I smiled weakly. “Sorry I’m a lightweight.”

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “It was my fault. I never should have pushed you so hard.”

“I wanted to keep up.”

“You will. One day soon, you’ll run circles around me. It takes time to build up.”

I blinked up at him in the waning light. All along, I’d thought Hunter was the hermit in the story, but as I watched him at ease against the earth, his silhouette a sleek extension of the ground and sky, I realized it had been me all along. I’d been the one cut off from society, dangling off a ledge on a waterfall just to feel alive. I wasn’t used to this activity…but I would be. He would see to that, and so would I.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, concerned. “I can go ahead and bring back help.”

“No, I swear I feel better.”

It was true. Like a colt standing for the first time, I was wobbly. It would take time and practice before I could walk and run and gallop on my own.

“I’ll rest tonight and we’ll go back in the morning. And I’ll be more careful from now on, let you know if you’re going too fast.”

At that, he smiled with remorse. “Not that I’ve done a great job at listening so far.”

“You will,” I mocked him gently. “One day soon you’ll be the most sensitive guy around.”

He laughed, squeezing some of the water from the compress onto my face. I shrieked and laughed too, drinking down the drops that fell into my mouth.

He wouldn’t let me help put up the tent, but that was okay. I was learning my limits, what they were and how to respect them. He needed to be kind and I needed to receive kindness.

That night he pulled back the top of the tent, and we lay in the jumble of sleeping bags and pillows staring up at the stars. I rested my face on his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall while the crinkly hair tickled my nose.

“Tell me,” I said softly.

Beating beneath me was a strong heart, one that had started off pure but tainted now. Poisoned when no one had believed in him, poisoned when the men in jail had hurt him.

There was poison inside me too. Because of what had happened to me with Allen, because of the guilt from my mother. Neither of us could purge ourselves of it completely, but we could help each other. Like the way I’d read the old settlers of this place would deal with snake bites, lancing the wound and sucking out the venom.

And so the words began to flow.

“He was my mentor in seminary school. The man who gave me that rosary. Norman had already graduated but while he was working as a missionary, he’d had a crisis of faith. Some of the things he’d seen…the atrocities that men will commit on other men. On women.”

My heart swelled with sadness for him—that man, but mostly for Hunter.

“We became friends though. I was starry-eyed, naïve. Idealistic in the extreme. He started off jaded, but he seemed to calm over the years I was there. Norm taught me what he knew, and he told me later it felt like he was relearning it. Neither of us questioned that it was God who had brought us together as the best of friends.”

He went silent.

“What happened?” I whispered.

I already knew the way this story ended, but I wanted to hear it. And maybe he needed to tell it.

“We were lucky. When I graduated, two positions opened up in the same parish. We loved that place, the church, the community. At night we would talk over dinner, debating the same passages over again. It was…” I felt him swallow. “It was everything I had dreamed of having.”

“And then?”

“There was one family there with a teenaged daughter. The parents were wealthy but both very busy. The daughter had come to our Sunday school, she joined the choir. She started having trouble in school. Nothing too alarming, skipping school and hanging with the wrong crowd, but they wanted counseling for her.”

This time even I fell silent, reluctant to hear how his peace was shattered. Nervous to learn of the woman I’d reminded him of, at least at first.

“She told me…She said she’d been waiting until she was of age, she said. It wasn’t the first time a parishioner had confessed to a crush, but it was the first time she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was uncomfortable… embarrassed. I told her I couldn’t speak to her one-on-one anymore. I considered talking to her parents, but then she was nineteen and living on her own. She started having regular sessions with Norm, and I figured the problem was solved.”

He pulled me tighter, so tight I couldn’t breathe. I stroked him, running my fingers over the goose-bumped skin on his chest.

“I didn’t realize it, but she was saying the same things to him. Earning his trust. He thought she loved him. He loved her back. And then she told him that I’d taken advantage of her. That I’d touched her even though I hadn’t. Not ever.”

“I know,” I said quietly, though I was sure he wasn’t listening. He was tense, sweating, back in the past that hurt him.

“He called the police. They showed up to take me away in handcuffs while he watched from the curb. He wouldn’t listen to me, refused to talk about me or see me. I was convicted without ever hearing him speak another word to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He laughed. “He left the cloth for her. I don’t know why, maybe he got suspicious or she just needed to confess, but somehow she ended up telling him the truth. Did she think he would stay with her anyway? He got proof to my lawyer, and they overturned the sentence. In a way, it was too late for me. I was already so fucked up. So many fights…those nights in the ER…I didn’t want to be like this. I had to survive. I couldn’t…”

“I know. I understand. You couldn’t let them.”

“The craziest part of the whole thing was when I was released from prison. I got it into my head that he’d be there waiting for me. He would apologize, and I’d already forgiven him. I knew I could never go back to the priesthood, but at least I’d have a friend.”

I pulled myself up to face him. “You have a friend.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my head. “I don’t deserve one. You, least of all.”

“I know I’m pretty great,” I said blithely.

He grinned. “A saint.”

I rested my forehead against his the way I had in his truck. It brought me closer to him, like I could pull the pain from him and take it into my own body. He did the same for me, really, and we were both conduits for the pain, the currents between us grounding us together. He was the god of thunder, retreating from the world that had rejected him. I was the maiden he’d caught going over the edge, who he’d secreted away in his lair beneath the falls.

“Sometimes I think Norm was a bastard. A stupid, horrible person,” he continued, “and I curse him to Hell. Then other days…I knew my friend too well. He believed her. Maybe he was blindsided by her looks or interest in him. Or maybe he was too messed up by what he’d already seen. But either way, he truly believed it of me and that hurt the worst. He’s been out there, somewhere, feeling like shit, and I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to care about that, but I do.”

I knew the feeling exactly. My mother wasn’t the best, but she hadn’t wanted me hurt. She hadn’t realized what Allen was doing to me until it was too late. Like Hunter, too late.

And yet, here we both were. Two second chances. Almost a miracle.

“Forgive yourself. It’s the only way we can be together.”

His lip quirked. “Are you preaching to me, Evie?”

“You know what they say. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, preach.”

“Do they say that?”

“I have no idea. I’ve spoken to approximately five people my whole life.”

He grinned and kissed me, his lips curved as they pressed against mine.

It was the first time we had really kissed. His tongue met mine in a sensual meeting, a languid caress followed by another and another. He explored me there as thoroughly as he knew the rest of my body, learning each contour and sweetly sensitive shadow.