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But they didn’t try, not even after they’d recovered their breath. Meg just looked at Silas with the same intensity with which he looked at her. It was this one small act of shared rebellion that brought Silas’s thoughts full circle to the rapidly waning time they had left together. Tonight had been snatched from them, but they could snatch it back.
Was she thinking the same thing? Did Meg want what he wanted right now?
He wouldn’t waste another moment before finding out. One hand on Meg’s bicep, he guided her backward a few yards into the trees. The muscle beneath her skin jumped, as it always seemed to do at his touch, but she didn’t resist.
“She’ll head back down the trail to the lodge,” he whispered. It was logical, after all. And even if Jessicawasn’tlogical, and climbed back uphill instead, she’d run headlong into Danny.
Meg nodded, still treading carefully backward with her eyes trained on the ground so as not to snap the scattered twigs underfoot.
She did know, then. What he wanted. And she wanted it, too. Her back hit the rough trunk of a ponderosa, her breath departing her lungs with an“Oof”she immediately muffled. They waited, listening, scarcely daring to breathe, their chests rising and falling hard in the quiet.
Neither of them spoke. Silas kept his hand on Meg’s arm, and she remained frozen, her back still against the tree. So close. The distance between them finally nonexistent. Down the trail there was only silence; uphill they could no longer hear Danny’s shouts, and Silas knew it was a lame cliché, but time seemed to freeze, like the world had paused just for them. But then:
“What was that?” Meg breathed.
The snap of needles and branches. Jessica must have rethought her course and was now heading back toward them. In a minute she’d be upon them. Silas cursed under his breath. Would she never justgo away?
He didn’t know how it occurred to him to do what he did. Ever afterward he’d remain convinced that when motivated, the human mind can conjure up its best and worst brainstorms within a split second’s time. In this particular second, his managed to do both.
Just as Jessica came back into view on the trail, still half crying, half whimpering, Silas bent down and snagged the first thing he touched: a handful of small rocks. His gaze met Meg’s again in the darkness: she saw the rocks in his hand, could read the desperation on his face. Without a doubt she knew what he was about to do. That hecouldn’t ... justcouldn’t... let Jessica ruin this last chance between them. Let Danny deal with her. Silas couldn’t allow this opportunity to pass.
He let one small rock fly.
Later, he would wonder if it had been that one stone, that single effortless release cast in a perfect arc against an inky sky, that had changed their lives forever. He heard it land on target with a flat thump in the dirt to the right of Jessica’s feet and saw her shadowed outline jerk back as if the pebble had come with strings attached.
“Silas? Is that you?” She didn’t sound very sure. “If it is, knock it off!”
Silas stared at Meg, who stared back, silent and still, her mouth tightly closed.
“Silas? I mean it!”
There was a slight huff, and then ... nothing.
They waited, breathing in sync in the dark, listening for any more telltale cracks of twigs or pine needles. Waited for what felt like ages, until the silence blanketed them completely. And then Silas let the remaining pebbles, still clutched in his hand, fall silently to the ground, because finally,finally,he and Meg were truly alone. The darkness now complete around them in the canopy of the forest, he stepped close to her. She wasn’t crying, but she was close. He could hear the slight shake on each ragged exhale.
“What are we doing?” she gasped.
“You know what we’re doing.” He reached blindly through the darkness until his hand found the side of her face. He half expected her to freeze, but she yielded, turning hesitantly into his touch as his fingers curved over her jawbone. “You do.”
She swallowed, one tiny muscle constricting below the hollow of her ear. Had Silas not been reading her by feel, he would have missed it altogether.
He let his thumb travel across the plane of her lower lip, back and forth, and still she let him, leaning forward just enough that her shorts-clad thighs grazed his in the dark. Her skin was cool. She curled her hand around his wrist to keep her balance.
His mouth hovered inches from hers, and then less, and Meg wavered, and Silas waited for her, his own breath caught tight in his throat.Cass,he thought—he was afraid to speak and tip the balance—and then Meg’s chin tilted upward, her jaw sliding under his palm, and she was kissing him.
He reacted with an intensity that pressed her back against the tree. She released a single strangled noise, and he slid one hand behind her head, cradling it against the rough bark. Megwascrying now—he could feel her tears wetting the cracks between his fingers—but her hands dropped from his arms to his back, pulling him closer as she explored the arched curve of his spine through his shirt. He shifted his weight against her, one leg settling between hers to brace her more securely against the tree, maybe to hear her gasp again, maybe to keep his balance.
They remained that way, bodies pressed hard and close, as time seemed to stretch and fold upon itself. They had months and months to make up for, after all. Silas’s hand had just slid under Meg’s tee when they heard the single, piercing sound cut through the darkness.
She pulled back. “What was that? That horrible ... was thatJessica?”
It had sounded like a scream, but Silas didn’t want to call it that. “Do you think she yelled?” Maybe if he formed it as a question in his head, it wouldn’t be true. Because he could see that stone in his mind’s eye again, could watch its arc as it had flown. He’d never wanted to hurt anyone. Least of all Jessica.
Meg leaned back against the tree, her hands running a wide swath through her hair. “What-are-we-going-to-do?”she managed in one exhale.
“We’ll go find her.” It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. “C’mon. It will be all right.”
But they didn’t know which direction to start in. Turning in circles, they called out to her and then listened, Silas first thinking they should head back uphill, Meg disagreeing, adamant that the cry had echoed from below. Amid the acoustics of the mountains it was impossible to determine where the sound had come from. Jessica could be anywhere within hearing distance. Silas reached out and captured Meg’s now-cold hand. Straining to see her expression in the dark, he held it loosely until she shifted her fingers through his.
