When I drop Riley off at her house later that evening, the both of us are spent, not just from the day of sex but just the day of letting each other in. I don’t know about her but after today…fuck. There’s no going back anymore. This woman is becoming everything to me. I can’t think straight, can’t see straight. My skin, blood, bones, still hum with the feel of her, like she’s imprinted herself deep, down to my marrow.

It’s enough to drive a man mad. Wild. And I’ve never had anything in my life throw me for such a loop before. It’s that adrenaline I get when I get the call, the thrill when I’m rappelling down an ice-covered cliff, the wonder of seeing a pack of wolves running off in the distance, oblivious to someone as insignificant as me. She’s every unexplored mountain, every wild river, every storm that catches you by surprise.

She’s a force of nature.

Super, Natural, Riley Clarke.

But she’s not mine. And sometimes I think I might not be able to tame her. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t. Because she was right to ask last night, about what we are doing. She was right because I’ve thought it too. Where this can go? How can we ever become anything more than sex, because if we do, we lose our livelihood. Sex can be a secret; a relationship is harder to bury.

And, fucking eh. Am I even ready for that? In this line of work? Committing myself to someone, knowing I could lose them, that it could ruin us both in the end?

All I know is that I’ve never met anyone who is more addicting than search and rescue. Those thrills I seek, the validation, it’s all inside her. We work in a team, but we’re a team of our own, the two of us, a team with nowhere to go and no one to rescue but ourselves.

I’m sitting in my truck now, just outside the house. The lights are on and I can see Fox’s shadow pass by the large windows but I don’t want to go inside yet because he’ll grill me. I think it’s his favorite hobby, pestering me about the women I date just so he doesn’t have to think about his own romantic shortcomings.

But eventually I have to go inside, so I get out of the truck and the door is almost immediately slammed back against me. A burst of wind has come out of nowhere, rising hard and fast from the direction of Ravenswood and Cherry Peak to the north.

It’s a cold wind too, immediately chilling me to the bone. After the near balmy temperatures, I wonder if this is the storm I’ve been suspecting. The wind dies down almost immediately but that one burst has me on edge.

When I wake up the next morning, it’s four a.m., a long time before my alarm goes off. I get up and look out the window. The wind is howling now but there’s no snow, just the high, eerie whine as it whips through the trees.

I wonder if Riley is up, listening to the storm. I have a feeling she is.

I text her, Hey, you awake?

I then wait, wishing I hadn’t done that. She’ll probably assume it’s a call to go out and I’ll wake her up for nothing.

But she texts back, Yes. Can’t sleep.

Want company? I text back and I know, I know, I’m pushing things here. But fuck, she was pushing it for so long, I figure it’s time I return the favor.

Don’t you have to be at work in the morning?

I text back. Don’t you?

But I take that to mean she wants company because she didn’t exactly say no, so I get ready and head out the door. It’s funny, to feel so comfortable with someone but we’re still in that stage where we’re really not sure about what we are and how every text or word or look can be too much or too little.

Soon she’s letting me in her suite and I’m kissing her and we’re falling backward onto her bed and I’m taking off her tank top, sucking on her breasts, her neck. I push inside of her and I know I’ve found that peace I crave, that balance to all the chaos.

It doesn’t just stop there.

Like the day before, we keep touching each other, sinking into easy, constant sex, our bodies constantly entangled. I swear we fuck for hours, this slow, drowsy, descent into this world we’ve created for just ourselves.

I’ve just pulled out of her, my back stinging from her nail marks, my muscles cramping from the night of effort, when my phone buzzes.

I glance at the glowing clock radio—seven a.m. now, I’m not supposed to be in for another hour—and fish my phone out of my jeans.

There are a shit ton of missed calls.

“Oh fuck,” I mutter.

“What is it?” she asks.

I shake my head, looking them over. “How did I not hear these come in?”

“Because we were having all the sex.”

I glance at her. “Why didn’t your phone go off?”

She looks put out. “It died after you texted me. I figured any call would go to you. What is it?”

