Every few steps my sneaker would catch on a rock, pitching me forward; every time, Caiden grabbed my arm, steadying me, but his hand lingered as if to memorize the shape of me.
I could feel his own tremor, the shared current of fear and adrenaline.
Neither of us mentioned it. Neither of us dared.
We circled a patch of burnt grass, blackened and brittle as bone, and ducked behind a boulder to escape the wind. I collapsed, my legs trembling.
In the darkness, Caiden’s eyes seemed to glow. Like a wolf’s gaze, wild and haunted.
My own mind was a tangle: the freezer, the knife, Lillian’s laughter in the distance, the possibility that this whole thing was a fevered nightmare and I’d wake up alone in a white room.
The wind howled, a high keening that reminded me of the way the man’s voice had twisted the air in the basement, whistling through the cracks and into the soft tissue of my skull.
I found myself straining to hear it now, half-certain that any moment he’d step from behind a tree, dragging a snare wire and wearing that polite, hollow smile.
I shivered, not from cold but from the sick certainty that trauma isn't something you outrun, it’s a parasite, it curls up under your skin and waits for night.
Our kidnapper was dead, yet I felt as if he would jump out and attack us.
It was a dread that was engraved deep into my bones. I wondered if I would ever feel safe again.
A raven landed on a rock, its obsidian eyes seeming to pierce my growing darkness, mirroring the unease that coiled in my gut.
Caiden glanced at me, as if sensing my unease, but did not speak. I embraced the security of his presence, grateful that I had somebody else to endure this with, being lost out here in the Colorado wilderness.
Suddenly, a low howl ripped through the stillness.
Caiden's hand instinctively reached for mine, his knuckles white against my skin, pulling me towards him.
My body stiffened at the contact, and a shiver enveloped me.
The raven took flight, its shadow a fleeting omen against the rapidly darkening sky.
Panic, raw and visceral, threatened to overwhelm me, but I clung to Caiden's hand, the shared tension a fragile lifeline in the invading dusk.
Each step was a battle against the crescendo of fear, the wilderness itself seeming to conspire against our escape.
My head drooped. My eyelids fluttered. Caiden’s shoulder pressed against mine, anchoring me to the stone, to his warmth, to the reality that we were not alone and not safe and, maybe worst of all, not dead.
THE PRESENT
AMELIA
Caiden and I had fallen asleep next to each other in the wilderness, and I awoke with him pressed up against me from behind.
I woke just after sunrise. The cold bit deep, and my shoulder throbbed like a hymn for everything ugly that had happened.
I could see my own breath, each exhale a ghost. I shifted, and something heavy tightened around my middle.
His arm. Caiden’s arm, banded across me, hand buried under the hem of my shirt as if he’d tried to climb inside me for warmth while we slept.
My body went rigid.
At first, I could not move. My brain spat static and white-noise instructions—run, bite, scream—but none of it made it past the locked gates of my jaw.
I could not even muster a sound. His chest pressed against my back, radiating heat, anchoring me to the cold earth beneath.
The thing that frightened me most was not the weight of him, but how I wanted, for a moment, not to move. How my skin prickled at every point of contact, how the salt of his palm on my stomach felt more real than any touch I’d ever known.
