Page 74 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

Please, Honeybee, just accept that you need to rest.

But the longer she waits to answer, the more sure I am that I’ve lost the battle.

She finally smiles at me softly, and that steely determination I always loved so much about her settles into her gaze. “I’m all right. I appreciate your concern, but I want to push on. We can camp there, right?”

I grit my jaw to keep myself from arguing with her, from trying to push what I think is best for her onto her because that’s gotten me in trouble in the past, and the last thing I want to do is upset her right now. She likely wouldn’t sleep anyway if we stopped here and would lie awake all night thinking about what we might find tomorrow.

“Okay, but we set up camp there. We don’t push farther.”

She nods. “All right.”

I allow my fingers to slide off her wrist slowly, immediately missing the feel of her skin against mine.

It’s ridiculous how completely obsessed I am with this woman. What she does to me…

Every waking hour is spent thinking of her.

Every night is spent worrying about what might come when she climbs into our bed and tries to sleep.

And as we start walking again, I can’t drag my eyes off her instead of searching like I should be.

I readjust the heavy pack on my shoulders and force myself to return my focus to the task at hand.

She’ll be okay.

We’ll rest soon.

Comfortable silence settles over us, only the sound of foliage crunching under our boots and the birds overhead and animals in the forest breaking it.

As we near the place where I found her in the water, my stomach tenses, and even she seems to sense it, her footsteps slowing, becoming more cautious.

We turn the slight bend in the river, and my gaze finds the log and tree roots her body was tangled up in, still protruding out into the water near the rapids.

She stops and stares at that exact spot for a moment, her head tilting slightly before she slowly turns and looks at me. “Was that it?”

I grit my jaw. “How did you know?”

Her brow furrows, and she shakes her head, turning back toward the river. “I don’t know. I was unconscious when you pulled me out…”

“Yes. And all the way to the hospital. You didn’t wake up once.”

And I didn’t take a single breath the entire time.

At least, it felt like that.

For hours, carrying her down this mountain and then driving to Asheville to the emergency room, all I did was pray.

Seeing her vulnerable, so hurt, so near death…

Seeing her at all when I thought I might never again.

She purses her lips and slowly approaches the water. “I may have been unconscious, but I must have been somehow aware of what was happening.”

I sure as hell hope not.

There were things I said to her, things I shouldn’t have, as I held her in my arms and trekked down the mountain. Things that would be hard to explain without delving deeply into the very reason that we broke up in the first place.

She pauses beside the bank, the water rushing over the rocks, boulders, and the tree where she was hung up. Willow stares at the spot for what feels like an eternity before she starts walking farther upriver.