I sigh and sit down on the bed, scrolling through them. “It’s nothing. Well, a climber fell at the Kokanee Glacier. Six-hundred-foot drop. His partner came back in the middle of the night. It’s pretty much a body recovery now.”

“Who went?”

“I don’t know.” I text back Tony and wait for his reply.

To his credit, he doesn’t ask where I was. Or where Riley was. He says that Tim and Jace went out. I relay this to Riley.

“Don’t they need us?” she asks, bringing her knees to her chest and tucking her covers over them. In the hazy morning light, she looks so young, fresh, innocent, her blonde bedhead spilling all around her.

I shake my head. “No. To recover a body…you can do it alone. Usually I’m doing it.”

She swallows and looks down at the pattern on the bedspread. “I’ve only seen one dead body. I don’t know how you do it.”

“It’s part of the job,” I tell her, leaning against her knees. “And someone has to do it. We aren’t always about the rescue. Sometimes the searching is more important. People deserve to be buried properly. Loved ones want to know what happened. So I go out there and I retrieve the bodies and maybe they aren’t alive but they’re safe. You know?”

She blinks, staring at nothing. “But…how do you do it? Face death? Doesn’t that…affect you? I mean, you’re so normal.”

I laugh softly. “Am I? I believe I told you the other night that there are two people in me, John and Maverick.”

“You know what I mean.” Her eyes are grave. She’s serious.

So I’m serious too. “Look. It’s not easy but you do get used to it. But for me, I’ve maybe recovered fifteen bodies or so, it’s a balance of being respectful while keeping your distance. There have been climbers who have fallen. Backcountry skiers buried in an avalanche. I’ve helped recover bodies in a plane crash, a Cessna where a father and daughter died together. Most of the time though, someone has taken their own life. Sometimes it’s a shotgun in the mouth in the middle of the forest and I don’t find them until after the wolves have. Other times, they jump over the waterfalls, like Bridal, or hurl themselves off of Cherry Lookout. It’s…so stark and raw and intimate, you know, to be the one to pick these people up after they’ve decided to end their lives. You’re seeing some part of their life that no one else ever will.”

“But your mother…” she says and then clamps her mouth shut.

I know what she means. “Maybe that’s why I do this,” I tell her. “Because my mother drowned herself and had there been someone in SAR around at that time, maybe they could have gone into that river and saved her. Maybe they would have given her the help she needed. Maybe…she would still be here today and I would still have a mother.”

It’s hard to swallow and I’m getting choked up. I close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose.

“Mav,” Riley says softly, getting to her knees. She wraps her arms around me and holds me close, resting her cheek on my shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Are you? I think but I don’t think too much. My emotions are running high lately and I can’t stop the few tears that fall from my eyes.

But this isn’t how I want to start this day. I need to get it together. Riley is unraveling me with every second we’re together, like when you’re climbing and there’s too much slack in the ropes and you know it. Eventually there will be nothing to hold you up. Eventually you’ll fall.

I get up and shake it off. “Let’s go in to work,” I tell her.

Thirty minutes later, the two of us are coming into the office together.

Tony is at his desk and looks up with a smile. At least this guy is always smiling.

“You’re here.”

“In the flesh,” I tell him. “Where’s Neil?”

“He went out for donuts,” Tony says. “Need to keep that boy busy.”

“Any word from Tim or Jace?” Riley asks as she takes off her coat and hangs it on the rack. I love how no-nonsense she can be sometimes, how easily she goes from sex kitten to vulnerable to a goof and back to one serious ass-kicking SAR.

“Tim has the body,” Tony says. “Jace is relaying. Police are with the climber by the road. Should take them about three hours to get down though.”

“Why so long?” I ask. From what I understood, the ice walls that the climbers were using were quite close to the trailhead, maybe an hour’s hike.

“This wind,” Tony says, gestures to the trees wavering outside the windows, “it’s coming from the glacier and beyond. It’s a fucking mess up there. I can barely get them on the radio.”

A cold knot forms inside my stomach. “I think we should go for backup.” I look at Riley. “You in?”

