Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
We reach the steep section of the trail—the part where it climbs up along the ridge, where the trees thin out and you can start to see the valley below. My breath comes harder now, and I focus on counting steps instead of breathing. Seventeen to the next switchback. Twenty-four to the outcropping of rocks. Thirty-one to where the view opens up.
He stays beside me the whole time. Never ahead. Never behind. Just there.
We reach the overlook point.
It's exactly as beautiful as I remembered—the frozen lake spread out below us, a sheet of pale blue-white ice surrounded by dark trees and distant mountains. The sky is that particular shade of winter gray that makes everything feel quiet and still, like the world is holding its breath.
I walk to the edge of the overlook. There's a low stone wall here, natural rock that keeps you from getting too close to the drop-off. I lean against it, trying to catch my breath, and he comes to stand beside me.
Too close.
Not touching, but close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that if I shifted my weight even slightly, my shoulder would brush his.
I don't move.
Neither does he.
The gap between our bodies is the loudest thing in the world.
I start counting without meaning to. The distance. Four inches. Maybe three and a half. My lips move silently with the numbers, and I hate myself for doing it, but I can't stop. It's what I do when I'm nervous, when I'm scared, when I'm feeling something I don't know how
to name.
Three inches.
Two and a half.
"It is beautiful," he says quietly.
"I come here to think.” I’m surprised to hear myself sharing this, albeit shyly.
“About what?”
Everything. Nothing. Kansas. My father. The courtroom. The judge's voice saying ‘life without the possibility of parole.’
But most of all, the one thing that I can’t stop thinking about is the letter I received from him months after.
Don’t ever visit me.
The memory makes me swallow hard. And I find myself shoving my hands deep into my pockets. “Just...life,” I finally say.
We stand there in silence. The wind picks up, cutting through my coat, and I shiver without meaning to.
"You’re cold," he says.
"It's February in Wyoming. Everyone's cold."
He makes a sound that might be a laugh, low and quiet. Then he shifts, and suddenly he's standing slightly in front of me, angled so his body blocks the wind.
"Better?" he asks.
I can't speak.
He's close now—closer than before—and I can see everything. The ebony depths of his eyes in the gray afternoon light. The strong line of his jaw. The way his hair falls slightly across his forehead. The small scar above his left eyebrow that I've never noticed before.
Two inches between us.
One.
He's not touching me, but I can feel him anyway. The warmth, the presence, the way he takes up space in a way that should be overwhelming but somehow isn't.
My heart is doing something structurally unsound.
“Thea...”
He reaches up as he says my name, and my breath catches.
Is he going to—
Is he—
Oh.
I almost feel like laughing and cringing at the same time when Santino simply ends up adjusting my coat collar and pulling it up against the wind. His fingers brush my neck—just barely, just for half a second—and, well, there goes my again.
"So you don’t freeze on the way down.”
His hand lingers. Just for a moment. Just long enough that I can feel the warmth of his fingers against my skin, can feel my pulse jumping under his touch.
Then he pulls back.
Steps away.
The cold rushes in to fill the space where he was, and I want to protest, want to tell him to come back, want to close that gap myself.
But I don't.
I just stand there with my coat collar pulled up and my heart racing and the exact imprint of his fingers still burning against my neck.
"We should go," I say, and my voice comes out rough. "It's getting late."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then: "Yes."
We turn and start back down the trail.
The walk back is different. Quieter somehow, even though we weren't talking much on the way up. But this silence feels heavier. Weighted. Like there are words neither of us is saying, and the not-saying is taking up all the space between us.
I count steps to distract myself. Thirty-one from the overlook to the outcropping. Twenty-four to the switchback. Seventeen to where the trail levels out again.
He stays beside me. Not behind. Not ahead. Beside.
And I'm hyperaware of every single thing—the sound of our boots on the snow, the way our breath comes out in white clouds, the careful distance he's maintaining now, like he's deliberately not getting too close.
Like touching my collar broke some rule he'd set for himself.
Like he's trying to rebuild the distance.
We're halfway down, maybe twenty minutes into the descent, when I hear it.