“Excuse me? Should we get the canoe?”
“So they can see where we are?” He points across the channel to the woods.
He wants us to muck out there and swim for it.
“No,” I say. “Fuck no.”
He turns to me, glowering. “Do I need to drag you?”
I swallow, knowing he would. I gather myself. If he says they’re here, they’re here. I untie my boots and step out of them, sinking even deeper into the freezing muck. “Let’s go.”
He points. “My footsteps.”
I follow him out, sinking knee-deep in the cold, slimy muck, holding my boots above my head until we hit clear water. Kiro’s in bare feet, of course. He’s been going more and more without his boots, like he’s reverting back to his wild self the deeper we go.
I swim quietly after him through the painfully freezing water, copying his movements, staying quiet, aware. There’s more muck on the other side. I’m chattering my teeth off.
We trudge up to the shore. I follow him in. The terrain hurts my feet. “Wait. Let me put on my boots.”
“No time.” He picks me up, carrying me through the woods—fast. He doesn’t quite follow a straight line; he seems to choose his course by the terrain, and he gets some serious loft as he goes, his movements more animal than human.
He slows at the base of a huge pine tree, looks up, then goes to another and another, and then he stops.
“What the hell, Kiro?”
He puts me down. “You’ll climb.”
“What?”
“There’s no time.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. He senses danger. Whether he trusts me or no, he senses that the danger extends to me.
“Maybe I can help you.”
“I’ll fight better if I know you’re safe. I won’t have to listen for you.”
“How do you know I can’t help?”
“I know. Please,” he grates.
It’s so unusual for him not to simply issue a command that I’m taken off guard.
“Let me see you get up there. High up. You’re safe up there—nobody will look up there, nobody will shoot up there. Wait for me to call to you. If I don’t call…don’t trust the silence. Stay. Wait it out.”
I rest my palm on his beard. “Okay.” I mean the touch as a comforting gesture, but there’s a tightness in his brow; it seems almost to hurt him more than anything. Like my kindness hurts him.
And I realize something about him: This is a man who doesn’t know what to do with kindness.
Kiro knows what do when people hate him. He knows about being hunted and trapped and confined and beaten. But he’s never known kindness.
He’s never thought to expect anything like that from me. Why should he?
It makes me want to put my arms around him and pull him to me. I want to tell him he’s amazing and fierce and brave, and surprising all the time. I want to tell him he deserves kindness. That he’s worthy of love.
Veryworthy of love. My heart pounds. “Kiro.”
“Please.” He hoists me up to the lowest branch. Kiro needs me to do this now. I catch the branch and scramble up, shivering, channeling my inner monkey, making sure not to look at the ground.