Chapter 16: Back into the Wilderness

I didn’t sleep a single minute that night. Even though Jared slept outside the tent like the night before, I could barely close my eyes.

I was too scared to get nightmares and relive all the terrible things that happened with Buck. But what was a much bigger problem was that I already did that while I was wide awake.

My heart was racing, and I was sweating and shaking like a leaf.

No matter how many times I told myself that Buck didn’t manage to do much before Jared stopped him, it didn’t stop the disturbing maelstrom that was pulling me down.

In my mind, it was like he’d already succeeded in what he’d planned. I could literally feel it in my body as a physical memory.

There was just no way that was only imagination. My body was hiding secrets my mind didn’t want to remember, and this was one of them.

I’d been raped before.

I listened to Jared’s calm breathing outside and to Buck’s more prominent snores, and it was somewhat calming that I at least could hear where he was.

Jared had told me that he would protect me. Or more specifically ~try~ to protect me. Why did he say it like that? Did he know something I didn’t?

Was there something worse than Buck out there waiting for me? Or was it all just me scaring myself out of my own goddamn mind by envisioning hundreds of illogical things?

Question after question kept playing on repeat in my brain and all of them were left unanswered.

Eventually, I heard the birds start praising the sunrise, and the first weak sunbeams painted a strange reddish light inside the otherwise green tent.

I tried to stretch a bit, but the place was too cramped and my body ached everywhere. Just thinking about going outside and moving some more made me want to cry.

But at the same time, I wanted to get as far away from this camp as humanly possible. Unfortunately, the growing need to pee eventually forced me to get up and open the tent.

Jared mumbled something and moved so I could walk past him. Then he sat up and looked at Buck’s tent before he nodded to me, as a sign that he would make sure I would be safe.

From Buck, at least. From other wild animals? I didn’t know. But I quickly did my business and hurried back to Jared, and I stayed as close to him as I could the rest of the time I was there.

There wasn’t much verbal communication between the two men, but their body language spoke volumes. And now I regretted coming to their camp at all. I didn’t want to ruin their friendship like this.

Then again, it was Buck’s fault that I was there in the first place. He’d brought me there, and he was the one who’d saved me from being killed by the bear.

Then why did he want to kill me himself? I just didn’t understand. But Jared ripped me out of my constant rambling thoughts.

“Are you sure you don’t want any food?” he asked with poorly hidden concern in his voice. But I just shook my head.

I wasn’t hungry. I knew I needed energy for the long walk that lay ahead of me, but just the thought of food made me want to hurl.

“Do you know how to put up a hare snare?”

His question seemed completely natural to him, but for me it wasn’t, which is why I stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

There was just no way I would kill a cute bunny for food, or whatever other animal that would be unfortunate to get caught.

Yes, I had eaten the food he’d given me and ignored the fact that it was something ~he~ had caught and killed. But I would never do that myself.

“How about fishing?” he suggested when he noticed my reaction.

“Yeah, I tried to do that before the bear…”

A flashback of the gaping jaw over my head and the teeth penetrating my skin made my voice fail, and Jared stopped stirring the beans he was having for breakfast and looked at me.

I could see he wanted to ask something because he hesitated a bit. Then he chose to stick to the topic.

“But do you have what you need to do it? A hook? Line?”

I shook my head again.

“Okay. You’ll get one of mine. And you can take the blanket, too. The nights are getting colder.”

“But what about you? You need it, too.”

I watched him disappear into his tent and return with his brown wool blanket that was so worn that it looked more like an old rug you normally walk on.

Then I reminded myself that was exactly how Jared used it. Instead of covering himself, he put it on the ground and curled up like a human ball. And now he wanted to give it to me.

“I have another one. Besides, I hardly ever use it.”

He didn’t wait for me to accept the blanket. He just put it on the trunk-bench next to where I was sitting.

Then he walked over to a little supply they had in between the tents, a wooden frame covered in rusty steel plates, and grabbed something.

When he returned to me, he leaned down to my eye-level, took my hand, and placed a slice of bread in it.

“Please eat, Skylar. You need the energy. We’re going to walk for hours today.”

I didn’t know why I blushed or why my heart suddenly raced one hundred miles an hour. His sudden and intense proximity, or the fact that he just confirmed what I’d hoped but not dared to ask.

“We?”

“Yeah. Whenever you’re ready,” he said with a half-smile and disappeared into his tent again.

This time he was gone for a whole minute or two, and I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable in front of Buck, who was sitting on the other side of the camp, slicing the bark off a branch with a knife.

He had a knife.

I don’t even know why that scared me, because he’d already proven that he was perfectly able to hurt me in the most terrible ways with only his hands.

But aside from giving me a terrible grin and a wink, he did nothing, and I pretended to ignore him while I willed myself not to panic.

Eventually, Jared came out with a hook and a line, plus the sweater I’d borrowed yesterday to cover up. For some reason we both smiled when he gave it to me.

“It looks good on you,” he whispered, and I reddened and tried to stifle a giggle. I highly doubted he was telling the truth, but I accepted it without any discussion.

I knew perfectly well how cold the forest was at night, and not a single cell in my body wanted to walk out into the wilderness again. Much less alone.

As for now, I was just unbelievably grateful that Jared wanted to follow me and guide me in the right direction. And not even thirty minutes later, I left the camp for good.

***

The first mile or so, we walked in complete silence. My feet felt awfully sore after running barefoot yesterday, but they turned numb after a while.

However, the pain in my head and ribs stayed the same and made me whimper a bit every time I had to jump from a rock or climb a steep hill, and I could tell Jared noticed.

