"Flag my—what?"
"Stick your leg out. Counterweight."
I do it. It works. My body finds a position that shouldn't be stable but somehow is.
"Good." The approval in her voice warms something in my chest. "Now the hard part."
"That wasn't the hard part?"
"That was the warm-up."
The crux is exactly as bad as she described—ten feet of vertical granite with holds that barely qualify as holds. Crimps, she called them. Little edges of rock, just enough to hang fingertips from if you're willing to trust your body weight to something the size of a matchbook. My blood thuds in my ears, jockeying with the roar of the wind that’s trying to shake me loose like a dead leaf.
Evie flows through it. Makes it look easy. Makes it look like dancing, if dancing involved defying gravity and certain death.
I make it look like a man trying very hard not to die. My fingers are raw, the skin peeling back as I claw for traction, and my boots chatter against the stone as I fight for every inch of height.
"You're almost there." Her voice comes from above. I don't look up—can't look up, can't spare the attention—but I can hear the beginning of something in it. "Three more moves."
Three more moves. I can do three more moves.
The first one nearly kills me. The second one actually peels two fingernails back. The third one?—
The third one puts me on a ledge I didn't know was there, gasping, shaking, and absolutely certain I've never worked this hard for anything in my life.
"Welcome to the crevice." Evie's face appears above me, haloed by sky, grinning like she just watched me run a marathon. "You made it."
"I made it." The words come out between ragged breaths. "I actually made it."
"You did." She reaches down and offers me her hand. "Come on. We should get out of sight before they start looking up."
I take her hand. Let her pull me into the crevice—a gap in the rock face, invisible from below, just wide enough for two bodies pressed close together.
SEVEN
First Heat
EVIE
The crevice is smallerthan I remember.
Or maybe it just feels smaller with Riot pressed against me, his body a wall of heat in the narrow space. We're sitting with our backs to the rock, legs stretched out, shoulders touching because there's nowhere else for shoulders to go. The granite is cold through my fleece, but everywhere he touches me is warm.
Too warm.
"How long do we wait?" My voice is low, barely above a whisper. Sound carries in canyons.
"Until the search moves on. Could be a few hours. Could be longer if they're thorough."
I'm hyper-aware of every point of contact between us. His arm against mine. His thigh parallel to my thigh, not quite touching but close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. The adrenaline from the climb is still singing in my veins, a frantic, electric hum that makes every sense feel dialed up to ten.
"They'll assume we went around eventually. By the time they figure out we didn't, we'll be over the top and gone."
"A few hours, then…” I shift, trying to find a more comfortable position in a space that doesn't allow for comfort.
His leg brushes mine. Neither of us acknowledges it. "In a crack in a cliff. In the cold. With cartel soldiers searching for us below."
"Romantic, right?"
