It was still dark when I woke up. Completely dark. I would never consider leaving the tent if it wasn't for the growing need to relieve myself. For the longest I tried to ignore it until it became unbearable and impossible to sleep anyway. So I opened the zipper as quietly as I could and peeked out of the tent. But just as I stumbled out into the darkness, my foot hitched in something, and I fell backwards with a scream. Surprisingly, I didn't fall to the ground. I landed on a person, who turned out to be Jared.

"I'm so sorry!" we exclaimed almost simultaneously. I was as good as blind in the darkness, so I didn't see Jared get up in a hurry until two strong arms helped me back on my feet.

"What are you doing lying down there?" I asked in confusion. He'd been laying curled up on the ground between the guy ropes on the tent with his sleeping bag. And he wasn't even lying inside of it. "Wouldn't it be better to lie next to the bonfire so you can stretch out properly and keep warm?"

"Yeah, but... I'm prot... Uhm... I..."

After stuttering a bit, he chose not to answer and instead asked if I was alright.

"Yeah, but why are you..."

"Can I help you with anything?" he said a bit sterner. He clearly didn't want to talk about it. And now it was my time to fumble with the words because I felt stupid for waking him up, and because his behavior confused me.

"No, I just... I need to go... You know. I need to pee."

I mumbled the last part really quick and was pretty sure my cheeks were glowing in the dark.

"Oh. Sure. I mean, yeah. Go ahead."

He took a couple of steps back to give me space, but I was still so startled that I just stood there, gawking at him for a several seconds. I could barely make out his contours, but somehow, I knew he was just as dumbfounded as I was. Then he cleared his voice and I snapped out of it and turned to leave. With my arms stretched out in front of me, I tried to envision my way by memory of how it looked like in daylight. Unfortunately, that didn't go very well, because I crashed into a tree and groaned in pain when a branch hit my lip.

"Fuck," I heard a bit further away, and I jumped and screamed when Jared suddenly was right behind me. How could he be two places at the same time?

"It's just me, Skylar. Calm down. Did you hurt yourself?"

Not really expecting an answer, Jared guided me between, to me, invisible trees and bushes by placing my hand in his and his other one carefully on my lower back. His strong body felt like a safe shield against any danger that might be lurking around us, and I suddenly felt strangely weak. But then we stopped, and I instinctively turned towards him.

"Oh. You're bleeding," he said with concern in his voice.

"Bleeding?"

"Yeah, your lip."

He lifted his hand up to my face, and I instantly felt the urge to shy away like I did last time he did that. Only this time, I didn't.

A warm thumb grazed lightly across my lower lip, and the touch made me shiver. I was unbelievably grateful that the darkness hid how severely I blushed. Nevertheless, I couldn't stop the tiny smile that pulled at the corners of my mouth. And Jared mirrored it. Carefully he wiped away the blood from a tiny cut caused by the impact with the branch. Then, totally without thinking, I licked my lip and accidentally brushed over his thumb as well, and I instantly turned away in shame. But he stopped me. With his hand still on my cheek, he gently pulled my head back by placing his other hand on my other cheek, so he was cupping my face.

"Beautiful," he whispered breathlessly, and it felt like he was staring into my soul.

Slowly he leaned closer while his hands moved to my neck, and his fingers softly tickled the shells of my ears before they entangled with my hair. My heart was beating so fast that it felt like my chest was about to explode. His lips were hovering above mine, lingering like sweet torture. It literally felt like every nerve ending in my body was about to be lit on fire. Way more intense than anything I'd ever experienced before. So I let my head fall back a bit because I was expecting him to kiss me. But instead of his lips embracing mine, he suddenly stopped, and I was surprised by the overwhelming emptiness I felt when he backed away.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. He didn't sound like himself at all. His voice was dark and hoarse, almost like he'd been smoking a pack of cigarettes every day his whole life. And even though he sounded a bit scary, a part of me wanted to pull him back so I could stay in the safety of his arms until daylight had chased the darkness away. Darkness was definitely scarier than his raspy voice.

I tried to gather my thoughts to focus on what I was supposed to do, and did my best to ignore the loneliness that engulfed me like a sweaty glove. I quickly concluded that I much rather would stand alone in the dark for a while, instead of doing my business in front of him, so I shrugged the disappointment off. Unfortunately it returned together with a knot of panic growing in my stomach as soon as I was done.

Which direction did we come from? Where was the camp? What if I started walking in the wrong direction? Was Jared too far away to hear me if I called his name?

"Jared?" I asked, but my voice sounded like a tiny screech. Then I cleared my throat and tried again.

"Jared?"

Nothing.

I started stumbling in the direction I thought we came from and called his name a couple of times more. Then I froze when I heard noises from the vegetation around me, and every part of my body was on high alert when I heard it came closer. Was it another angry moose? Or was it something much, much worse?

"JARED!" I screamed from the top of my lungs as anxiety took over my logical sense and prepared to flee. But then...

"Shh! Don't be scared! I'm right here," Jared said and chuckled a bit. "And you're walking in the wrong direction."

