That man asked the most annoying questions. And by annoying, I mean questions I had no answers for, because I’d spent years avoiding thinking about things like…the future. Like…careers.

Gah. I didn’t want to think about this. I wanted to have my head stuck blissfully in the sand, my emotional faucet very firmly shut off, the past in the past where it belongs.

Ramsey Badd had a way of dragging things out of me that I hadn’t thought about in years, and that I didn’t want to think about now. Damn him.

He’d gotten me to talk about Mom, and I hadn’t really talked about Mom, even with Kitty or Juneau. Same with Dad.

Next thing you know, I’ll be telling Ram about running away.

Ha. Not likely. I NEVER talk about that with anyone, ever.

I found the creek easily and meandered upstream, passing the place where I’d caught our dinner. God, that had been so fun. Thrilling, exciting, and rewarding. This whole trip wasn’t at all like I thought it would be. I’d jumped headfirst into this without thinking, and really hadn’t had any idea what I was getting into, or what it’d be like. I just know I’d expected to hate it…and Ram.

Turns out, I don’t hate either one.

In fact, I was finding myself liking both the experience of hiking, and the man, a lot more than I had thought it possible to like anything or anyone.

I kept walking along the banks of the creek, staring into the water, lost in thought as I watched it ripple and churn, occasionally narrowing to a swift, white-water rush of water, other times widening to a wide, calm creek. Trees overshadowed it in places, brush thick against the banks here and there, forcing me to pick my way carefully through it, following the creek so I wouldn’t get lost.

I paused and really looked around me. How far had I walked? I wasn’t sure. Would I know how to get back to the campsite?

Crap, crap, crap.

I looked back at the way I’d come. I didn’t recognize anything, and I could see nothing but forest. Suddenly, the chirp of birds and the chuckle of the creek seemed somewhat less peaceful. I knew all I had to do was follow the creek back downstream—if I could find the place where I’d caught the fish, I’d know I was close to the campsite.

Only…

The spot I was standing in looked almost identical to that fishing spot. And, now that I thought about it, I’d passed by a few places where a big tree leaned out over the creek to spread a pool of shadow.

Shit.

I forced myself to breathe calmly, and not panic.

I had bear spray.

I had a compass.

I had no idea how to use the compass, though—knowing which way was north wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good if I didn’t know where I was supposed to go.

The wind kicked up, making the tall trees around me sway and sigh, dappling the sunlight and cooling the day. It was evening, at this point—the sun would be down soon. How long had I been walking? An hour? Shit! If I had to walk another hour back, it might very well be dark by the time I got anywhere near the campsite…assuming I could find it again in the first place.

“Don’t wander off too far,” Ram had said. “Be aware, and be present.”

Ramsey would have a shit fit if he knew what I’d done. Hopefully I could make my way back to camp before he began to worry. I’d given him a mocking salute and promptly ignored his advice, and now I was lost. Well, not lost, just…misplaced. This creek had to cross the trail at some point, because we’d crossed it on the bridge. That was miles and miles back downstream…or upstream? I wasn’t sure, anymore.

Fuck.

I was starting to panic.

Lost in the woods.

Where there were bears.

I’d heard stories of cougars, too, thinking back to sitting in a dive bar with the girls, giggling as we listened to tourists exchange fish stories, and the locals swapping legends and tall tales.

Did cougars attack people?

If a bear attacked me, Ram had said, it wouldn’t eat me…just rip me apart and leave me there to be eaten by other scavengers.

I pulled the bear spray out of my pocket and held the cool canister in my sweaty palm as I headed back downstream. Stay close to the creek, I told myself, and pay attention so I can spot familiar landmarks.

And stay calm.

Stay alert.

And hope Ram comes looking for me.

I was trying my damnedest to not hyperventilate as I hugged the creek’s edge, watching the sunlight fade. If I was still out after sundown, would I freeze? How cold did it get out here at night? Would more scary stuff come out after dark?

Oh god, oh god.

The sighing of the trees sounded frightening now. The chirp of the birds was threatening. The chuckle of the river was mocking laughter. Squirrels scampering across branches was the crackle and stomp of a hungry grizzly bear on the hunt for silly, lost city girls with no business in the forest alone.

