Page 25 of When Glitter Meets Gold

Maybe it’s the Baker family themselves I’m recalling. However, if that is the case, there’s no way the scent would have the same calming effect on me. This is something…pleasant. Something that warrants deeper inhalation.

I close my eyes as I breathe in a couple more times.

Leather and childhood. Strange, yet, weirdly comforting.

I contemplate the combination as a leaf slaps against my temple, drenching my face like an oversaturated sheet mask. God, what I would give for some skincare right now. I tear it off, cursing into the night.

My mind wanders back to the scent, to Jack, as I trudge toward the glow of the tent, a surprising beacon of comfort given the circumstances. My eyes narrow as I study his huge, silhouetted frame within the structure.

I can’t figure him out. He’s messy, his hair lacks any style or order, his face is dotted with grime resulting from a lack of showering no doubt, and no, washing in a stream didn’t count. Yet beneath the dirty nomad, there’s a polished, refined side to him too. Like the way he’d neatly packed away the trash from our snacks instead of tossing it into the corner. Or the way he’d laid out the equipment from hisbag, arranging each piece in an orderly way rather than shoving them in a heap with no care. He pays attention to details. He hikes wearing a Rolex. It doesn’t fit with his baggy, mismatched clothes, and grizzly appearance.

Even though I can see he's content out here, something about him doesn’t quite belong in the wilderness either. It makes sense that he belongs to a larger city, his accessories certainly support the notion.

Yet somehow, I can’t help but think that he doesn’t quite belong in either world. Maybe that’s why he hikes off trail, maybe he doesn’t quite know where he fits in either.

I’m several feet from the tent when a noise rises above the storm. It’s somewhere between a wet cough and a grunt.

“Jack?” I whisper as my eyes scan the area wildly. The rain lashes down against my cheeks, and the forest wails as the storm rages through the woods, but somehow all of that melts away and dulls into the night, because the only thing I can feel is my heart thudding against my ribs.

Another noise sounds in the distance, like a heavy boot striking the earth.

Someone’s out here.

12

JACK ‘J’

Jhears the noise before it turns into an immediate threat.

He’s in the middle of changing his shirt when he hears the creature approach from behind the tent, grunting and pacing through the trees, caught out in the storm much like he was with Sara.

If only she’d stayed in the tent for another five minutes, they could have continued to wait out the storm without incident, tolerating each other from separate corners. But J had quickly realized that nothing was simple where this girl was concerned. After all, she’d managed to fall offtwocliffs in a five-minute window, an almost impossible ratio.

He hears her scream, hears the animal stamp its foot, and, when he unzips the tent and sticks his head into the elements, he sees why.

Sara’s having a face-off with the largest moose he’s ever seen out on these trails.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he says, groaning and wondering why the hell she’s still standing there whenthe animal’s stomping its hooves and generally displaying every sign that it’s about to charge. Yet Sara remains frozen to the spot, probably scared out of her mind. Unfortunately, the moose doesn’t speak human; all it knows is that it’s being challenged to a duel by a tiny person who won’t back down.

“Move Sara!” J yells from the tent, pointing into the dark. “Get to the trees.”

She could run a few paces to the left and be out of the line of danger in seconds.

She doesn’t even flinch however, because she’s not listening. Rooted to the spot by fear and inexperience.

The animal performs a final warning stomp before J has to take matters into his own hands. The moose grunts, smacking its lips together and snorting before charging her at full speed.

“Ah fuck.” With only seconds to react before this girl is mowed down by fifteen hundred pounds of brute force—a tackle from a linebacker would be less catastrophic—J leaps from the tent.

The sound of Sara screaming could shatter glass.

“Jack! It’s going to kill me! I’m going to die!”

Barefoot and shirtless, he sprints across the wet earth, barreling into the night to reach her just as the beast is about to make contact with her tiny frame. He wraps a strong arm around her waist, crushing her to his chest and breathing a relieved, “I got you” into her hair. He dives out of the way just in time, tumbling to the forest floor, taking Sara with him. Her fingers sink into his arms as they roll toward the safety of the nearest tree.

“I got you.” The words slip out again as he feels the danger slip away.

It’s the danger that gives him the adrenaline rush. It’s thething he craves most in the world, the thing he can never get quite enough of. That feeling ofrisk.

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