The compliment would have meant a lot more if that wasn’t exactly what Easton was doing. Easton strode over to her, and in front of the rest of the group, he took River’s face in his hands.

“Keep that radio on you,” he said in a rough, low voice. “I’ll call when I get to the pickup site and start back up. You can’t leave, River. Promise me. Don’t go anywhere you can’t keep your hand on the tent. The weather isn’t calling for a storm, but the wind is picking up. If visibility goes down too far, you could get lost. Promise me, or I can’t leave you here.”

“I promise.” River wrapped her hand behind his neck, going up on her tiptoes as much as her crampons would allow. “You can trust me, Easton.”

Resting his forehead to hers, Easton inhaled another deep breath. Then he kissed her, a quick, hard kiss. “I’m coming back, River. I’m not leaving you up here.”

Her smile was the breath in his lungs. “It never once occurred to me you would.”

• • •

Grown women weren’t scared of the dark. Or the not quite dark of being on a mountaintop near the North Pole.

But like a tree falling in the woods, if no one was there to witness River being a scaredy cat, it wasn’t actually happening, right?

“People make vampire movies out of situations like this,” River decided as she sat in her tent, staring out a tiny hole she’d unzipped in the flap.

Opening the flap fully wasn’t happening. With night came the cold, and this cold was beyond any she’d experienced so far.

“I’d rather have a nice warm werewolf if something was going to show up. Or an abominable snowperson. Those can be sexy. I’m sure somewhere out there is a ripped snowperson, waiting to find true love.”

Talking to oneself wasn’t a bad sign. River had told herself that every conversation she’d had since her team had disappeared out of sight.

Being alone on the mountain was…surreal. Even though it was technically day, the wind picked up, like Easton had predicted. As she stayed in camp, super-duper alone, River tried to decide what was scarier: being in the wilderness and not knowing what was out there or being in the wilderness and knowing nothing was out there.

Nothing at all.

“Maybe one vampire would be okay,” she murmured to herself.

Zipping up the opening in the tent, River bundled up as best she could, keeping the radio tucked close to her. Taking out the handheld camera, she settled into as comfortable a position as she could find.

“This is River. I’m on my handheld because, well, things didn’t go as planned up here. A small accident happened.”

River made a face into the camera. “Small is a relative term, because it scared the crap out of all of us. Even Easton looked strained around the eyes. Bree and Jessie were filming outside camp, and she got hurt. I really love Bree. We’re friends, you know? We’ve worked on three movies together, and when you spend that much time with someone…”

River drifted off, gathering her thoughts. “Anyway, I’m really glad Easton and Ben were here. I can’t imagine being up here with anyone else. Except, well, I’m not up here with Easton anymore. I’m by myself. Bree and I decided that I should summit and finish the film. Easton needed to help Ben get everyone back down, so we agreed I’d stay here. It’s quiet. It’s so quiet.”

Holding the camera steady was difficult, especially when her hands shook from the cold. So River set it between her knees, pointing at her face. The angle was terrible, but she didn’t care.

“You know what I keep thinking up here? I don’t miss back home in LA. I miss my home back in Wyoming. I miss the sound of my father’s voice. I miss my mother’s arms hugging me. I miss the smell of the ranch in the mornings, the dew on the grass, and the breeze coming across the pastures. I miss my grandmother’s hands. I even miss my sisters.”

River made a face at the camera. “I bet my sisters never thought I’d say that, but I do. I miss you. I miss having people who matter within arm’s reach. It used to be suffocating, but now…now I just want to be suffocated.”

Closing her eyes, River tried to gather herself.

“Okay, enough of that. Easton said he’d be back tomorrow. I don’t know if sleep will actually happen, but I’m going to close my eyes and think about what it’s going to feel like making it to the top of this mountain. People have done it before. I will too.”

Setting down the camera, River curled up on her mat, holding the radio tucked tightly to her chest, whispering to herself.

“I will too.”

• • •

As trips down the mountain went, this one couldn’t have gone fast enough.

After putting in a call to Ash—and hearing several times that she told him so—Ash had agreed to pick them up. Twelve thousand feet of elevation was about as high as she could safely land, and they knew of a spot to touch down there.

Easton had never been so glad he’d trusted his gut on anything as he was about calling the climb on these two. Jessie was done, both physically and mentally. The oxygen had helped Bree, and she was faring relatively well, but her pace was so slow, Easton was having trouble staying patient with her shuffling steps.

River needed him up there, not going the other way at a crawl.

Ben and Bree had bonded as they descended—now that Bree wasn’t focused on her filming. He spent the better part of his time helping her traverse the terrain, making jokes and telling wild stories to make Bree laugh. The pair’s spirits were high, but some of that might have been the painkillers they kept feeding her. High as a kite, she kept mentioning the stories she’d have to tell once she got back home.

Getting them both through the Veil was a challenge. The only positive was there wasn’t a client unclipping from the line and going off course on him.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked on their two-thousandth break to catch a breath. A break Easton knew was necessary but drove him crazy.

“Not really,” Easton told his friend. “I hate that I left her up there.”

“River’s tough, man. She can handle it.”

Yes, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be up there too so they could handle it together. Easton had forced himself to accept they couldn’t set a tougher pace, but his skin crawled with the need to get moving, to get back up and get to River. She’d never soloed a climb before, and the mountain did strange things to someone when they weren’t used to being alone.

Knowing her, something would happen that would give her a perfectly logical reason to leave the safety of the tent, or worse, the camp. He’d mentally berated himself the entire descent, switching off with Ben as they kept a helping arm around Bree’s waist. As they descended, Easton found himself missing the furball. Bad breakup or not, at least the marmot understood him. It would have been chafing at the pace too.