And then, as I rounded a bend in the river, I saw the most welcome sight in the world: Ramsey, a fishing pole in his hands, calmly casting his line out into the water, neatly plunking the baited hook underneath an overhanging section of brush. Tight jeans, boots…shirt off. The evening sun shone red-gold on his tanned skin, limning every muscle and curve and plane. He’d removed his hat and the wind was ruffling his long, loose, shaggy, messy blond hair. His arms rippled as he adjusted his rod and wound the reel.

He reeled his line in, let the baited hook swing free above the water for a moment, and then with a smooth sideways movement, cast it further downstream to another spot, letting the line spool out a few feet, and then reeling it in again.

I watched, mesmerized by the utterly raw, male perfection that was Ramsey Badd. The end of his beard fluttered gently in the breeze, and his hair flattened against his scalp. God, how could anyone be so…much? So powerful, so strong, yet so smart and sensitive, and so capable?

He saw me.

He winked with a knowing grin. “Hey,” he called. “Have a good walk?”

He surely didn’t miss the bear spray in my hand, but he didn’t say anything about it. Nor was there even a hint of “I told you so” in his expression or tone of voice. He was just…here. Waiting for me, probably knowing full well I’d get lost and need him to rescue me.

I shoved the bear spray back into my pocket and moved downstream to stand near him, out of the way of his rod as he cast the line again.

“We already ate,” I said, ignoring his question. “So why are you fishing again?”

He rolled a thickly muscled shoulder. “Somethin’ to do. It relaxes me.”

I stood far enough away from him that I wouldn’t give in to the temptation to run my hands over his muscles, which looked like they’d been carved out of marble. Except, this marble was sheathed in smooth, warm skin, and rippled deliciously with every move he made. My hands itched to roam over his shoulders, to feel the slabs of muscle over his chest, the ripples across his back, the ridges of his ripped abs, to trace the bear claw scar. My hands ached to wander. To delve under the waistband of those just-tight-enough, perfectly faded blue jeans. To see if my memory of his anatomy was even remotely accurate, or if memory had added an inch, or two…or four. Because it didn’t seem possible that he could be anywhere near as well-endowed as I seemed to remember.

So, I stood well away and kept my hands clenched into fists and tucked them under my arms, because I was so grateful to see him that I didn’t trust myself or my libido to not overpower my better sense.

I had to acknowledge the situation somehow, though.

Meaning, the situation of having ignored his advice, and how he’d arranged to be standing here fishing, waiting for me. Neatly sparing my feelings, not making me feel like he’d had to come rescue me.

The reel on his fishing pole suddenly started whining, and the tip bent toward the river. My own heart started thumping in excitement, remembering how hard I’d had to fight to bring that salmon in. He made it look easy, letting it run, reeling it in, letting it run, dragging the tip skyward and reeling furiously, all without seeming to expend any effort. Within a few minutes, he had the fish in, lifting it free of the water, dripping and flopping and wriggling—it was plenty big, but not anywhere near as nice as mine, I noted with a smug sense of pride.

He held it by the mouth and wiggled the hook free. With a grin at me, he tossed it back into the river saying, “Good thing for you, buddy, I’m full, or you’d be our second dinner.”

I sighed. “Thank you, Ram.”

He collapsed the pole and secured the line. “For what?”

I arched an eyebrow at me. “The only reason you’re fishing in this spot is because you knew I’d get lost and you followed me.”

He winked at me. “It is a good spot for fishing. Two or three casts and I got a hit.”

“Ram.”

He tapped me on the nose. “You were upset. Wandering off upriver, lost in thought? Pretty much the most cliché way to get lost, you know?”

I faked a glare. “So I’m a cliché now?” I turned away from him and his stupid, endearing, adorable, obnoxious boops on the nose.

And because he was too close and too sexy.

He followed me a step or two. “Don’t pick fights, Izz.”

“Can’t help it. It’s in my nature. I’m an arguer.”

“No, you’re not.” He stood beside me. “It’s a defense mechanism.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Defense against what?”

“Liking me,” he murmured, suddenly behind me. Too close—way too close.

“I don’t like you. You’re annoying.”

He took me by the shoulders and turned me around…and now he was inches away, his bare chest in front of my face, his beard lit by the sunset, his eyes brightest blue and piercing straight into my secret heart, that tiny, shriveled, desiccated, atrophied little hole in my chest.

