Even though Ben had been trying, over the last two days, not to think too hard about a lot of the stuff Julie had said. Because whenever he did, it made him feel things, and feeling things was the worst.
So Ben was night hiking, because that was what you did in the desert to catch up on miles. And night hiking, as it turned out, was also the worst.
Panic had bloomed, spreading in all directions like a drop of ink hitting water, almost as soon as the sun had gone down. Hiking in a world of shadow was terrifying. Ben questioned every noise, every silence, every step.
He would have stopped a long time ago, but the trouble was he couldn’t find a good spot to fucking camp. He had decided to night hike through a patch of trail that was apparently surrounded only by unyielding cliffs and rocky ledges. At least, from what he could see. Which wasn’t fucking much.
The Deep Creek Bridge truly freaked him out, hearing all that water in the darkness, unable to fully see it. He wore his headlamp, but it only shone so far, only illuminated so much.
He tried singing in his head, but he couldn’t remember any song that had ever been sung in the history of people singing music.
He was losing it.
A pathetic prick of tears had just hit his eyeballs when he saw it.
The beam of his headlamp danced over something on the ground. Something out of place. Something that—his heart threatened to beat out of his chest—he was 95 percent sure he recognized.
Slowly, carefully, he bent over to pick it up.
Poor Alanna. She was covered in dust.
Ben brushed off the cover as best he could. Ran his thumb over the spine.
The other thing was, Ben might have, possibly, maybe considered the fact that if he night hiked to catch up on miles, he might also hike himself closer to Alexei.
He just hadn’t thought too hard on what would happen, if that actually worked.
She was such a small, well-loved paperback,Alanna. Ben likely would have walked right past her—and possibly, soon, in his exhaustion, straight off a cliff—if he hadn’t been searching the ground so desperately for a soft place to land.
But he had been, and Alexei had left her here, to give it to him.
Ben released a quiet sob.
Alexei Lebedev would not stop saving Ben’s life.
He looked around. Saw that the ground to the left of the trail stretched smoothly into the darkness in a most hopeful way.
For the first time in hours, Ben stepped off the trail. One step, two. Three, and then—
The beam of his headlamp hit the edge of a tent post. One Ben knew very well.
He scanned the ground before clicking off his headlamp. He didn’t want to wake Alexei by flashing this harsh light all over the place. Was this a violation in the first place, setting up camp next to Alexei without express permission? Although he’d left the book. Was it a bad decision, picking up the book?
But Ben needed to rest regardless, and this was the only decent place he’d found to do it. He’d set up camp a respectful distance away and hope for the best in the morning.
Maybe he’d figure out what to say to Alexei in the morning.
He couldn’t believe Alexei was here.
As quietly as he could, he dropped his pack to the ground. Placed Alanna inside it and found his tent, rummaging for the small pack of folded posts.
He could set up a tent in the dark. Right? He’d been on the trail for a month now. Had hiked nearly three hundred goddamn miles. He could do this.
He was only shaking a bit as he snapped the first pole together. Now that he wasn’t hiking, his body apparently realized how cold it was in the desert in the middle of the night. He might have to turn his headlamp on again, just for a minute—
The pole in his hand slipped from his fingers, crashing against one of his trekking poles with a clang that seemed entirely too loud for two such small, infuriating things.
“Shit.”
