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“It was made for one human-sized person.”

He laughs. It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.

Eventually, he gets up. He wets a cloth with warm water from the kettle on the stove and comes back to clean me up, gentle and thorough, just like he bandaged my leg. Then he wraps me in a blanket and lies back down with me in front of the stove, on the floor, where there’s room.

I pick up his big hand and kiss his knuckles, one by one. They’re scarred and rough, and an hour ago they were all over me. They’re mine now.

“Will you find out?” I ask sleepily. “About the locking together.”

He kisses my shoulder. “I’ll ask at poker,” he says. “Sober this time. And I’ll tell you before we try anything. I promise.”

I can wait.

I fall asleep to the sound of his heart.

Sometime in the night, a deep roar wakes me. It goes on and on, like a train passing in the dark, and the whole tower trembles on its legs.

Holt’s arm tightens around me. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s the hill. Go back to sleep.”

When I open my eyes again, it’s gray dawn. The rain has stopped. Holt is standing at the window, already dressed, with the radio in his hand.

I wrap the blanket around me and limp over to stand beside him.

Across the valley, where the north loop used to be, a whole side of the hill is gone. There’s just a long, raw scar of mud, rock, and broken trees, running all the way down to the creek.

“Holt,” I whisper. “The trail.”

“Gone.” He pauses. “The whole north bank came down in the night.”

My stomach drops. “The moths?”

“Above the slide line.” He points to the dark crown of old hemlocks, still standing on the ridge, well above the scar. “The bowl held. I checked with the binoculars as soon as it was light.”

He’s been standing here since dawn, watching over them from a mile away.

Nobody’s building a public path up that face now, but my report still has to keep it that way.

The radio crackles in his hand. “Holt? Wren? It’s Prue. Are you two okay?”

Holt looks down at me. I look up at him, wrapped in nothing but a scratchy wool blanket, with his handprint practically tattooed on my hip.

Define okay.

CHAPTER 8

GLOW UP

HOLT

By midmorning, the creek has dropped enough to cross, so I carry Wren down the fire tower road to the bottom gate. Prue is coming to meet us, and I can hear her little blue hatchback grinding up the gravel from a mile away.

Wren is sitting on the gate with her bandaged leg stretched out, swinging the other one. She’s wearing my spare fleece, which comes down to her knees.

“So,” she says, “what do we tell Prue?”

“About what?”

She gives me a look. “About the part where I’m wearing your fleece and I smell like you.”