“No?” he asked. “You don’t? Not at all?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

He took my hands, lifted them palms facing outward, and spread his hands against mine, palm to palm, fingers to fingers—his hand was enormous, so big he could bend his fingers down over mine. His hand was rough, scarred and callused, hard as concrete, yet so gentle.

“Then tell me something.” His voice was like his hands—roughened by years of wildfire smoke, deep as a canyon, yet gentle and kind and strong. “Who else knows your mom died when you were thirteen? Who else knows you used to listen to Gene Autry with your dad? Who else knows you still have that hat of his?”

I blinked, swallowed. “Doesn’t mean I like you.”

He smirked, seeing through my thinning screen of bluster and bullshit. “Who else knows you want more out of life than fashion blogging?”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“When I asked if that was your future, you didn’t talk about it like I talked about becoming a park ranger. You didn’t—you shut down and changed the subject.” Those damned eyes of his saw me—saw me; saw me. “You want more than managing a retail store, Izz—more than blogging about the latest fashion trends. I don’t know what you do want—maybe you don’t even know—but I know that’s not it.”

I blinked hard, hating the burn and sting in my eyes. “Be quiet. You don’t know shit about me or what I want.”

“Sure I do.” He wasn’t fazed by my outburst in the slightest. “I don’t know much about you—in a way, we’re really just meeting each other for the first time on this trip. But I know enough to know you have walls a million feet high and a million feet thick. I don’t need to know the details of the story to see those walls, babe. I got my own walls, my own scar tissue deep inside, and like recognizes like, you know? You want more out of life. You’re just scared.”

“I’m not scared of anything,” I snapped. I hesitated. “Except getting lost alone in the woods…and being eaten by bears and cougars.”

“You were never alone out here, sweetness,” Ram rumbled. “I was with you the whole way.”

“What do you mean, with me?” I asked, my voice quiet, faint.

“I mean, I stayed far enough back you wouldn’t know I was there, but I was there. You needed time alone, but I figured you’d end up getting farther away than you planned.” His smile was…not gloating, like mine would have been; it was soft, sweet—too much so for a man so tough, so capable, so strong and macho. “You really think I’d let you get lost? Not on my watch, honeybuns.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, but my voice lacked its usual bite.

He shook his head. “Stubborn.”

“Can we go back?” I asked, suddenly tired.

I expected questions, probing, demanding. Instead, he just nodded. “Yep.” He pointed off through the forest. “Trail’s that way, campsite’s about half a mile or so down the trail.”

“How far did I wander?”

He shrugged. “Two miles or so. Quite a ways.”

“Would I have been able to find the campsite on my own if you hadn’t followed me?”

He tilted his head side to side. “Maybe. If I’d kept the fire going and stayed put, you probably would’ve smelled the fire, and if you were smart, you’d have followed your nose to the fire. Not many campsites around here, so it stands to reason if there’s a campfire, it’s ours.”

He led me through the undergrowth, and sure enough, after a few minutes of traipsing in a straight line through the brush, we came upon the trail. I’d have never found it on my own, …and if I hadn’t gone in a straight line, I’d have missed the trail, what with the way it wound around.

He didn’t say another word the rest of the way back to camp, and neither did I.

It was such a relief to see the fire ring, and the little blue-and-gray dome tent, that I actually sighed out loud, a huff of relief. It wasn’t until we reached the camp that I truly realized how scared I’d been, even though I’d never been alone, and had only been walking for five or ten minutes before I ran into Ram.

Ram squatted by the fire, rearranging logs and adding kindling and poking at the coals with a length of stick, leaning close and blowing gently. In a moment, I saw flames flickering, and then in another few moments the fire was going again, blazing merrily as he added more kindling, and then another thick log.

I sat on the tree trunk facing the fire and just let myself soak in the comfort of the campsite; it was odd how quickly and easily I’d come to think of this little spot as a kind of temporary home, a place of comfort. It was just a tent and a fire, and we’d be gone by morning, but for now, it was home.

I glanced at Ram, who was tossing trail mix into his mouth, staring up at the sky, watching an eagle wheel in the drowsing quiet of sunset.

How lost would I have been without him?

I realized I was entirely dependent on him, out here. I knew nothing. Zero. I would literally get lost and die without him. Or, at least, require a search and rescue team to bring me back to my lattes and Wi-Fi.

