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The question startled me. “What?”

“Up the trail.” He nodded over my shoulder. “Did you feel a head rush? Get a metallic taste in your mouth?”

I stared at him. “Have you been spying on my nervous system now? Is that one of your many cowboy superpowers?”

He didn’t smile. “Did you?”

“Yes,” I muttered reluctantly. “A little. It was probably just altitude. Or dehydration. Or the fact that I’ve been emotionally flayed open for the past forty-eight hours.”

His jaw flexed. “That’s not altitude.”

“What is it then?” I demanded.

He hesitated for a second. A faint, irritated tear slipped from the corner of his eye, and he swiped it away with the back of his hand, his expression flattening into something unimpressed, like the pepper spray had failed to meet expectations.

“There are…” He exhaled, the sound sharp through his nose. “Places up here where the ground’s not as stable as it should be. Old mines. Gas pockets. Things that can make you sick if you’re not careful.”

His eyes scanned the trail again, something colder moving in them now. “And sometimes when the wind blows…things act off.”

“Are you talking about animals?” I asked. “Like the squirrels start trying to unionize?”

That earned me the smallest flicker of a smile, even though I’d been embarrassed the second the words had come out of my mouth. It didn’t hang around long. “And other things.”

I didn’t like the way he said that.

A shiver crawled up my spine. “Okay, so…what you’re saying is I need to go back to communing with therapy instead of nature,” I commented. “Noted.”

I glanced down at my water bottle, oddly disappointed that my hiking adventures seemed like they were coming to an early end.

“You just can’t commune alone,” he said.

I blinked. “That’s…not remotely how therapy works.”

“You can’t commune alone out here,” he corrected.

Before I could argue, or agree, or pass out, his fingers closed firmly around my hand.

“Hey,” I sputtered, stumbling a step as he started walking, pulling me along the trail. “What are you—what are you doing?”

“Walking with you.”

“That’s what you call this?” I asked, breathless. “Feels a lot like being abducted actually.”

His grip tightened just enough to make heat flash up my arm. “If I were abducting you,” he said calmly, “you wouldn’t be walking.”

My knees went weak.

He kept walking like the trail belonged to him, like the whole damn forest deferred to the width of his shoulders and the certainty in his stride. His hand stayed wrapped around mine, as if letting go wasn’t an option he’d even entertain.

I tried to regain dignity. I really did. “Okay,” I said, slightly breathless. “Can we—slow down? Maybe? Just a little? My legs aren’t built for…whatever cowboy pace this is.”

He didn’t stop, but he adjusted just enough that I could walk at his side instead of tripping behind him like a kidnapped marionette.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes,” I muttered.

“Good.”