11
ARIEL
The dogs lost us somewhere between the creek bend and the first rise of the ridge. Cap slowed only when the barking turned confused, sharp at first, then ragged, as if the handlers were arguing with their own leashes.
We climbed in silence, soaked to the bone, feet sucking mud and letting it go again. My legs trembled, half from cold, half from everything my head was still replaying, the truck doors slamming, Sunshine’s scream, the way the woods swallowed sound whole. Cap checked our back trail every dozen steps, listening with his whole body.
“Sound’s drifting,” he said finally. His voice came quiet, close to my ear. “They’re circling the creek now. We bought space.”
“How much space?”
He looked up through the trees. “Enough to need it.”
The ground leveled out. Water ran thin over rock and spilled into a hollow between two hills. I could barely see, but he caught my wrist. Steered me toward a darker shape in the dark, a cleft in the hillside where runoff had eaten its way into the dirt.
“Cave,” he said. “Half of one, anyway.”
It wasn’t much, but the overhang kept the rain off. He crouched low and held the edge of the opening so I could duckinside first. The air smelled of old fire, stone, and animal. A patch of dry leaves lay pressed flat where something had bedded down weeks ago. I didn’t care. It was shelter, and we weren’t running.
Cap slid in after me, shoulders brushing the wall, filling the space. His breathing stayed even, controlled. He waited until the silence outside sounded honest, then pulled his pack around and shook a lighter out of its pocket. The tiny flame threw gold across his face, battered, streaked with dirt, jaw tight with a kind of patience that had edges.
“Fire,” he said simply.
I didn’t argue. He built it small, coaxing damp twigs until they smoked, then flared. Heat slid through the cave like relief, soft and steady. When he finally sat back, hands spread toward the flame, I could see every scar the rain had hidden.
The sound of the search faded altogether, just rain, fire, and the echo of our breathing. The silence between us grew heavy in a way that wasn’t about fear anymore.
“Boots,” he said gently. “You’ll freeze if you keep them on.”
My fingers wouldn’t work. He knelt, touched the laces like they were skittish animals, and worked them loose. His thumbs were nicked and muddied; his touch was careful enough to feel like a luxury. When he slid my boots off, heat crawled back into my toes with pins and needles. He cupped my heel, lifted it to his mouth, and breathed warm against my socks like he could talk my blood into moving.
“You, okay?” he asked without looking up.
“Yes.” The word shook. I swallowed and tried again. “Yes.”
He set my foot down like he was putting something valuable back where it belongs. Then he shrugged out of his tee. Shook the water from it, the cut of his shoulders catching firelight, the kind of body that told you what it had done without bragging. Scars. One old and tidy high on his rib; another fresh ribbon athis forearm where the fence had taken its due. He caught me looking and didn’t make a joke. He held my eyes and let me see him.
“Come here,” he said, and when I did, he wrapped the dry part of his shirt around my shoulders and pulled me into his lap like it was the most obvious place for me to be.
Everything in me was still running, adrenaline, fear, the sound of Sunshine’s voice telling us to run, but pressed against him, I felt the pace change. His heartbeat was slow and stubborn. My palms found his chest; heat rose through my skin like I’d been outside the house in winter and had just stepped back in.
“Tell me what you need,” he murmured into my hair.
“You,” I said, honest because lying felt like it would make the fire go out. “I need to feel something that isn’t terror.”
His breath hitched once, just once, and then his hands went up my sides under the shirt, not greedy, not hesitating, mapping me like he was learning a coastline. He stopped at my ribs. “Yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, and then “Please,” because I wanted to hear myself be the one to ask for something and get it.
He kissed me like he knew how fragile I felt. How unbreakable I wanted to be, soft at first, patient, the kind of kiss that asks you to meet it halfway. I did, and it deepened, heat uncoiling low in my belly, the taste of rain and smoke and him turning my nerves to live wire.
“Closer,” I said against his mouth.
He gathered me, dragged me over his thighs, pressed me down until no part of me could pretend we weren’t doing this. The world narrowed to the scrape of stubble against my jaw, the rough grate of his palm braced at the small of my back, the low sound in his throat when I rolled my hips. Found exactly where I wanted to be.
“Good girl,” he breathed, and the praise hit me like a spark catching tinder, quick, bright, dangerous.
I rocked again, slow at first, exploring the angle, the give and drag of wet denim, finding the rhythm my body wanted. He didn’t take it from me. He matched it, hands steadying and then urging, guiding without stealing, letting me set the speed until the ache turned into something sharp and delicious.