Yet he moved with utter ease and confidence. He made it all look easy—making a fire, catching a fish, cleaning and cooking it, scaring off bears, watching giant bull elks from mere feet away, hiking out into the wildness with nothing but what he could carry on his back…he was at home out here, and he had brought me into his world.

“Do your brothers ever go hiking with you?” I asked, the question tumbling out unbidden.

He glanced at me, as surprised as I was by the question. “Ummm, no, not very often. Rem will on occasion. He and I took a little afternoon hike up the Deer Mountain trail a few weeks ago, but…these long weekend camping trips? Nah. Not really their thing. They’re just as capable of wilderness survival as I am, but they don’t seek it out the way I do.”

“So…you’re by yourself out here most of the time?”

He nodded. “Yep. That’s how I like it, though. I’m kind of a loner, usually.” He smirked. “I think I know what you’re angling at. Yes, Izzy—you’re the only woman I’ve ever brought on a hiking trip like this.”

“The only one…ever?” I couldn’t help staring into those big blue eyes of his to gauge his reaction.

“The only one, ever,” he said. “Hikes are…well, they’re—” He hesitated. “At the risk of sounding melodramatic, they’re sort of sacred to me. Being out on the trail, like I said earlier today, it’s my safe place. This is my me-time, where I go to recharge so I can stomach being stuck in that fucking dingy ass saloon of Rome’s.” He sighed. “That’s not fair, though. We built a hell of a beautiful bar, and I’m proud of it, and of him, but I just…I don’t like being there.”

“So when I invited myself along with you...” I arched an eyebrow at him.

He laughed. “I honestly expected us to hate each other, for you to demand I take you back to town after the first few miles.” He made a face. “Surprise, surprise, but…I’m having a hell of a good time with you.”

I ducked my head. “It’s a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I really am enjoying myself, Ram.”

When had he sat on the log beside me? I don’t remember him moving. The fire was blazing. The sun was mostly down, the sky red-orange and darkening to purple at the edges. There was a hint of a chill in the air, making me glad of the fire. He was close. I could smell him, sweat and man, fish, campfire; he smelled like the wilderness.

I couldn’t help staring at him—he was still shirtless, magnificently so. He looked as if he just belonged, like he was part of the scenery. He was the wild, because there was something as wild about him as the forest around us.

I felt drawn to him in a way I’d never felt drawn to anyone.

I wanted to kiss him. Hold on to him. Lay on the pine needles with him and stare at the stars, feel his heat against me.

I blinked hard and looked away, trying to breathe away the strange, intensely powerful, deeply personal desire I felt for the man who was Ramsey Badd.

“My dad remarried when I was sixteen,” I heard myself say.

Intervention. Tell a story; tell him something personal to keep the desire at bay. Maybe if he knows more about me he won’t want me as much, and I won’t want him to want me, and I won’t want him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid me. Utterly boneheaded reasoning, but it was all I had to defend against the constant onslaught of my desire to keep him out of my heart, out of my life, and out of my body.

But he was worming his way into those three places without even trying, slowly, deliberately, and surely.

“You get on with your stepmother?” he asked.

My snort of laughter was bitterly, derisively negative. “Not exactly. My nickname for her is Evil Cunt. And her daughter is Evil Cunt Junior.”

He blinked. “Wow. Okay. So no, you didn’t like her.”

“Honestly, even though I came up with those names when I was just a teen, those names turned out to be pretty accurate.” I stared into the fire rather than looking at Ram; I let my words flow, unsure where they were coming from, or why I was telling him any of this, but I couldn’t stop it and I knew better than to try. “After Mom died, Dad just…fell apart. There was nothing physically wrong with him, he was just literally brokenhearted. Sick from losing her. Physically sick. He spent most of the first month isolated in his study, coming out only for the funeral and for food. He could barely talk to me, and his friends and colleagues couldn’t reach him at all. After two months, he decided to take time off, so he got a leave of absence from the hospital—a year sabbatical, he called it.” I sighed, pausing. “I thought maybe we would spend time together and heal together, but he didn’t seem to realize that I was hurting too. He sent me to live with my aunt, his sister. He said it would just be until he could get back on track—just for the summer. They lived way across the country and we didn’t see them all that often, but he still packed me off to live with them, and two months turned into a whole year.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, it was…not great. I hardly knew them. And they already had four kids and were barely making it. I just added to their stress, but I was family so they took care of me. But it wasn’t…loving. It was tense and awkward. I was grieving, but I was in a strange home with people I didn’t know, in a new school with no friends, and I didn’t want to make any new ones because I was still hoping Dad would bring me back home. I was fucking miserable.”