“Always,” she says, grabbing her coat and putting it back on.

I look at Tony. “Stay here and be base. And don’t let Neil eat all the donuts.”

“I’ll save you a maple glazed.”

Riley and I get our gear in the truck and head out. It’s about an hour drive to the glacier and she’s lapsed into silence, staring out the window at the weather. The wind is still howling and now light flakes are starting to appear. As long as they stay light, it shouldn’t be a problem, but if they get any heavier, then the avalanche risks rise. The glacier can be notorious for that, another reason why I think we need to be there.

But her silence is telling after a while.

And I have questions.

“You never talk about Levi,” I say to her.

She stiffens slightly but keeps her eyes focused outside.

“There isn’t much to say,” she says after a few beats. Her words are careful.

“He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

She nods. “Only friend.”

“Just a friend?”

Now she looks at me. “What makes you say that?”

I give her a quick smile. “I don’t know. I just feel it. The closer someone is to you when you lose them, the less you want to talk about it.”

She watches me for a few beats, thinking, then sighs, leaning her head back against the seat. “Yeah. Well, I was in love with him. Ever since high school. He didn’t know it though.”

“I’m sure he did. There’s no way you can love someone and not have them know it.”

A line forms between her brows. “You’ve obviously never pined for someone before.”

I think I might be pining right now.

“What I mean is, you, Riley. Your heart and soul just beam out of you, like a sunburst. You’ve got all this joy and life in you that you can’t possibly contain. There is no way in hell that Levi didn’t know how you felt. He knew, believe me, he knew.”

She watches me for a few moments, confusion and fear washing over her features, until she says, “If that’s true, he never addressed it.”

“Sometimes it’s difficult with friends. You don’t want to ruin a good thing. Take Fox and Del for example.”

“Yeah. What is their deal?”

“It’s what I said. They’re like sister and brother. Good friends to the end. But there’s something else there that neither of them are facing, because if they do, it means that everything they are to each other is at risk.”

“That’s sweet that you care.”

“Sweet? No. I’m not a matchmaker and I don’t necessarily believe in their romance. But Fox is a short-tempered grump. Just like our father. But worse, because he’s sexually frustrated over Del and doesn’t even know it. Love would calm him down, bring him peace.”

“Love is chaos.”

I give her an odd look. But she’s right. Love is chaos.

I think I might be falling in love with Riley and I’ve never felt more turbulent in all my life.

I clear my throat, trying to push those feelings away. “Anyway, the reason I’m asking about Levi is that –”

“You want to know if I’m capable of loving someone.”

I blink at her in shock. “What? That is not what I was going to say.”

She shrugs. “Sometimes I wonder myself.”

What I was going to say had to do with the dead body. I know she found Levi’s and I don’t want her to be traumatized all over again if it turns out we have to help take the climber out. I’m not sure if Tim has a body bag packed with him or not.

But I let it go because, really, it’s dumb of me to ask. Riley is more than tough and she can handle everything that gets thrown at her. Even if she’s crumbling on the inside, she has enough bravado to do the job properly and I suppose that’s all that matters in this line of work.

When we finally get to the trailhead, we have a quick meeting with the RCMP officer and the distraught climbing partner. The police always have to be called in when someone dies, especially to make sure foul play isn’t suspected. It never turns out that way either, but there are also special precautions that we have to take when we’re investigating the scene.

Then we head up. Our packs are extra heavy today because we’re both carrying 600 feet of rope in case we need it, plus ice axes, helmets, and crampons. It’s almost all vertical, so there’s no skiing in and the snow is too wet for snowshoes, so we’re hiking in our boots. Thankfully it’s a popular trail for ice climbers or people wanting to see the glacier so the snow is hard packed and we’re not sinking in too much.

The weather, however, is like one big fucking hand in our faces, trying to hold us back. We push through, but it’s hard. I keep looking over my shoulder at Riley, just her eyes visible through the balaclava that covers her face, frost and ice building up on the fabric.

