There are trails. A wide variety of them. The trails covered in squelching moss by the meltwater streams. Then there are ones paved by the sloughing mudstone. Don't forget the ones with muddy snowbanks sheltering in the shade, flooding the path with murky water. I hate the treacherous lot of them, but Ryan had it right. The landscape is passable. Treacherous and passable. Maybe I should feel a certain affinity to it, but I don't. I hate it.

But also, Ryan is alive. We're on the run together, fueled by the new hope of finding help. That's what I was striving for, right? Save Ryan, get the fuck out... Then why oh why am I constantly thinking about all the places I would rather be than in these mountains?

Places like my favorite gym, Ryan's boat, my girlhood room in Nazarevich's Stronghold, the posh tea-house in L.A., and the featherbed in a quaint French chateau. The list playing through my head is as endless as the trails we trot. And I like it like that, on a loop, because when I don't daydream about my happy places, Ryan's voice rings in my mind.

Open your fucking eyes, Naz.

My eyes are open, thank you very much.

If anything, I have to have them peeled to watch out for obstacles in the darkness reigning under the forest's canopy. Even after the sun rises and the going gets easier, I have to keep them open, so I could use my imaginary laser-shooting gaze to drill holes through the back of Ryan's head. He's my only prize for betraying everything I know.

Naturally, my darling husband proves to be an annoying outdoorsy type, who's probably at home in every environment.

Jungles, desert, frozen tundra, fiery pits of hell... Ryan would probably cross every terrain at the same punishing clip, whistling all the way.

Well, he's not whistling right now, but my imagination runs wild. I hate his even gait. I hate his peace of mind. Most of all, I hate these soggy, craggy mountains!

Only after the sun is high in the sky, Ryan calls a halt by a stream. He finds a bottle with a purifying filter in his well-organized backpack, fills it up and sets it to purify. I crouch with my back against a tree and my eyes fixate on the bottle.

Water...

Water...

Water!

Filter faster!

Sweat coats my body in a disgusting layer. The primal need for water supersedes every rational thought.

I don't want to study the old-fashioned, laminated topo map Ryan unfolds on a clipboard. I don't want to look at his battered face, painful winces, smartening bruises and messed up hair. It's plastered to his forehead in the front and at the nape of his neck with sweat. In a couple of places, it's probably dried blood. I don't want to talk to him, even if he abandons suffering in silence.

Whenever I glance at him, my stomach turns and nausea engulfs me. I'm an adulteress! Luca had an excuse for cheating on me: we weren't married yet. It's a shitty excuse, but I don't even have that. And Luca—Luca the Philanderer, Luca who plumbed everything with a hole in it—yes, that Luca turned into a faithful paragon.

Me? I... I fucked up. Royally. Stupidly. Hopelessly bad.

The water's done dripping. It's as clean as a tear as it accumulates in a sweating bottle.

Ryan offers me our only cup first. Because he's my husband? A man? I would kick him in the head with it, but I don't know how many more hits to the head he could take without passing out. I grab water out of his hands and upturn it into my parched mouth. It's the best water I've ever had, despite hurting my teeth because it's so cold. I swallow it in just a few greedy gulps.

His gaze stops on my throat, watching every swallow. Watching the drop that trickles out of the corner of my mouth. Watching the chilly rivulet it makes to the jacket's collar.

The warm, heavy paw of desire steps on a certain part of my anatomy. Apparently, I can't stay faithful even to the guy I've cheated with on the husband I'd married to avoid marrying the guy. If my hands were free, I'd put a finger-gun to my temple and shoot myself.

I press the empty cup into Ryan's hands.

"Let's follow the creek until we find a place to camp," he says, after draining his share and wiping his mouth. "It's almost due east."

"Sure." I should have thanked him, but now it's too late. The pace he sets is too punishing for talking. My head hangs low as I trot in his wake, no longer curious about our surroundings. So long as I don't slip or trip, I don't care what we pass.

My mind hums along. I can't live like this anymore. There's nothing for me to go back to. Nothing to look forward to. I can't live—

Ryan's exclamation interrupts my unhappy thoughts. "Naz! We're in luck!"

I lift my eyes to see what he's pointing at: a cabin, leaning against a rocky outcrop, about a hundred yards away from a deeper pool in our stream.

We gave a wide berth to a village earlier, afraid to run into the authorities. A shepherd overtook us with some goats, sparing us a wary glance from under a shaggy hat. Yet, this is the closest we come to other people or their dwellings.

"Let me see if it's occupied." Ryan's eyes flash with a renewed enthusiasm. His glance is strange without the glasses, softer somehow.

"Sure." I perch on a tree that snapped three feet above its roots. The ivy had been threading its fallen trunk to the forest floor ever since. The moment my butt touches the rotting wood, I feel like I could never get up again. I splay my aching limbs, roll my head back to catch the warmth of the last sun rays. Gosh, the day's nearly gone.

Time stops for me.

"Naz. Naz!"

With a sigh, I lift my head and rub sleep out of my eyes. "Yeah?"

Ryan's even more irritatingly energized, taller and straighter after relieving his shoulders from the backpack. "Naz, the cabin hasn't been used for a while. It's ours."

This is good news. Great news, even, but a groan comes out of my slacking mouth. I just want to sit here in peace and quiet. Hundred yards to the cabin up the creek's bank feels like a mile.

Ryan extends both arms toward me. "Come on, Naz. On three..."

Doesn't he have a concussion? I wrap my hands around his warm ones, and he lifts me to my feet. For a second, we hold together at the distance of an outstretched arm, as if getting ready to dance a polka. In response to this quaint pose, or maybe to his smile, blush warms my cheeks.

"Three?" he asks.

"Yes."

He lets go. We walk inside our shelter single file. He sucks air in audibly when he has to bend his head under the low lintel.

The cabin is even smaller than his boat's stateroom, and dingy. There's practically nothing here, with the exception of a cast-iron stove stamped with the USSR's state standard. It's bolted to the floor, as a nod to the more recent times. But, in keeping with the human custom in remote places, there's a stack of firewood and a woodsman's ax.

Ryan has already extracted our only sleeping bag to lay it over a wooden frame, barely a few inches above the dirt floor. I drop on it gratefully, trying to forget the existence of bedbugs, scorpions and other creeping things.

"Wait." Ryan turns from where he was squatting in front of the stove, stocking it with firewood. "I want to wash up, while we have running water and the fire to dry things. Wearing clean stuff lifts the spirit. We need it."

"We sure do."

He stares at me expectantly. I squirm. I scrubbed off every bit of Luca from my skin back at the villa, but the thought of handing over my underwear creeps me out.

"You're being silly," Ryan mutters, but swivels away, presenting me with the view of the back of his head. His attention is seemingly consumed by the kindling.

With a bit of a whimper, I strip my t-shirt, panties and socks, wriggling back into my pants. Because no way I'm sleeping in the nude with the bedbugs and the scorpions.

By then, Ryan has coaxed the flames to life and made sure the ancient stove vents properly.

My eyelids grow heavier with fatigue and guilt. I succumb to sleep, because feeling my feelings is not fun. Sleep is better. The dreamless sleep... a regret-free space. Darkness...