He laughs—quiet, surprised. "Not the word I'd use."
"What word would you use?"
"Insane. Improbable. The plot of a bad action movie." He turns his head to look at me, and even in the dim light filtering into the crevice, I can see the humor dancing in his eyes. "If someone told me this morning I'd be hiding in a crack in a rock face with a kindergarten teacher who free solos cliffs for fun, I'd have questioned their sanity."
"And now?"
"Now I'm questioning my own." But he's smiling. "In a good way."
Below us, voices echo off the canyon walls. Spanish, mostly. Commands, questions, frustration. They're searching the canyon floor, the approaches, the places people usually go when they're running for their lives.
They're not looking up.
"They really can't see us?" His voice drops even lower.
"Not from down there. The angle's wrong—the crevice looks like a shadow on the rock face, if you can see it at all. I've spent hours in this crack, watching climbers on the opposite wall, watching hawks circle the thermals, watching the light change as the sun moved across the sky. I've never seen anyone even glance up here. It's invisible unless you know exactly where to look."
"And you're sure about that."
"I've sheltered here in thunderstorms. Eaten lunch here while groups passed below. Taken naps." I pause. "It's my spot. Has been for two years."
He's quiet for a moment, processing. "Your spot."
"Everyone needs a place where no one can find them." The words come out more honest than I intended. "This is mine."
Something shifts in his expression. The humor fades, replaced by something more thoughtful. More tender. He looks at me with a raw kind of focus, his gaze dropping to my hands—still dusty from the granite—then back to my eyes. He’s looking at me like I’m the rescue, not the other way around.
"Thank you," he says. "For sharing it with me."
The sincerity catches me off guard. I expected jokes, deflection, the easy charm he wears like armor. Not this—this quiet acknowledgment that I've given him something real.
"You're welcome." My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
The voices below grow fainter. Moving on, searching elsewhere. We're safe—as safe as we can be, a hundred and twenty feet up a cliff face with killers below.
The temperature is dropping. I can see my breath now, faint puffs of vapor in the fading light. The adrenaline that kept me warm during the climb is fading, and the cold is seeping in—through my fleece, through my jeans, into my bones.
I shiver. Try to hide it. Fail.
"You're cold." It's not a question.
"I'm fine."
"You're shaking."
"It's just—" Another shiver cuts me off. Harder this time. My body is betraying me.
He doesn't ask permission. Just shifts, wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulls me against his side. The heat of him is immediate and overwhelming—like stepping from a freezer into a warm room.
"Better?"
I should pull away. Should maintain some kind of professional distance, some boundary between rescue and rescued. But he's so warm, and I'm so cold, and the solid weightof him feels like safety in a way I don't want to examine too closely.
"Better," I admit.
We sit like that for a while. His arm around me, my head slowly gravitating toward his shoulder, the warmth between us building into something that has nothing to do with survival. The light fades from gray to blue to the deep purple of mountain twilight.
The tears come without warning. Not sobs—just a quiet overflow, leaking down my cheeks, impossible to hide in this small space. He doesn't look away. Doesn't make a joke. Just brushes the tears away with his thumb and watches me like I'm something worth seeing.
