Trail of Desire

The pain was a bright, hot wire wrapped around my ankle, and I was starting to think the sunset might be the last beautiful thing I ever saw.

I'd been stupid. That's the only word for it. Stupid and alone on a trail I didn't know, six miles up a mountain that didn't care whether I made it back down. The rock I'd slipped on was still there, a smooth gray slab slick with moss and shadow, and I'd been looking at my phone instead of my feet. One second I was walking. The next I was on the ground, my ankle folded under me at an angle that made my stomach turn, and a sound came out of my mouth that I'd never heard before. Not a scream. More like a wounded animal. Something that didn't belong to the person I thought I was.

That was three hours ago.

Now the sun was bleeding orange behind the ridge, and the air had gone from warm to cool to something that felt like a warning. I'd tried to stand. Twice. The first time I made it two steps before my leg gave out and I went down hard on my hands and knees, scraping both palms raw. The second time I didn't even make it to my feet. I just sat there on the trail, my back against a pine trunk, my ankle swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and I did the math.

Six miles down. Maybe three hours in daylight if I could walk. I couldn't walk. I couldn't even hop. And the temperature was dropping fast enough that I could see my breath starting to fog.

I checked my phone. No signal. Of course. I'd laughed at the sign at the trailhead, the one that said *know before you go*, because I'd been hiking since I was a kid and I knew what I was doing. I knew how to read a map. I knew how to pack water. I knew how to be careful. What I didn't know was how to be lucky.

"Hey."

The voice came from up the trail, and my heart slammed so hard I felt it in my throat. I hadn't heard footsteps. I hadn't heard anything except the wind and my own shallow breathing, and then suddenly there was a man standing twenty feet away, tall and backlit by the dying sun, a backpack slung over one shoulder and a water bottle in his hand.

I should have been scared. A woman alone on a trail at dusk, a stranger appearing out of nowhere. Every true crime podcast I'd ever listened to screamed at me to be afraid. But when he stepped closer and the light caught his face, fear wasn't what I felt.

He was younger than I expected. Maybe thirty. Dark hair pushed back from his forehead, a jaw that looked like it had been carved rather than grown, and eyes that were doing the same thing mine were doing. Taking inventory. Assessing. His gaze dropped to my ankle, to the way I was holding it, to the scrapes on my palms, and his expression shifted from surprise to something sharper. Focused.

"You okay?" He was already moving toward me, long strides, sure-footed on the uneven ground like he'd been walking trails his whole life.

"Sprained my ankle." My voice came out hoarse. "I can't walk."

He crouched in front of me, close enough that I could smell him. Sweat and cedar and something clean underneath, like soap. He didn't ask permission before he reached for my foot, and I didn't flinch away. His hands were warm. Big. He turned my ankle gently, his fingers probing the swelling, and I hissed through my teeth.

"Sorry." He looked up at me. "I don't think it's broken. But it's a bad sprain. You're not walking on this tonight."

"I know." I swallowed. "I was trying to figure out how to get down before it gets dark."

"You can't." He said it flat, no room for argument. "The trail's steep in places. With that ankle, you'd fall. And it's already too dark to see the roots."

He stood up and looked at the sky, at the last sliver of sun disappearing behind the mountain, and then he looked back at me. Something passed over his face. A decision.

"I'm Brendon," he said.

"Emily."

"Emily." He said my name like he was trying it on. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I have a headlamp and a space blanket in my pack. There's a flat spot about a quarter mile back, a little clearing off the trail. We're going to get you there, and we're going to stay the night. Tomorrow morning, when it's light, I'll carry you down."

"You'll carry me?" I laughed, and it came out shaky. "You don't even know me."

"I know you're hurt and you're alone and it's getting cold." He shrugged off his pack and started unzipping it. "That's enough for me."

He pulled out a headlamp and clicked it on, the beam cutting through the dusk like a blade. Then he knelt beside me again, and before I could ask what he was doing, he slid one arm under my knees and the other behind my back. He lifted me like I weighed nothing. Like I was a bag of feathers. My arms went around his neck automatically, and my face ended up inches from his, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his irises.

"Hold on," he said.

"I don't have much choice."

He smiled. It was a small smile, but it changed his whole face. Made him look less like a stranger and more like someone I might have known in another life.

"That's the spirit," he said, and started walking.

The clearing was exactly where he said it would be. A patch of flat ground ringed by trees, soft with pine needles, sheltered from the wind. He set me down gently, propped my foot on his rolled-up jacket, and then he went to work. Space blanket spread on the ground. Headlamp hung from a branch so we had light. A granola bar pressed into my hand. A bottle of water. He moved with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before, and I watched him in the dim glow, the way his shoulders moved under his shirt, the way his hands were steady and sure.

"Why are you out here alone?" I asked.

He paused. Looked at me over his shoulder. "Same reason as you, probably. Needed to get away from something."

"Did it work?"

"Not yet." He turned back to his pack. "Ask me again in the morning."

The night settled around us, cold and quiet, and I pulled the space blanket up to my chin. My ankle throbbed. My heart was doing something strange, something I didn't want to name. And Brendon sat down beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and stared up at the stars.

"You know," he said, "I wasn't supposed to be on this trail today. I was going to take the other one. The one with the waterfall."

"Why didn't you?"

He looked at me. The headlamp caught his eyes, and for a second, he looked like he was seeing something he'd been waiting for.

"I don't know," he said. "Just a feeling."

The wind picked up. I shivered, and he noticed. He always noticed. He pulled off his fleece and draped it over me without a word, and I breathed in the smell of him, cedar and sweat and something warmer underneath. Something that made my chest tight.

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me yet." He lay back on the pine needles, his hands behind his head. "You might hate me by morning."

"I doubt it."

He turned his head. Our eyes met. And in the dark, with the stars wheeling overhead and the mountain silent around us, something passed between us. Something that felt like the beginning of a story I hadn't meant to start.

"I don't even know your last name," I whispered.

"Does it matter?"

I thought about it. "No," I said. "I guess it doesn't."

He smiled again. That same small smile. And when he reached over and took my hand, his fingers lacing through mine, I didn't pull away. I held on.