Finally, we break through the treeline and head up a couple of ridges before we come to the glacier. I’d been trying to radio with Jace on our way but things aren’t coming in clearly. All I got is that they had to take a higher route along one of the saddles before cutting down the glacier at an angle.

We can see them now, halfway across, tiny dots on endless white. Tim leads, holding the body bag on the litter, Jace keeps up the rear.

“This isn’t good,” Riley says.

I look over at Riley. She’s pulled down her mask, staring at the ice field with trepidation. Her pallor is white as snow. She looks at me. “I don’t like this.”

I put my attention back on the team. They seem fine. Slow, but more than capable as they cross. “Why?”

“I don’t know. The storm, the way the snow is sitting at the top there, those cornices are overloaded. All of this is fresh powder, it’s been dumping here for hours, probably since yesterday, after those weeks of snow melt? No. I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you wait here,” I tell her. Granted it’s not the best spot where we’ve stopped. We’ve just come up the spine and while the slope into the glacier is easy and gentle, the slope behind us is four hundred feet of pure ice that eventually drops off into the abyss.

“Why don’t we wait for them to come to us,” she says. “No point putting extra weight out there.”

“I wouldn’t be much of a leader if I didn’t go out there and help,” I tell her. “I should have been the one to take the call this morning. I should be there.”

A wash of shame comes over her eyes and she diverts them, looking to the glacier. I didn’t mean for it to sound the way it did, that I was angry that I was having sex with her this morning instead of being where I needed to be.

“Okay but…” she trails off just as a whumpf sound echoes down the glacier. Instinctively we both look up at the top and see a massive cornice of snow break away and fall onto the slope below.

The trigger for an avalanche.

“Run!” I yell across the glacier but it’s pointless because Tim and Jace have both heard it too and have stopped, staring up at the giant sheet of snow – two football fields worth – that’s barreling toward them faster than anything they can outrun.

I’ve seen plenty of avalanches before. Despite how destructive and deadly they are, they’re also awe-inspiring. It’s probably why so many die in them. Not only are they hard to predict but when you see them, you can’t look away. It’s supernatural, ravishing and horrifically beautiful. A heard of ice horses stampeding toward you on white crested waves.

I’m powerless. I can’t yell, I can’t move, though moving won’t help anyone right now. I can just watch as the snow comes down in a relentless blast, the powder clouds rising high into the sky. In seconds Tim, Jace and the climber have vanished, disappeared under the cover of snow and then the wall starts moving up the edges of the bowl, coming for us.

It should stop just below us, the momentum already slowing, but it’s still rising, crawling up the ridge to where we are, reaching for us with icy fingers.

Instinctively I move in front of Riley to shield her, even though I know the worst we’ll get hit with is a face full of powder.

But she screams.

I turn around in time for the powder cloud to hit my back and to see her stumble backward away from me, arms wheeling around trying to keep her balance on the thin line of the ridge.

“Riley!” I cry out, lunging for her.

But it’s too late.

She falls backward, ten feet down onto the slope of ice and starts sliding down, fast, first on her back and then flipping over, trying wildly to grab hold of the ice as she slides.

I don’t think.

I just move.

I leap off the ridge and land on my stomach, arms out, sliding down right after her, head first.

The slope is pure ice, fifty degrees slant, and I’m hurtling down faster than a car, my hands stretched out in front of me, trying to be as aerodynamic as possible to catch up. I have no idea how I’m going to stop, I just know that I have to reach her before she goes over the edge.

She’s trying to dig her fingers in but at this speed and with her gravitational pull, it’s pointless. Then she flips back over, trying to get her pack off. With one hand on the straps, it rises above her in an attempt to slow down.

It doesn’t slow her down much but it does close the distance between us. Snow, ice flies in my face and I keep my eyes focused on hers. They’re wild, they’re panicked, they’re a vessel of fear.

I catch up to the pack, grabbing the strap and reach for her ice axes. I grab one and with my free hand start trying to jab it into the ice but it’s impossible to get a good stick.

“Hold on!” I scream at her and my eyes fly over her head and at what lays beyond her.