I groaned in embarrassment and felt like a big baby.

"You're more or less blind in the dark, aren't you?" he asked, and I heard the amusement in his voice.

"Yeah. So?" I muttered. "It's not my fault there are no streetlights here. And the moon is doing a pretty lousy job, hiding behind the clouds like that."

Jared laughed even harder, and I actually struggled to keep serious myself even with adrenaline pumping through my veins in panic mode.

"How come you can see so well, by the way? Do you have night vision contact lenses or something?" I asked after I'd thought for a moment. Then I got confused when he was reluctant to answer.

"I guess you get used to it when you live at a place like this for so long."

With that my curiosity was triggered, so I asked another question.

"How long have you been here anyway?"

For some reason he hesitated again.

"A long time," he mumbled. Then he stopped me, and I realized that we were back at the camp. "I'll light up the bonfire, so it gets easier for you to see."

He helped me get seated on the log-bench, and I watched him dig into the embers from last night and quite efficiently make a whole new bonfire out of a tiny piece of warm coal. It didn't take long until vibrant flames were licking the air and made our surroundings shiver in the yellowish light. Fascinated, I wrapped my arms around my curled-up knees to protect myself from the cold morning air and smiled thoughtfully. Until my eyes connected with Jared's through the flames.

"Are you cold?"

The words felt forbidden even though they were just that. Words. And the way he held my gaze captured only increased this feeling. This was the wrong place and the wrong time for pretty much everything. Still, I couldn't help but to think about what would happen if we met somewhere else. He was truly a mesmerizing man.

"I'm good," I smiled but kept sitting with my arms around me. That's why Jared got up and went into his tent to get the thick blanket I'd borrowed the past couple of days. He wrapped it around my shoulders and let his palm rest on my back for a moment.

"Feeling better now?" he asked, and his eyes smiled even though his face was quite serious. I nodded.

"Good."

He threw another log into the fire and sat down next to me, and we both sat in silence for a while and listened to the crackling sounds from the fire. Only Buck's snoring in the background ruined it a bit.

"So..." Jared started after a while. "What are you running from?"

I had no idea what to answer so I just stared at him.

"Or... Who?" he continued, urging me to give him a reason.

"What makes you think I'm running?"

He kept looking at me and it felt like his gaze pierced right through me, as if he knew more about me than I did myself. And right there, it actually felt like he did too. Was I running from someone?

"Well... Something must have happened to you since you're out here all by yourself. So I was just curious."

Honest questions need honest answers, but could I trust him? I'd merely known him for forty-eight hours, yet I had this odd feeling that I'd known him all my life.

"I don't remember," I said at last, and immediately regretted saying anything. Jared's searching eyes grew more intense, and I wasn't sure if I was ready for the elaboration I knew would come.

"That was unexpected," he said, and finally shifted his gaze back to the fire. The flood of questions never came, but the silence that followed was overwhelming anyway. The only thing that made me feel better was when the darkness slowly lost its battle against the daylight, and I knew that the sun would rise over the mountains far away in a matter of minutes. There was something about it that made me sad. I missed my mom, even though I didn't remember much about her. Was she worried? Did she miss me? Did she know what happened to me or where I was? Did she even care?

Before I knew it, big, salty tears moistened my cheeks. I simply couldn't hold them in. I lowered my head so Jared wouldn't see, but he did anyway. And merely seconds after he moved closer and wrapped his arm around my back.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. He sounded a bit uncomfortable hugging a stranger, and truth to be told, so was I. But somehow, his protruding smell felt calming now that I was used to it, and I ended up sobbing even more. He was so caring compared to the man who rescued me. Buck helped, but for a reason I didn't understand. Jared's help was genuine. It came from his heart.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"I don't know what to talk about. I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing here. And I barely remember anything from before I woke up next to this... This cliff... And I... I..." I sobbed, and it was like when the bubble finally burst, I became inconsolable.

"Shh... You're safe now. You'll be okay."

Jared stroked my back before he pulled me closer and rested his chin on top of my head. Then I heard his breath hitch a little before he let out the same low growl I'd heard before, and this time I knew that it wasn't just my imagination. I was literally hugging a growling man.

I tilted my head up so I could look at him and gasped when I saw a peculiar glow in his eyes. A glow that hadn't been there before. But just as soon as I saw it, it disappeared, and he looked like his normal self again, only now, I could see him lick his lips and swallow heavily. His facial expression was strained, and his gaze wandered from my eyes and down to my lips before he clenched his jaw and looked away.

He pulled me close again, and I noticed that he was barely breathing. But just as I was about to ask if he was okay, we heard Buck opening his tent and came crawling out. An intense glare made us withdraw from the embrace, and that's when I noticed something different in the tension between them. They didn't seem angry, but there was definitely something more hostile in the way they stared at each other. And it was so poorly hidden that Jared actually got up, and stood in front of me, as if he was hiding me behind his back. And then he mumbled something to Buck that made my skin crawl.

"No hunting."