But when he finally broke the silence between us, I was glad he didn’t comment on it. It wouldn’t change anything anyway.

“So, you really don’t remember where you came from?”

I felt a bit taken aback by his question, and I wished I had a decent answer to it.

“No. I remember my best friend and my…uhm.” I bit my tongue, not really sure if I should tell him about something I wasn’t even sure of. But he beat me to it.

“Boyfriend,” he finished.

How the heck did he always seem to know what I was thinking? “Yeah,” I admitted. “Or at least I think he was. Or is. Or…I don’t know.”

“He wasn’t very nice, was he?”

The question was so blunt that I stopped walking because I felt so incredibly exposed, and Jared turned to look at me. Then he walked up to me, which caused me to stumble a step back.

“Is he the reason why you react this way?”

I swallowed and flinched away when his hand came up to my face, like if I’d been burned. Then I stared at the ground without saying anything.

“Is he the reason why you get scared when I’m close to you?” he asked and slowly reached out to cup my cheek so he could turn my face to look at him. I barely dared to breathe.

“And when I touch you”—he continued and stroked his thumb over my lips and made all kinds of feelings go haywire inside me—“like this?”

I was so tense that I was trembling. Was it panic? Or was it the way my body responded to his tiniest signals? I didn’t know. I just watched him eliminate the gap between us entirely so he could kiss me.

And when his lips slowly started to move with mine, it was like life was injected through my veins and made me able to breathe again.

He made me relax, and he made me start longing for more. More of what he gave me yesterday. But he pulled away with a hurt in his eyes that startled me.

“You need to get as far away from me as possible, Skylar. I’ll show you the shortest way back to civilization, but it’s going to take several days to get there because of your injuries. And in only three days, the moon…”

He shut his mouth and clenched his jaw. Then he turned around and started walking again.

I felt confused. Why was he behaving like that? What didn’t he want to tell me? And the thing about the full moon? The thought of werewolves crossed my mind and almost made me laugh.

Now, ~that~ was so far-fetched…! That only existed in books and movies, so that was definitely not it. I think I must have hit my head really hard when I fell off that cliff, imagining things like that.

I rolled my eyes from my own foolishness and followed Jared as he guided us through a valley covered in glowing copper and gold. The colors of autumn.

Even though the sun was shining brightly, the air felt sharp against my skin and cleared my head from the cloud of thoughts that tormented me.

After what felt like hours, we stood on the top of a hill, and Jared pointed at something in the distance.

“Do you see that mountain over there? The one with the buckled shape?”

I nodded and stepped closer to see.

“That’s the direction you’re heading. And when you get there, you’ll see another two mountains, where one of them is shaped like the face of a man. It’s not especially obvious, so use your imagination.”

“Okay,” I said slowly and memorized it the best I could. Him saying this meant that he wouldn’t follow me any farther, and the thought made me so sad that I felt like crying.

I hated the thought of being alone in general, and especially out in the wilderness again. However, I knew I had to face reality sooner or later. I just hoped he could stay with me tonight.

At least that would mean one less night alone in the woods. And he did.

As soon as we’d climbed down from the hill and walked through a forest, we came to an opening in the terrain and settled down next to a lake that was quite a bit smaller than the one at their camp.

It was still daylight, but the sun was on its way down and made the water quite mysterious, with a light mist floating over the surface.

It made the sounds dull and moist from droplets on the grass, and the world smelled clean and fresh.

I helped Jared collect some wood to make a bonfire so we could keep warm through the night, and then I sat down next to it and rubbed my sore feet while Jared tried his luck fishing.

Still, it took quite a while before he returned. Next thing I knew, I was waking up from someone softly stroking a hand over my cheek, and I realized I’d dozed off.

Then I became aware that he’d tucked the blanket around me while I slept and felt stunned by how caring he was.

“Food’s ready,” he said with a gruff voice. Then he turned away and stared into the darkness like he’d done something wrong.

“What is it?” I asked and stretched a bit.

“Trout.”

“No. I mean, what’s wrong?”

He captured my gaze for several seconds, and like many times before, he stirred something deep inside me, like I knew him on a deeper level than just these past few days.

At first, he didn’t say anything, but then he cleared his voice and looked at the ground.

“I’m sorry for staring at you while you were sleeping.”

I giggled. That was all? That was actually a bit cute. Not that he was staring, of course, but the fact that he apologized for it.

He could’ve easily kept it a secret, yet he chose to be honest, as if to prove to me that I could trust him. And even though he tried to hide it, I sometimes felt his eyes on me while we ate too. I didn’t mind.

“Why do you live out here on your own?” I asked to break the silence. It was a good silence though, so it didn’t bother me, but I just needed to know.

And I ignored mentioning Buck on purpose, knowing perfectly well that he wasn’t completely alone.

“It’s best that way.”

Jared was staring into the fire, picking on the glowing coal with a crooked stick.

“But what about your family? Your parents? Don’t you ever miss them?”

He shrugged.

“They died many years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear,” I said and felt bad for asking. I didn’t mean to dig into sad memories and ruin the nice atmosphere. It was just us two and the bonfire surrounded by darkness.

“Don’t be. It’s almost two hundred years ago. I hardly think about them anymore.”

I snorted and giggled. “So that means you’re about two hundred and twenty?”

“Something like that,” he mumbled and got up. And the way he visibly shut down in front of me made me regret that I had laughed. But before I could apologize, he walked off into the darkness.

“Jared?” I didn’t know why, but I felt tears stinging in my eyes in only a matter of seconds. This couldn’t be it. He promised to stay the night and keep me safe. Did he change his mind? Or maybe he forgot?

“Jared? Come back! Please! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

But he was gone.