The real her. I'm looking at her right now—hair escaping its ponytail, cheeks flushed from exertion, eyes bright with something that isn't fear. This is the woman who threw a rock at an armed soldier. Who kept pace through a mile of hostile terrain without complaint. Who looked at a two-hundred-foot cliff and saw not an obstacle but a homecoming.
This is the real Evie. And she's magnificent.
"He was an idiot," I hear myself say.
"What?"
"The guy." I hold her gaze. "Anyone who made you feel like you needed to be smaller wasn't paying attention. He missed the whole thing."
Her breath catches. Just slightly, just for a second, but I see it. Feel it.
"You don't know me," she says. "Not really."
"I know enough." The words come out rougher than I intended. "I know you spent five days in a cage without breaking. I know you trusted your gut when everything told you not to. I know you threw a rock at a man with an automatic weapon because you thought it might help." I pause. "And I know you're currently saving my life by leading me up a cliff I'd never have the balls to attempt alone."
"That's not?—"
"It is." I cut her off because she needs to hear this, because someone should have said it years ago. "You're not too much, Evie. You're not too intense, too wild, or too anything. You're exactly enough. And anyone who told you differently was wrong."
Silence. The wind. The distant sound of engines somewhere below, searching for us.
Evie's eyes are bright—not tears, not quite, but something close. Something raw, vulnerable, and painfully human.
"We should keep moving," she says. But her voice is thick, and she doesn't look away from me.
"Yeah." I don't look away either. "We should."
Neither of us moves.
The space between us is charged. I want to reach out to her.
I don't.
"The crevice is seventy feet up. That's where the crux is."
"The hard part."
"The hardest part." She turns back to the rock. "Stay close. Watch my feet. And Riot?"
"Yeah?"
She glances back, and there's something new in her expression. The beginning of something.
"When we get to the top, you can tell me more about the view from down here."
Then she's climbing, and I'm following, and my forearms are screaming.
I don't know how long we run—no, we're climbing. Time stops meaning anything when your world narrows to the next footfall, the next breath, the next crack to jam your fingers into. The granite is slick with sweat and mountain mist, and once, the rubber of my boot screeches as it slips on a sloper, my heart leaping into my throat before I catch myself.
Eventually, the angle steepens. The granite turns from gray to a sun-bleached white that hurts to look at. My lungs burn. The air is thinning, sharp with the scent of pine and old stone.
"You're handling this better than most people would.” The words feel heavy, like they're fighting the altitude.
She doesn't slow down. "I told you. I've had practice."
The next seventy feet are the longest of my life. The rock gets steeper, the holds get smaller, and Evie moves through it like water flowing uphill—impossible, inevitable, beautiful. I grit my teeth and follow, jamming my fingers into cracks that seemdesigned to tear skin, smearing my feet on surfaces that offer nothing but faith.
"Left hand up, there's a pocket." Her voice guides me, calm and steady. "No, higher. There. Now flag your right foot out for balance."
