the wolves. Like something that has just shown him their savage untamed nature.
I close the distance and I kiss him.
16
REID
She is still facing the valley when the last echo dies.
Her chest heaves. Both arms at her sides, hands open. Tears track down her face in clean lines and she has not moved to wipe them. The wind comes across the ridge and the light from breaking clouds moves over her in long, slow golden sweeps.
She is beautiful.
The most alive thing I have seen in years.
She turns and her eyes find mine immediately. Wild. Clear. Whatever was locked behind them has come through the door she just kicked open.
She closes the space in two steps, takes my face in both hands, and pulls my mouth down to hers.
The contact is total. Her lips are cold from the wind and sure of themselves, no hesitation in them. For one suspended second my entire system stalls. There is only the pressure of her mouth and her hands on my jaw and the valley open and enormous behind her.
Then it moves through me and I kiss her back.
My hands go to her waist and I pull her in and she makes a sound against my mouth that dismantles everything. She presses closer. Her fingers move into my hair and she kisses me with the specific hunger of someone who has been keeping herself from wanting things for a long time and has just decided to stop. I feel it in the pressure, the deliberateness. I meet it in full.
