Four
Home—Rainelle—was nestled in the mountains along Sam Black Church Road, surrounded by woods and wild. But despite her surroundings growing up, Rilla had never hiked anything farther than a trail to a party or a tree-stand, and she’d only ever climbed to get something she couldn’t reach otherwise. Sitting on a rock, where Walker had told her to stay while he disappeared up a steep gully, a sudden wave of anger washed over her.
This was stupid. What did she think she could do . . . move to California and suddenly become one of these tourists with hiking poles and SPF clothing? Like, let’s go die in the wilderness, Bob. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Pointless and avoidable death for the win!
Rilla stared at the gray granite wall in front of her, her jaw clenched tight. The gentle asphalt path that circled the Valley and promised a quick return to Thea’s place sat just out of the corner of her eye. But if she went back, it would only be to an empty house. She didn’t know what she was doing. Here, with climbing. Or in life. Her eyes stung, but she took another careful drink of her warm Gatorade. She wouldn’t cry. No more crying.
“West Virginia,” Walker said from behind her.
Rilla jumped. “How did you?” she sputtered. “Where—”
Walker adjusted the sunglasses atop his short, dark-blond hair. “I rapped down.”
She blinked a long, slow beat.
“Um. Right,” he said. “Rappelled. I set up a top-rope, a rope at the top, and rappelled down the rope. You haven’t ever been climbing before?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, no biggie. We got this.” He tilted his head. “Come on.”
Forcing herself up, Rilla followed him farther along the base where two stretches of a bright green rope ran down the cliff and coiled at the bottom like a thin, vivid serpent.
“What do you do here? Are you a ranger?” Rilla asked. She was pretty sure he lived in the park, and now she understood there was a reason.
“I’m on the Yosemite Search and Rescue Team. We get to stay in the park for free, in exchange for our search and rescue skills.”
Rilla’s spine straightened. Well, hello. “Oh. How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Hi, Walker!” a bright voice called.
He turned and lifted his hand in reply to a girl with long red hair, walking with her friends.
“Climbers?” Rilla asked.
“Hikers,” Walker said, digging through his pack. “Hang on. I swear I had one . . .” He dug through the top. After another moment, he started pulling things out and setting them in the dirt. A balled-up sweatshirt. Some clinking metal bits that looked totally foreign. A big black notebook. Another book with a photo of a climber, mid-pose on the cover.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself. He shook the bag.
The wind stirred, sending dust spinning into the books. Without thinking, Rilla bent to retrieve them. One was a guide book full of photos. But it was the black notebook, which had fallen open to a detailed ink illustration of a mountain, that caught her eye.
The sketch included notes and lines showing a path to the top. It was beautifully drawn, and also made no sense. Rilla flipped to the next page. A half-finished charcoal of some people—mid-laugh around a fire—was on the next page, and the opposite page dated entries. “The weather fucking sucks,” began one. Too late, she realized Walker had drawn them. This was his notebook. His journal.
“Hey,” Walker snapped. “What are—”
She slammed the book shut, trying not to look guilty. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“That’s mine.” He snatched the book back. Two spots of red rising on his cheeks. Anger? Embarrassment? She couldn’t tell.
“I didn’t realize it was personal,” she said, handing back the guide book as well. “They fell out of the bag, and I didn’t want them to get dusty.”
He glowered, taking the guide book and dumping both back into the pack. “Let’s just stick to climbing.” He pulled a long stretch of rope out of the coil, the muscles in his side flickering lightly under little folds of skin as he bent. “A figure-eight knot is the basic knot in rock climbing. It is essential to learn, as this is the main point of contact between you and anything that keeps you alive.”
The lack of a shirt hadn’t seemed unnerving when Walker had showed up at Thea’s doorstep—it hadn’t read as nakedness. But now that Rilla stood within touching distance and felt less like death, it was hard to ignore the grace of his movements and the substance to his body. That intensity seemed to simmer under his skin, and it was hard not to watch for it like the sun behind clouds, wanting to feel it directed at her.
“Got it?” Walker asked, shaking a finished, intricate knot in front of her.
Shit. She’d been staring at him, not the rope. “Can I see it again?”
He started over.
At first, it was a relief to focus on the knot and the way his body was a welcome distraction from the rest of her feelings. But as he started through a second time, for no reason, the charm turned sour.
He shifted his weight in her direction to show the double overhand knot he said was her backup, and her heart raced at his closeness. But it felt like she had bitten into something sweet, and made her head throb. She tried to focus on his hands, but kept chasing after the origins of the sickening feeling.
