Page 76 of Beneath the Mountain Sky
I want to believe that won’t happen, that something will spark her full memory to return, but today has left that boulder of doubt sitting in my gut.
She tilts her head slightly as she steps into the trees, allowing my hand to stay connected with hers as I trail behind her.
At this point, I couldn’t stop her even if I wanted to.
We move into the foliage, and she uses her free arm to bat away low-hanging branches, wincing slightly a few times, no doubt remembering that they might be the ones that caused the still-healing marks on her bare arms.
After a few more yards, I pull her to a stop. “This is where I found the scrap of fabric.”
A jagged branch shoots out at a forty-five-degree angle, clearly snapped by something big plowing through here rapidly.
Her gaze narrows on it. “I must have done that…”
I nod. “Yes.”
“What was I doing out here in a storm like that?”
The crack in her voice, the way her hand tightens on mine, it feels like my heart is being ripped from my chest.
“I don’t know, Honeybee.”
God, I’m so sick of saying those words.
I want to give her answers. I want to give her comfort. I want to give her exactly what she needs—the truth of what happened to her—and it’s all out of my control. Something I’m definitely not used to on McBride Mountain.
The one thing I so badly want to fix is the one thing that’s completely out of my hands.
Willow draws in a shaky breath and then pushes on. I point out the few places we found her footprints, though they’re mostly gone now, animals and the weather either washing them away or covering them. By the time we reach the clearing where her trail ends, she’s trembling.
She stops, her body tensing, and I slide behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist to hold her steady.
A tear trickles down her cheek, and I press my face into her hair, breathing her in and wishing so much I could take away her pain. “Anything else coming to you?”
It takes her a few seconds before she responds. “No. None of this looks familiar, but…”
“But what?”
She turns her head sideways until her eyes meet mine. “I feel like I’ve been here before. You and I never came up here?”
I shake my head. “Not this particular clearing. I’ve been through here a few times over the years hunting, but never with you.”
Her lip disappears beneath her teeth, and she points to the west. “Then why do I know that way will lead me up to a small canyon?”
What the hell?
I freeze as my back tenses. “You shouldn’t know that.”
Her gaze goes unfocused, like she isn’t seeing what’s right in front of us but something else entirely. “I can see it in my head.”
“What?”
“The canyon. It’s narrow, barely wide enough for a human to get through. I think the animals use it, though, as sort of a bypass instead of going up over the peak or around the mountain the long way.”
I turn her slowly in my arms and tilt her chin up. “You’re describing the gorge. Maybe you saw it on the maps. Those old ones that my dad and his dad before him drew for McBride Timber. You looked at them hundreds of times over the years in the office.”
Her lips twist. “Maybe, but I’m not visualizing a drawing of it. I’m seeing the gorge itself. High rock walls…”
Which doesn’t make any fucking sense.
