Page 95 of Jaded

“What are you, a hound dog?” Avery asks, and I squint an eye open to find that his eyes are still closed. Teasing but listening—still. Beside him, Sydney’s face has relaxed into smooth lines of calm.

I rein in my smile. “Nope. Okay, now stop talking and listen.”

The silence rings in my ears, profound, deep—hollow, almost—until they start to pull noises from nature. The soft whisper of wind through barren trees and tangled pine boughs. The frail twitter of a hopeful bird, somehow equipped to battle the cold and ice of this world despite his small size and fragile bones. The oh-so-faint hum of the city below, its own tangle of contrasting sounds blended into one harmony.

“You hear it?” I murmur, my voice a brutal slash of sound through the quiet.

“Mmm,” Avery responds, and when I open my eyes, he stands motionless, lids fluttered closed. Sydney beside him, her face that same serene sheet.

Behind them, Nat stands still as a statue, eyes closed, face tilted towards the sun.

Listening. Listening to the world around us, like he too wants to be a part of it. I wonder, when was the last time any of them stopped tolisten?

“Okay.” I refocus on Avery. “Now, reach out your right hand. Little more . . . there.” I mimic his motion with my left, so my fingers brush the bark of the same tree, the rough scrape almost jarring when my energy’s so tuned, so focused. “You feel it?”

Avery hisses in a quiet breath.

“Open your eyes,” I murmur, following my own instructions. “And tell me we’rejust walking.”

Nat chuckles, and Avery opens his eyes. His face is expressionless until he catches me looking, scrunches it into such stubborn denial I almost laugh. But he doesn’t tell me I’m wrong.

“Well,” he finally huffs. “I am pretty sure we’re lost.”

Nat groans, but I turn and point ahead. “You see that rock there?”

Avery’s gaze follows the line of my finger. “Yeah? It’s just a rock.”

Behind him, Sydney’s looking, and behind her, Nat’s looking too.

I try not to let his attention heat me from the inside out. Focus, Olli. “Nah, see how it’s kinda square on the edge there? Good climbing rock. Which I know, ’cause I climbed it, and you can actually see over the tree line a little, get some views of the city. Really nice, actually.”

Avery’s gaze goes suddenly intense, and I know what his next question’s gonna be. “Can I climb it?”

“Let’s do it.” I take the lead to the oversized hunk of granite bulging out of the trees. We’re in the foothills, no real elevation gain happening here—seemed unwise given the company of my city slickers—so the rock is more a roil and froth of the land than a piece of mountain terrain.

Still makes for a fun, if short, little hand-and-foot shuffle to the top. I pop up onto the slightly concave ledge, watch as Avery makes light work of the climb. Behind him, Nat and Sydney follow in smooth pulls of their hands, thrusts of their feet.

Avery comes to stand beside me, and Nat moves to my other side, so they flank me as we stare out over the world beneath us. The trees fall at our feet in a tumble of pines interlaced with snow and—

“That’s an aspen, isn’t it?” Nat murmurs, leaning slightly into me. The words trail through my hair, caress the shell of my ear. Send the most delightful shivers down my spine.

“Yes, it is.” I tilt my head so he sees my dramatic eye-roll. “Along with the thirty or so ones around it.”

“Right. Yep.”

“How does Google not know about this?” Avery murmurs, maybe a little awed at the wonder of nature. The majesty, the greatness . . . the damn call of the wild.

“Google doesn’t know about things unless people tell it,” I say, adding a note of warning to my voice. “You aren’t gonna tell Google about this, right? Cause if you tell Google, Google will tell other people who don’t love this trail as much as I do.”

“No,” Avery hums. “I’m not gonna tell Google. But . . .” He hesitates, turns his gaze away so I can’t even read his profile. “Would you mind if I came back sometime?”

I rein in my smile. “No, I wouldn’t. We are gonna have to get you some better hiking shoes, though. C’mon, let’s keep walking. I have more thinking to do.”

I slide back down the rock, and as my boots crunch down into the snow and I tilt my head back to watch Avery, Syd, and Nat descend behind me, I think that this strange company of sojourners . . . something about it feels right.

It shouldn’t. Just like Nat and I shouldn’t feel so right. We inhabit two different planets, or we should, and yet here we are. With his daughterand her damn boyfriend, conquering a snowy trail on the edge of the civilized world.

Dreaming up ways to save a hockey team, to bring the fans of hockey back to the topside world. Maybe it’s not just a hockey team we’re saving, eh, but a whole damn town?

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