Suddenly it hit her. He was humoring her. He was trying to be nice because he felt bad for her.
Her cheeks burned and mouth watered. Stepping back, she focused on his hands, on the slide of the rope—flexing her fingers as he went. She’d show him. She’d show them all. Starting with this dumb fucking knot.
After another moment, he held out the rope for her to try.
She took it—her brain suddenly unable to recall what he’d done, let alone connect it to her hands. The limp green coils twined in her fingers. She moved her hands, but the rope went the wrong way. The seconds ticked past. The wind waved the tops of the pines. All she wanted to do was one thing right. One thing. He’d just shown her. Her throat swelled with the threat of tears.
Walker pointed to the rope. “Around this way.” Taking her whole fist into the palm of his hand, he pulled her through the motions.
It didn’t help—his hands were warm and rough and utterly distracting. She wanted to do this on her own. She wanted to show herself she could. It was silly, but it mattered.
Walker let go, pointing out the places for her to push the rope back through. “Great job!” He congratulated her in the same overly cheery, supportive tone as she finished. Like a dog who’d finally shit outside.
Ripping the knot apart, she flexed her fingers and began again.
The third time, Rilla did it perfectly. Neat and elegant. Sweat beaded on her back and her head spun, but she pulled it apart and did it again. And again. And again. And—
“Okay.” Walker took the finished knot away. “I think you got it.” His tone had softened.
Which only made it worse. He could see her cracks.
She cleared her throat and put her hands on her hips. “What’s next?”
He pulled out a snarl of thick nylon webbing and hard plastic loops. “This is a harness. Waist. Leg loops. Gear clips to these, but you won’t need to worry about that.” He pointed out the pieces, but they didn’t look like anything but a snarl. “You tie in through these front parts and clip in to belay from this big front loop.” He hooked a big finger through the sturdy nylon loop in the front of the harness and swung it to her. “Put it on. Like pants.”
She fumbled, managing to catch it and step through the leg loops after he pointed where to step. How did she keep this on? Clutching the waist belt to her, she glanced at Walker.
He gripped the webbing on either side and pulled it up farther. “Your waist. Not your hips.”
Her breath caught. That intensity—right under his skin—close to her. It was a one-sided charge. Reacting. It didn’t make sense—he wasn’t that attractive. But her heart thumped in the back of her throat, and it felt like he could lift her off the ground if he tugged too hard. She leaned back, trying to get distance. This wasn’t how she wanted to feel.
“Pull the leg loops up as high as they’ll go,” he said, backing away.
“It’s supposed to assault you?” she asked, yanking the leg loops into her inner thighs as instructed.
His mouth twitched, like he might have a real smile somewhere instead of that tacked-on, handsome shit he put out. “Yes.” Offering her the end of the rope with the figure-eight follow-through half started, he tucked the tail into the top of her waistband. “Double back, then follow-through.”
Rilla hated how he kept using words that made no sense. She hated how her head felt light from the push and pull of blood reacting to him. She hated everything. “You don’t take new people climbing much, do you?”
He frowned.
She did as he said, rope cinching the top and bottom webbing together as she finished the knot with only a little hesitation.
Walker pulled the other end of the rope to his harness, opening a metal contraption he took off one of his gear loops. “This is called a Grigri.”
“Gree-gree?”
He nodded. It was about the size of his palm, and he stuffed a bend of the rope into it before replacing the cover and clipping the whole thing to the belay loop.
“This goes to your climber.” He yanked on the rope running up the wall.
The tug pulled up on her harness, cinching it tighter between her legs and around her hips.
God, why was he so compelling? It was like her hormones were the only thing not completely trashed.
“And this is your brake,” he said, pulling on the rope that spit out the other end. “This stops the climber from falling. A Grigri has assisted braking, but it’s just an aid. Don’t ever take your hand off this part of the rope. Ever. Never.”
Yeah. Okay. When were they going to start climbing? “Can I try?” Rilla asked.
Walker unclipped the Grigri from his harness and re-clipped it to her belay loop—his hands close to the space between her hipbones.
She bit her lip and then hastily pushed it back out in case he caught her looking like a moony-eyed middle-schooler.
Walker backed away, pulling the rope with him. “If your climber says slack, it means they need more rope. When the climber says take, you want to bring the rope back in.”
Carefully, she practiced feeding the rope back and forth through the Grigri, and locking it off in case of a fall.