“Did he ever bring you home?”

I nodded. “After a year. A little less, actually. I moved to St. Paul in March, and moved back to Memphis the following January.”

“Was your dad any better?

I laughed again, bitterly. “No. He was worse, if anything. He’d…drawn inward while I was gone. He went back to work. He’d always worked long hours, but when he went back, he went back with a vengeance. He basically lived there, leaving me alone pretty much all the time.”

He huffed a laugh. “I know how that feels.”

“Yeah.” I took a twig and snapped it into pieces, tossing the smaller pieces into the fire one by one, watching them catch fire and burn. “He was never the same after Mom died. He’d been fun, funny, charming, talkative, easygoing. After I moved back, he was just…angry. Cold, distant, and totally shut down.”

“So you went from having two loving parents to no parents at all in the space of a year.”

I nodded. “Yeah. And then it got worse.”

“He met your stepmother?”

I nodded again. “Yep. He met her online, I guess, and then they met in real life, and within six months they were married. I told him flat out I hated her, told him she only wanted him for his money—I saw that the first time I met her. She had him buy her all sorts of stuff every time they went out—jewelry, purses, clothes, for her and for her daughter.” I sniffled, against my own will. “He never bought me a damn thing. Barely looked at me. Acted as if he couldn’t stand me.”

Ram frowned. “God…why?”

I shrugged, shaking my head. “I really don’t know. I think it must have been because I look so much like Mom. I sound like her too.”

“So he married the greedy gold digger.”

“Yep. She was divorced from a rich old guy who’d seen through her bullshit, but by then she was used to a certain lifestyle. She saw her opportunity in Dad, so she took it. I think he just wanted someone to warm his bed, you know? He never loved her. I don’t think he even liked her, but…” I shuddered. “She put out, so he married her and let her bleed him dry, because he just didn’t care.”

“Yuck,” Ram muttered. “That’s bullshit.”

“What’s bullshit is that she only cared about spending money on herself and her spoiled bitch of a daughter, who she’d had with her first husband—I think she literally nagged that poor bastard to death, from what I understand. She didn’t do shit except shop. I took care of Dad, fed him, did his laundry, cleaned the house because no one else would.”

He eyed me. “So should I start calling you Cinderella?”

I snorted bitterly. “More than you know. This went on for about two years, and then Dad just…died. Literally, actually on my eighteenth birthday. He just…wasted away right in front of me and I couldn’t do a thing about it. He got thinner and thinner, ate less and less, slept less and less. Talked less and less. And then one morning I found him dead in his bed.”

“Jesus, Izz.”

“So yeah, things got worse from there. Evil Cunt took over. Kicked me out to the little loft over the garage.”

“How could she kick you out of your own house?”

“She controlled the money. I’d been buying food and whatever else with his credit cards, and she took them and cut them up and got new ones. And I was just so depressed already, and then further devastated by Dad dying that I just stopped caring, stopped fighting her.” I’d run out of twigs to snap, so I grabbed another and resumed breaking it into smaller sections and tossing the pieces into the fire. “I reached a point where I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t handle Tracey or Trina anymore. So I left. I’d managed to save a few thousand dollars, essentially siphoning it off while taking care of Dad—it was stealing, if you want to get technical about it, but I guess deep down I knew which way the wind was blowing and took precautions. So I had some money, and I ran away. I mean, I was eighteen, so it wasn’t really running away, just leaving. I ran into some people I used to babysit for. They’d lived in the same neighborhood as us for years, and they had three kids a lot younger than me, so babysitting was a way to earn some spending cash, because Dad didn’t believe in allowance. Anyway, they’d moved to a different neighborhood, and I got talking to the mother, and it came up that they were looking for a live-in nanny. So…that was how I survived for the next couple years.”

He eyed me with curiosity. “You? A live-in nanny?”

I laughed. “Don’t sound so surprised. I do have a nurturing side.”

“I guess I just have a hard time visualizing you changing diapers and making bottles.”

I laughed again. “Oh, no. The kids were older by then, kindergarten, third grade, and fifth grade. I was mainly there to keep them from burning the house down, or killing each other. I also prepared the meals and did laundry, since the mom and dad both worked full time out of the house. Live-in nanny basically means housekeeper and babysitter in one.”

