"I'm okay," she says quickly, righting herself. But she winces when she puts weight on her left foot. "My snowshoe … it feels loose."
I look down. The binding on her left shoe has worked itself free, the nylon strap trailing in the powder. It's a rookie mistake, not checking the tension after the leather gets wet and expands, but looking at the fatigue lines around her eyes, I don't have the heart to lecture her.
"Hold still," I say.
I drop to my knees in the snow at her feet.
"I can get it," she says, bending down.
"No, stay standing. If you bend over with that pack on, you'll topple over." I bat her hands away gently. "Let me do it."
She freezes, standing tall while I work at her feet. I strip off my heavy outer gloves, needing the dexterity of my liner gloves to work the frozen buckle.
I wrap one hand around her ankle to steady her boot. Even through the layers of wool and leather, the contact feels electric. Her leg is solid, the muscle tense beneath my grip as she balances.
"You have to double-back the strap when it's wet," I explain, my voice sounding rougher than I intended. I pull the nylon tight, yanking hard to secure it. "Otherwise, the ice works it loose."
"Physics," she murmurs.
"Friction," I correct.
I thread the strap through the buckle and lock it down. But instead of letting go, my hand lingers on her calf. I look up.
From this angle, me on my knees, her looming above me, the perspective is all wrong. She should look imposing. Instead, she looks breathless. Her cheeks are flushed red from the wind, her lips parted slightly. She's looking down at me with an expression that is wide open and terrified and hungry all at once.
It's a submissive posture for me to be in, kneeling in the snow, but the power dynamic feels completely different. I'm anchoring her. She's letting me.
For a long beat, the only sound is the wind in the spruce and the harsh rasp of our breathing.
"Nash," she whispers.
I could stand up. I could brush the snow off my knees and tell her we need to keep moving.
Instead, I slowly slide my hand up the side of her leg, just to the knee. A test. A question.
She doesn't pull away. She leans into my touch, her breath hitching, her eyes dilating even in the bright snow-glare.
"Is it fixed?" she asks, her voice trembling.
"Yeah," I say, my eyes locked on hers. "It's tight. You aren't going anywhere."
I stand up slowly, letting my body brush against hers as I rise. We're standing chest to chest now, the heat radiating between us almost enough to melt the permafrost.
"We should …" she starts, then clears her throat. "We should keep moving. The weather is turning."
She's right. The sky to the west is bruising purple, heavy with unfallen snow. But stepping away from her feels like tearing a magnet off a fridge.
"Right," I say, forcing myself to step back. "Weather."
We push on down the trail, but the air has changed. The cold carries a charge now.
"Tell me more about him," I say after a mile of silence, needing to fill the space with something other than the sound of my own pulse.
She glances at me, grateful for the distraction. "What do you want to know?"
"What made him special enough to inspire this kind of dedication."
The question hangs between us while she considers how much to reveal. We've moved past the professional boundaries we started with, but she still guards pieces of herself like they're too precious to risk.