Fifty feet until she’s over the edge.

Forty feet.

Thirty feet.

Frantically, I try again, jabbing again and again with the axe as we slide toward our death.

Twenty feet.

Holy fuck.

We’re not going to make it.

This is it.

We’re going over the edge.

We’re going to die.

Ten feet.

God, please…

Thwack.

My axe penetrates the ice, sinking in to the hilt, and a cry is ripped from my throat as it stops me, causing me to swing around one eighty, still holding onto the pack, both of us spinning as we’re whipped around on the ice face, her body swinging up higher than me, the edge just six feet below my legs.

But Riley loses her grip on the pack.

Her hand slips away.

She screams.

Starts sliding down the ice, down me.

Reaches up wildly, fighting against her death. Her fingers rake down the length of my legs, trying to stop herself, trying to hold on.

She gets to my boot.

Her hands throttle it with all her might, wrapped around my ankle.

Half of her is hanging off the edge of the cliff, only her grip on my boot keeping her alive.

“Hang on,” I tell her. I wish she wasn’t wearing gloves. Gloves don’t have the same grip as hands do. Gloves can slip off. We’ve all seen Cliffhanger.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this right now. I don’t know why I’m thinking about anything at all. I’m just so stunned by the sheer terror of it all, I don’t know what to do.

But I’m a leader. I’m a leader and my team is dying.

Tim and Jace are buried by the avalanche and I’m not there to save them.

The woman I love is dangling by a thread.

I could lose everything.

The fear is overpowering.

I don’t even think I can move past it.

I can’t.

“Mav,” she cries out softly. “I don’t think I can hold on much longer.”

The poignancy of her words brings me out of it.

Fear will find you. Better you find it first.

So I let in the fear.

I let it fuel me.

“Don’t you fucking say that,” I growl at her. “You’re not dying, not here, not today.”

“Mav,” she pleads and I hate the sorrow I see in her eyes. “Mav…I…”

I swallow hard, gathering strength and I roar, “Hang on!”

I take one of my hands off of the axe so I’m holding on with just one hand now, my wrist and arm screaming in pain as I try and hold up the weight of my body and hers. I reach back into my pack with my free hand and feel around until I find another ice axe.

“Don’t let go!” I yell at her, surprised at how strong my voice sounds, and then I slam the new axe into the ice right beside the current one.

Then I lift up that one and with all my strength, my muscles straining, my body pushed to the limit, the pain coursing from my wrist to my toes, I reach up and slam the next axe down, right into the ice.

We move up a few inches. Riley is pulled up with me, still hanging on for her life.

And this is how we do it.

This is how I save our lives.

Slowly, so slowly.

Inch by inch.

Axe by axe.

I climb up the near vertical slope, supported only by thin blades of metal into ice, pulling up Riley with me as I go.

My muscles are shaking, breaking.

My mouth tastes like pennies.

I can’t even feel the cold anymore, that’s how cold I am.

And the whole time I talk to Riley. I talk about Friends. And how she’s more Phoebe than anyone else, but she does have a bit of batshit crazy Monica in her. She doesn’t talk back much but she’s listening and staying alive and she’s holding on and that’s all I can ask for.

It’s all I can ask for.

I don’t know how long it takes but we finally get to the top of the slope where the angle isn’t as steep, the ridge where we were earlier is now coated in a fresh dump of snow thanks to the avalanche.

The avalanche.

I can’t even think of that yet.

I wait until I get a hard stance and then I reach down and take Riley’s hand, my grip firm around her wrist.

I pull her up to me and she collapses into my arms. To her credit – to our credit – we manage to keep it together, too many emotions swirling around at once.

I may have just pulled her up four hundred feet of ice using just two ice axes but two of our teammates are buried in the snow out there.

Instinct tells me we are too late now to help but our job is to search and rescue and sometimes you can just rescue one, just save one.

I saved Riley.

We get over the ridge and look down into the glacier bowl.

There’s nothing but white. No sign they were ever there.

I’m spent. I’m shaking. I’m not sure how to get through this.

