Alexei had turned back, was a step from his tent, when Ben finally stumbled up.
“Listen,” he said, stuffing his own hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. That comment about last names was sinking in a bit more. Ben had known, from the moment they left Tommy’s Kitchen in Idyllwild, that Alexei could take off at any moment. The dude, like Ruby, clearly liked being alone. But maybe, if he cared about Ben’s last name, if he was thinking about looking out for each other on the trail, he didn’t completely hate hiking with Ben.
And if hehadn’tbeen hiking with Ben right now, he would be…what, hiking thousands of miles to punish himself for being gay? Being alone and sad and figuring out where to exile himself because his parents sucked?
No. That was a completely unacceptable prospect to Ben.
Hiking was a weirdly intimate thing to do with another person. But it really had felt easy with Alexei Lebedev from the start. Maybe, Ben thought, they had met again at Tommy’s Kitchen in Idyllwild for a reason.
Ben just had to get Alexei to stay.
“I meant what I said earlier, on Fuller Ridge,” he burst out. Even though he hadn’t; anything he’d said on Fuller Ridge had been nothing but adrenaline, but he meant it now. “Can we make a pact? We don’t have to walk all the way to Canada together. But unless we meet other people we want to hike with, we should stick together. There’s no way I’m making it over snow again by myself, and Lex, you seriously shouldn’t hike by yourself in the desert. Your fear of it is real; it’s too risky to be out here alone. There was a day a few weeks ago, before Idyllwild, when I was hiking with those guys, and the only water source we passed all day was dried up. We would have been totally fucked if Faraj hadn’t rationed out his water better than the rest of us, and we were able to share it until the next source.”
Ben took a breath.
“Anyway,” he said. “I’m just saying.”
Alexei stared at him.
“At least through the desert,” Ben said. “We should at least stick together through the desert.”
Alexei’s face twitched.
The desert went on for hundreds of miles. Ben knew this was…possibly a big ask.
He bit his lip, waiting.
And then—
“Okay.”
It sounded uncertain, but Ben felt himself smiling like a dumbass anyway, his stomach finally lifting.
“Awesome. Night, Lex.”
Ben clambered into his tent before Alexei could change his mind.
He still could change his mind, of course, the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that, and Ben would let him. He wouldn’t actually hold Alexei Lebedev to anything he didn’t want to do.
But Ben liked helping people, and he knew what he could do for Alexei now. He would curb his thirst for the guy—Alexei was processing heavy shit; he didn’t need Ben’s messiness. And Ben had promised himself he’d stay away from men for a while anyway. The trail wasn’t for all that. The trail was for good decisions.
No, Ben wouldn’t touch Alexei.
But he could be his friend.
He could show him that he could trust people. That the world Alexei’s parents believed in wasn’t the real world at all. At least, it wasn’t the world that mattered. And there was so much good in the world that did.
Ben was still terrified of the snow. He missed his family all the time and he doubted, even on his good days, whether he would make it all the way through this thing.
But he knew he could show Alexei that.
Chapter Five
Acrunchy peanut man, huh?”
Alexei looked down at the protein bar in his hand and shrugged.
“Most fat and most protein.” While Alexei’s stomach had settled since Idyllwild, he had yet to experience the hiker hunger he had read so much about. Most of the time, Alexei forced himself to eat only because he knew he needed the calories. With the exception of his trustworthy stash of gummy bears. But he knew he couldn’t survive the PCT on gummy bears.