“Isadora Styles, domestic goddess.”

I snickered. “Hey, I can make a mean lasagna, and fold baskets of laundry faster than you can blink. I’m out of practice these days, though.”

He grinned at me. “I’m definitely interested in the lasagna.”

“If you’re really nice, I’ll make it for you someday.”

“I can be nice,” he murmured. “Very, very nice.”

I flushed hot, remembering how nice he had been on the trail earlier today. “Don’t remind me,” I muttered.

He grinned, letting out a low, lascivious chuckle. “No? I think that’d be something you’d want to remember.”

“How could I forget?” I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, counting to ten. “Anyway…I nannied for them for about a year and a half, maybe two years, and then Alan, the father, got transferred here. Well, to Alaska. Anchorage, actually. I moved with them, helping with the transition, but even though the transfer was a promotion, the change in living situation meant the house they ended up buying was too small for all of them, plus a live-in nanny. And the increase in pay meant Lucy, the wife, didn’t have to work as much, so they just didn’t need me anymore. It was great for them, overall, but it left me out of a job and living in Alaska by myself.”

“So how’d you end up in Ketchikan?”

“Alan knew someone who lived here who needed temporary help around the house—his wife was a high-risk pregnancy and on bed rest, and they needed help with the other kids and keeping up the house. So I moved down here, and then once she’d given birth and had recovered, I was out of a job again. By that time, I was twenty-two, almost twenty-three. No college, barely enough money to survive, no friends, no family. I mean, I have Aunt Mary and Uncle Nick in St. Paul, but I wasn’t about to go banging on their door again.”

“What’d you do?”

“I walked by a newly remodeled retail space right as the owner was hanging up a help wanted sign. I went in, asked if I could fill out an application, and ended up getting hired on the spot. That was Angelique, and I’ve worked for her ever since. I went from cashier and salesgirl to manager, to now basically running the place on my own while Angelique is semi-retired. She spends most of her time in Paris, sourcing inventory.”

He looked at me, long and hard and intently. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot.”

I shrugged. “When I was a kid and my mom and dad were alive, I never could have imagined what the future held for me. I went from love and security to one impossible situation after another, just sort of…surviving.”

“Don’t downplay it, Izzy. You survived on your own from a very young age. You’ve made good.”

I rolled a shoulder. “I guess.”

“Why do you doubt?”

I sighed. “I just…I’ve bounced from thing to thing. Place to place. Working for Angelique has been amazing, and I do love blogging, and I’ve got quite a big following, and even a few pretty big sponsors.”

“But…?”

Gahhh, here we go. The thing I hated facing. The thing I’d never even allowed myself to think about.

“But…before Mom died, I wanted…”

He waited a moment. When I didn’t finish, he nudged me with a broad, hard, warm shoulder. “You wanted what, Izzy?”

I blinked hard against the tears pooling in my eyes. It was stupid—why was this so hard to talk about?

“I wanted to be a doctor.” I whispered it, so low I barely heard myself. “Even after Mom died, I wanted to be a doctor. Even more so, in some ways. Like, maybe I could save someone else’s mother so they wouldn’t have to go through what I was going through, you know?”

“But then life happened.” His voice was close, rumbling in my ear, buzzing in my bones and in my blood. “Life got in the way of those plans.”

“And now I’m thirty years old with nothing but a high school diploma and a stupid fashion blog.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you still want to go into medicine?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it even possible, at this point in my life? I’d be forty before I finished.”

“Anything’s possible,” Ram said. “Don’t you know? Forty is the new twenty.”

I snorted, unable to suppress a grin and a giggle. “That’s stupid and you’re an idiot. Twenty is twenty, forty is forty, and old is old.”

He shook his head. “Now who’s an idiot? You’re not old. You’re barely thirty.”

“And I’m supposed to just…start over? Go back to school? Med school at that?” I laughed. “Med school is next to impossible for twenty-somethings with boundless energy and the ability to function on three hours of sleep.”

He bumped me with his shoulder again. “Okay, granted. I’m just saying, it’s never too late to chase your dreams. It’s never too late to start over. And if you want something bad enough, you’ll make the time, and you’ll get through it, if it’s important to you.”