Riley does though. She goes into my pack and finds the device that picks up their transmitters. We always wear them if we’re out as a team, that way someone else can locate you and dig you out. Like now.

The device beeps, showing us on the GPS where to go.

We’re stiff at first, muscles sore and spent but we push through, running and falling and tumbling down the avalanche debris. This is dangerous in itself, but after what we just survived, I couldn’t give a fuck anymore. All I care about is saving everyone else. I need to save more.

We reach them in the middle and begin the frantic dig to free them. I have a shovel I give to Riley and I use my hands and I can see from the determined look on her forehead that she’s been here before and she doesn’t want another Levi on her hands. She bounced back from almost losing her life right away. I want to be proud of her but at this moment, I can’t feel anything good.

All I keep thinking is that I failed.

I failed Tim. I failed Jace.

I even failed the dead climber.

With each scoop of snow I clear out, I hear the word “failed.”

I failed.

I failed.

I failed.

And then it happens.

The snow beneath the shovel starts to move.

A fist breaks through.

It’s Jace.

We pull him out of the snow and he’s wheezing for breath, paler than the snow and tinged with blue, but he’s alive.

“I had an air pocket,” he cries out, trying to breathe.

“Shhh,” Riley says, putting her arms around him. “Breathe in, breathe out, we have you.”

I go back to work, looking for Tim with new hope.

Riley tries to comfort Jace who seems to be going into shock. I let her do her thing, I do mine.

Maybe I didn’t fail…

Maybe I…

Yellow.

Bright yellow fabric, poking through the snow.

I sink my hands down and feel along Tim’s arm.

All it takes is one touch.

Just the way his arm responds to my hand.

Or the way it doesn’t.

The stiffness.

Death is wholly inflexible.

Being covered in an avalanche is the same as having cement poured on you. Sometimes you get lucky with an air pocket, like Jace. Most times, you’re encased, entombed, with nowhere to move, no place to go. You can’t even move your fingers. You die, drowning in the snow, if the blast from the initial impact didn’t knock you out first.

But I won’t stop. I keep digging, frantic now, until I’ve cleared all the snow away from him.

Tim.

Tim who was working at North Ridge Search and Rescue before I got there. Tim who showed me the ropes. Tim who would go climbing with me, telling me all about his upbringing in South Korea. Tim whose favorite trail mix was pistachios, but he would never litter the shells, so he’d always have one pocket full of nuts and another pocket full of empty shells and you’d always hear him coming. We called him the squirrel and I think he liked that. He once told me that squirrels brought luck.

Tim was wrong about that one.

Tim who shouldn’t have been on this mountain to begin with. I was the one who should have taken the call. I should be there where he is. He should be finding me.

“Mav,” Riley whispers, tugging at my sleeve.

It takes tremendous effort to tear my eyes off of Tim’s face. I look at her. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. I can’t comfort her. I feel nothing but shame. Guilt. It burns everything else away.

“Mav,” she says again. “We have to call in for the others. We need backup to retrieve them. Jace,” she trails off as she looks over at him. He’s sitting in the snow, staring at nothing, wracked by the occasional shiver. “He’s in shock, Mav, we need to get him to the hospital. Now.”

“I’ll stay here,” I tell her, looking back at Tim. There’s still another dead body buried.

“You won’t,” she hisses at me, getting angry. “It’s too dangerous. We’re not losing you too.”

“I’m staying here,” I tell her and block her out.

“Don’t do this,” she says, tugging on my arm again, harder. “There’s nothing you can do for him now, he’s dead, okay? He’s dead. And you’ll be too if you don’t come back with us. Please. The team needs a leader. You’re the leader. They need you…I need you.”

“Go without me,” I tell her. “You can handle him yourself. You can handle anything.”

I feel her silence at my back, trying to think of what to say. She wants to scream at me. She wants to hit me. But I’m not leaving.

“Fine,” she says. I hear her talking to Jace and then the two of them walk off. I turn around to see them disappear around the crest and down into the trees.

I collapse to my knees in the snow.

And cry.