Page 89 of Unmanageable

“Hey. Stop that.”

I don’t ask for permission this time. I step forward, grab her by the upper arms, and pull her firmly against my chest.

She doesn’t fight me. She just collapses against my chest, her forehead digging into my shoulder as the freezing rain starts to drench both of us. She’s shivering, her whole body shaking from the adrenaline dump of the last five minutes.

“Listen to me,” I say, putting one hand on the back of her head. “Look at me, Scottie.”

She pulls her face back slowly, her green eyes watery, her nose bright pink from the cold.

“We are not going to die,” I tell her, looking right into her eyes so she can see I’m not joking anymore. “My dad took me into the boundary waters in Minnesota every single summer from the time I was seven years old. He used to drop me off in the middle of the pine woods with a compass and a bucket of bait and tell me to find my way back to the cabin before the mosquitoes ate my ears off. I know how to read a ridge line. I know exactly which way the slope goes.”

“Your dad sounds like a child abuser, Cash.”

“He was an old-school defenseman,” I say, letting out a soft laugh. “He always told me, ‘If you get lost in the high country, the water is smarter than you are. Find where the rocks dip, follow the trickle, and it’ll take you back to the pavement every single time.’ Now, look down at your feet.”

She looks down.

The loose gravel under our sneakers is already turning into a dark, muddy slurry, and a tiny, clear stream of rainwater is beginning to cut a miniature channel through the dirt, trickling around a large pine root and heading straight down into the gray mist to our right.

“That’s our path,” I say. “We aren’t looking for trail markers anymore. We’re just following the water. It’s a straight shot down to the access road.”

Scottie looks at the tiny stream, then back up at me.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. But if a wild animal attacks us, you are the first line of defense. I am using you as a human shield.”

“That’s literally my job description, Scottie. I stop things from going into the net.” I give her arms a firm, encouraging squeeze before letting her go and reaching into the backpack to pull out the small bag of trail mix. I hand it to her. “Eat some of this. Your blood sugar is on the floor and you’re getting mean.”

“I am not mean,” she mutters, tearing into the bag. “I am highly communicative under duress.”

“Right. That’s what we’ll call it.”

I turn around, facing the steep, misty slope, and take the first step down into the brush.

“Stay right behind me,” I call back over the wind. “If you slip, just drop your center of gravity and slide on your side. Don’t try to catch yourself with your wrists.”

“If I slide, Cash, I am going to slide all the way to the bottom like a bowling ball,” she yells back.

The rain doesn’t let up; it settles into a steady, freezing drench that turns the front of my shirt wet and leaves Scottie’s red hair looking like a drowned bird.

Every ten paces, I stop, turn around, and extend my hand to help her lower herself over a fallen log or a steep drop in the dirt. Her hands are freezing, her skin pale and damp, but every time I grab her, her grip is incredibly tight, her fingers digging into my palm with a fierce, stubborn strength that makes me want to carry her the rest of the way down just to get her out of the cold.

“You doing okay?”

She lands with a heavy, squelching thud in the mud, her giant gray sneakers covered in brown muck now. She wipes her face with her sleeve, letting out a short, breathless laugh that sounds a little bit crazy.

“Honestly? I think I’ve passed through the panic and entered a state of acceptance,” she says. “My feet are entirely numb. I don’t feel them anymore. They belong to the mountain now. I am just a floating torso of corporate strategy.”

“That’s the altitude talking,” I laugh, turning back to follow the stream. “Keep moving. The trees are thinning out ahead.”

She’s right, though—she’s handling it. Scottie is drenched to the bone, her feet stuck in sneakers that are five sizes too big, and she’s still making fun of her own misery.

“You know,” she calls out from behind me. “This really highlights the flaws in our dynamic, Cash.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

“You need to get yourself a girl who can actually survive on a hike,” she says, her tone light and teasing, but there’s a tiny, sharp truth to it that makes me stop in my tracks. “Someone who owns real hiking sneakers and knows what a real rock looks like. A real outdoorsy type. Not a Boston agent who gets anxiety from a pine cone.”

I turn around slowly, standing on a wide flat boulder, looking down at her.