“Says the man still working at his brother’s bar,” I said, knowing I was being unfair.

“Okay, well I’m not still working there out of fear, I’m doing it out of loyalty to my brother.”

I sighed. “I’m not afraid.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me. “No? Then what’s holding you back?”

I groaned. “Shut up. I hate you.”

He chuckled. “Because you know I’m right.”

“Yeah, I’m scared, okay?” I snapped. “I’m scared of going a hundred grand in debt, I’m scared of going to med school with kids ten or twelve years younger than me, smarter than me, with more energy than me. I’m scared of leaving the job I know pays the bills.”

“No one is saying you have to do anything.” Ram rolled a shoulder. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t let being afraid stop you.”

“Easy for you to say. You parachuted into wildfires. You don’t get scared.”

He scoffed. “Is that what you think?”

I nodded. “Um…yeah?”

“Wrong. I was scared every single time I jumped out of an airplane. If you’re not scared to jump out an airplane with nothing keeping you from smacking into the ground but some silk and some string, you’re crazy—and I mean that honestly. And if you’re not scared to do that into the middle of a raging wildfire, you’re even more so.” He added a log to the fire, sending sparks winkling and floating up into the night sky. “I was scared shitless my first time jumping out of the plane. The instructor had to actually shove me out, as a matter of fact. And then I was out and in the air, free falling, and it was…the craziest rush of my life. There’s absolutely nothing like it. The scariest part of it is that moment when you have to convince yourself to do something legitimately moronic: voluntarily leaping out of an airplane ten thousand feet in the air. After that, it’s a rush. It’s fun, exhilarating, freeing. The part where you jump into a wildfire and have to start fighting it? That’s a different kind of scary. That’s where you have to fall back on your training. But that’s scary, too. So yeah, babe, I was scared of every plane I jumped out of, and every fire I went into.”

“I guess I thought because you did a dangerous job like that, that you just didn’t get scared. Like, you thrived on the danger or whatever.”

“You’re right and wrong at the same time—you do get scared, and that fear is what keeps you alive. It forces you to double, triple, and quadruple check your gear. It keeps you alert, keeps you training as hard as possible so you stay on the knife-edge of your skills. The part you’re wrong about is that people doing scary and dangerous jobs don’t get scared. You’re right about thriving on the fear and the danger, though. The adrenaline rush, the danger, the fear, the challenge, I did love it and thrive on it. You’re never so alive as when you’re hyperaware of your own mortality.”

“Were you scared to move up here to Alaska?” I asked. “It’s kind of like starting over, I guess.”

He nodded. “Not kind of like, it was starting over. We’d quit jobs we’d trained for, chased after, and loved. We left California, the home we’d chosen, and we were leaving Oklahoma, the home we were born to. We had no safety net up here, no family, no friends, no jobs. We had a business loan and an idea—Rome’s dream of opening a bar.”

“But you did have family up here, though.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but we walked into their bar and met them for the first time…and nearly got into a fist fight with them. Actually, Rome did get decked by Bast that night, come to think of it.” He laughed. “He deserved it, though. The point is, Rome had said we had long-lost cousins up here, but that didn’t really mean anything to me until we met them and slowly started developing relationships with them.”

“It’s good you have them,” I said.

He just nodded, and we were both content to let the silence stretch out, then. Ram slid off the log to sit on the ground with his back to the log, legs stretched out. He scraped his hand through his hair, and then dragged his fingers through his beard, sighing.

Eventually, a pressing need I’d been avoiding all day became too strong to ignore.

“Um, Ram?”

He eyed me, a smirk on his face. “You’re finally desperate enough that you’re willing to piss in the woods?”

I nodded, flushing and refusing to look at him. “Something like that,” I mumbled.

“Well, obviously I ain’t a girl, but from what I understand, the best way to go about peeing in the woods without a toilet is to dig a nice deep hole. Doesn’t have to be wide, or more than a foot deep or so, but digging a hole keeps your pee from splashing back up on you. The other trick I’ve heard girls talk about is keeping your knees wide, for some reason. Not sure on that one, but I’ve heard it more than a few times, so I imagine it’s true. Last, get your pants way down around your ankles, if not take them off entirely.”

I nodded. “Got it.” Another hesitation. “Um…did you bring a shovel?”

He laughed again. “I got you.”