Before she felt comfortable with it, he switched the Grigri back to his harness and handed her a helmet that looked sort of gross. “Okay, let’s go.”
It felt like he was in a hurry. He tied the knot on her harness in a matter of seconds, not giving her a chance to do it.
She buckled the helmet under her chin and looked at the wall out of the corner of her eye. All this other stuff was easy. Distracting from the real thing. Now she had to climb. She’d asked him to take her, after all. There was no tapping out now.
She turned to the wall. Her stomach rolled. The helmet shifted over her eyes. This was fucking stupid. She was stupid. She pushed the helmet back and reached.
The stone was cool on her sweating hands and she grabbed hold of whatever protruded and looked up. Shit.
“Don’t look up. Look at your feet.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, getting her feet on the wall and moving up. Sweat rolled down her back, but the faster she did it, the faster she’d get it over with.
“Go on, I’ve got you. You’re fine.” He said it smoothly, in the same lying tone he’d used when telling her he didn’t mind, that he could take her.
“You’re full of shit,” she said, still moving.
He sighed, the rope pulling tighter. “Okay, West Virginia.”
The wind had died and she seemed to be sweating everywhere. She’d gone far enough. Tied the knot. Did the belaying thing—sort of. Climbed. She could be done now. “Let me down.”
“You’re barely off the ground.” His impatience was obvious now.
“I want down.”
“You can do this.” His tone grasped for enthusiasm. “You wanted to do this.”
She pulled herself closer to the wall and looked awkwardly through her legs. “Yeah, I did it. Now I’m done.”
“You can go farther. Come on.” His sigh pulled on the rope. “I don’t want to come back out and do this again because you didn’t finish.”
Her face flooded with heat. “If I want to do it again, I’ll find someone else,” she snapped.
That shut him up. “What’s wrong with me?”
Only that he was an asshole. “I don’t want to do this.” She was shouting now, but she was still high above him and her fingers felt slippery on the granite. “I’m done. Let me down.”
“So, come down,” he yelled back.
Oh. She took her foot off and tried to find where last she stepped from.
“No, not like that. Sit back in the harness and hold the rope.”
She swallowed and tried. Closing her eyes, she saw herself go back and let go of the wall. And fall into nothing. “Nope.” She screeched, eyes flying open. “Nope. Nope. Nope.”
“I have you,” he said.
“You are not as helpful as you think.”
“Come on, just relax, take a deep breath, and trust me. I got you.” The rope cinched even tighter. A cord strung between them. But it wasn’t enough. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “I’m going to try to climb down.”
“Don’t do that. Just trust me. Feel me?” He tugged the rope and it yanked her harness tighter around her, digging into the tendons of her inner thighs.
She fixed her gaze to her hands. Let go. Let go. Let go. They didn’t let go. “I can’t,” she wailed.
“You can,” he bellowed.
“You’re wrong.”
“I am not fucking wrong.”
Ugh. He was no help. She had to get down. And pretend he wasn’t even there.
Looking around at her feet, Rilla spotted the last little cleft she’d stood on and reached her foot down. The whole thing felt precarious, like if she tried to crouch or move down she might fall. This had been the worst idea. People who did this clearly had no other problems in life and needed to experience human misery. Rilla’s toe couldn’t find the cleft and she couldn’t risk pulling away any farther to look for it. She was going to die or be stuck there forever.
Yanking herself back up to where she was safe, she dropped her forehead to the granite and started to cry, fingers cramping from holding so tight to the wall.
When someone touched her, she screamed.
“Calm down,” Walker said soothingly. “I got you.” He showed her the Grigri, locked off and holding them both.
“Don’t tell me to calm down when I’m stuck twenty feet off the ground,” she snarled.
“That’s definitely the time you should be calm.” He looked down. “You ready to come down now?”
“Shut up.”
“All right, West Virginia.” He put his arm around her waist and cinched her tight against him. “Let go.”
She didn’t want to, but with his arm there and the pull of his body away from the wall—the assurance of that weight—she could force her fingers to uncurl. Even so, a little scream escaped her throat as the rope stretched with their weight, pulling away from the rock.
Walker lowered them to the ground.
As soon as her feet hit the dirt, she yanked away, angrier with each second at everyone and everything. Mostly herself. Her tears were drying stiff and salty on her cheeks. Rounding on Walker, she opened her mouth to unleash her ire.
Before Rilla could even get a word out, a female voice interrupted. “Walker Jennings, stop torturing that poor girl.”