Ram stood up in a smooth, lithe movement, went to his pack, and unstrapped a small, collapsible spade from it, and then dug out a roll of TP, grabbing a canteen on the way. He jerked his head in a gesture to follow him, and guided me out behind the tent a few feet. He unclipped a small flashlight from his belt, turned it on, and handed it to me, and then dug a hole about a foot wide and a foot deep.

He gestured at the hole, leaving the spade and the canteen against a nearby tree. “Do your business, and use as little TP as possible. When you’re done, dump some water on the TP to help it break down faster. This is a fairly damp area, and not really all that sensitive, so it’s fine to bury the mess. Scoop the dirt and pine needles over the hole, and you’re good.”

“Um, so…if you don’t bury it, what do you do with it?”

He chuckled. “Well, if you’re hiking in an arid area, or a place where the ecosystem is fragile or sensitive, you live by the phrase ‘leave no trace.’ So you pack it all out with you.”

I frowned in disgust. “You pack out used toilet paper?”

He nodded. “Poop too. Human fecal matter isn’t part of most ecological systems, so if you’re hiking in a sensitive ecosystem, you have to take it out with you.”

“Oh my god, that’s so gross. How do you even do that?”

“Special bags. I’ve done it a couple times.”

I shuddered. “Nasty. This is about as far as I’m willing to go, at this point.” I shooed him away. “Dump water on the TP and then cover the hole. Got it.” I laughed, shaking my hands. “What a weird conversation.”

“It’s all natural, baby!” he said, laughing. “Okay. I’ll be at the fire. Give a shout if you need help.”

I snorted. “I think I can manage to pee by myself.”

“Just sayin’, I’ll be within earshot,” he said, walking away.

It felt a little silly to be so glad for the flashlight he’d left me. Away from the fire, it was pitch-black in the forest, and I could see very little. I pushed down my jeans and underwear, oriented myself over the hole, and took care of business. And, let me tell you, it was every bit as weird as I thought it would be.

Done, I dumped water on the TP, filled in the hole, and returned to the campfire, leaving the spade and canteen with Ram’s pack. I handed him the flashlight as I sat down on the log. He opened a pouch on his belt and withdrew a small bottle of hand sanitizer.

I laughed gratefully. “Oh thank god,” I said. “Clean hands.”

“Always prepared,” he said, holding up a hand in the Boy Scout salute.

“What else do you have in all those pouches on your belt?” I asked.

He winked up at me. “Trade secret, babe. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Wouldn’t be hard,” I joked. “All you’d have to do is leave me out here alone.”

He chuckled. “Nah, you’d survive. You’re smart and tough.”

“You really think so?” I asked, stretching and yawning.

When I came out of my stretch, I discovered that somehow, I’d ended up with my legs on either side of Ramsey’s torso, so he was leaning against the log between my thighs. And for some stupid, ridiculous reason, my fingers started tracing through his hair, toying with the long, feathery, silk-soft blond locks.

“Yes, Izzy, I do think so. I wouldn’t say it otherwise. I’m not in the habit of sayin’ shit I don’t mean.” He leaned his head backward, letting it rest against my belly.

What was I doing? Caressing his hair, stroking his scalp lightly with my fingernails…such intimate affection. Why?

I wasn’t sure. I just knew I couldn’t stop. I knew I should—this kind of intimacy was foolish, risky, too much too soon. I haven’t even had sex with him. I didn’t engage in affection like this with men I did have sex with, much less men I barely knew.

I bolted up off the log, abruptly and awkwardly, and lurched toward the tent. “I’m…tired. Gonna go see if I can figure out how to sleep in a weird bag on the ground.”

Ram didn’t say anything, but there was something knowing in his silence. I bet if I’d turned around, I’d have seen him smirking.

But I didn’t turn around. I unzipped the tent, took off my hiking boots and set them in a corner of the tent; they sat there for about forty-six seconds before I realized they stank to high heaven, so I set them outside the tent. I took off my bra without taking off my shirt, and climbed into the sleeping bag.

The ground was hard, but at least Ram had made sure I bought a weird little compressible hiking pillow—I pulled it out of its little bag and it sprang rapidly outward into shape, and turned out to be pretty comfy.

I’d come in here not because I was sleepy, but to escape the intimacy of the moment with Ram, but once I lay down and put my head on the pillow, I found myself drifting off to sleep faster than I’d ever fallen asleep in my life.