“I’ve been dead a while, you know?” he said, turning his face to dodge her kiss. He grinned playfully. “Quite a while. Just look at these clothes. Would a modern man wear this?” He gestured to his shirt—white with green stitching and long sleeves that reached almost to his elbows. He wore flat-front, pale blue jeans that belled out slightly at his ankles, and a heeled, square-toed boot. His attire was straight out of the late sixties. He looked up as an idea occurred to him. “What are modern men wearing, anyway?”

She shrugged, taking a step back to study his clothing, liking the way he was dressed. “Actually some guys would wear that. To be retro. I like your look. It turns me on.”

“As if that’s hard to do in these dreams,” he said, laughing.

She moved close to him and slipped her hands under his shirt. His stomach was hard beneath it. She bent to kiss his side. His skin was soft and hot. He sighed, then laughed quietly. “Careful now,” he warned her.

“Why? You said already, you’re not real. This isn’t real. A dream.” She was feeling unusually confident—she almost didn’t recognize herself. Kate would never just throw herself at a guy let alone start kissing him beneath his shirt without more of an invitation. Perhaps he was right; perhaps it
was
a dream.

“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m lying. It could be real.”

“Does this feel like a dream?” She straightened and traced her fingers around his stomach to his back and pulled him tight against her. He grunted and kissed her. His hands came up from her waist, to her shoulder blades, as he returned the embrace.

It has to be a dream,
she thought, abstractly. She’d never wanted anyone like she wanted him. His mouth devoured her and she knew that even once she had him, she would still be hungry for more, for him. It would never be enough as fulfilling as it could potentially be.

He
is
dead, isn’t he?
some muffled, distance voice rose from deep in her head. Did she remember the day he died? Was . . . was it the summer before she started her sophomore year of high school? She felt like she recalled it, broadcast in the news. Everywhere.

That meant Will wasn’t real.

This was her dream.

***

If you love anything in this world, anything at all, you will only get hurt,
Kate thought as she struggled to snap a carabiner into a climbing anchor above her. The metal bolt gleamed in the morning light that slanted across the limestone cliff. This canyon high above the city was her church—a place to run to when she needed guidance or insight.

Kate’s left arm groaned against her weight and the backwards angle she arched into, to reach the bolt. Her fingertips burned where the skin was raw from two hours spent climbing. Her toes curved into jagged pockets and quivered, threatening to spring loose.

Kate had pulled her protesting roommate and best friend, Audra, out of bed at seven to get to the cluster of climbing routes that contained Kate’s white whale before other climbers could stake their claim. She had to tackle it today. To exorcise the demons—those dreams she swore were plaguing her because of Tom’s accusations the day he left.

Like every day since he’d walked out, she’d woken alone, still searching for him somehow. How many more times would her heart deflate, and collapse into a black void in her chest?

“Come on, you got this, Kate!” Audra called from below. The rope snaked thirty feet down and through Audra’s hands, ten millimeters of braided walls and compact core to protect her in a fall. At this point if Kate lost her grip on the crags, the rope couldn’t stop her from falling ten feet. Not as far as thirty feet, but it would be better once she’d placed the quickdraw and got her rope through it. The limestone face slanted about sixty degrees, forcing her to rely on her upper body, rather than her legs.

How long had it been since Tom left? Three months? Five months? It gnawed in her heart like a saw, like a memory or a ghost trying to escape from a cage she’d built around it beneath those tissue-red walls. Once Tom had told Kate that he lived in her heart, in a little hole he’d dug there, and so that was how she always thought of her affections for him.

Kate gasped, every muscle in her body screaming. She took a deep breath and lunged. With a relieving snap, the carabiner clicked into place.

“Nice, Kate! You got it!” Audra cheered.

Now for the rope. Normally Kate would reach between her legs in one quick movement after placing the quickdraw—a piece of climbing protection that consisted of two carabiners connected with a piece of nylon webbing—and yank the rope up toward the piece of gear and its carabiner dangling on one end, eager to get the protection in place. She should do that, she knew, but her left arm was about to give out. Her shoulder burned from front to back. If she didn’t give her arm a rest, she’d fall. She knew her limits. Her fingers were stiff and locking up, close to spasming in pain. With little quick breaths exploding rapidly from her lips like machine gun fire, Kate’s right hand scrambled across the limestone to find the sharp pocket she’d used before placing the quickdraw.

She was going to fall, could feel the fingers of her left hand breaking as she fought to hold on.
I’m going to fall, this is it,
Kate, brace yourself!

But no, she found the bucket hold and shoved her hand in, clenching the fingers of her right hand around the protruding knob deep within the jagged hole. With a sigh, she locked her elbow and let her left arm dangle. She shook her cramping hand out and glanced down. Audra stood below in the shade of the wall, her head tilted down and her hands gripping the rope. The babbling river flowed behind her, tumbling over rocks and winding beneath the umbrella of trees on the other side.

“What’s going on, Kate? You alright?” Audra called, looking up just as Kate lifted her gaze back to her task. Audra’s voice relieved some of the fear and tension Kate was fighting. Someone was on her team.

“I had to take a rest before I fell!” Kate shouted down.

“Great! Don’t rest too long, this is where you always fall,” Audra helpfully informed her.

“Yeah, I know!” Kate said. She took a few rejuvenating breaths, trying to focus on reaching the top one bolt at a time. She gritted her teeth against the memory of Tom walking out that late, gray winter morning months ago and what he’d said: “I just can’t get into this, Kate. You’re cold. You’re close to me with your body, but you never let me in. And I don’t really feel like you care about me. About us.”

What did that even mean? He couldn’t get into it?
Sounded like an excuse to Kate if she’d ever heard one. A lie. A way to escape culpability.

She shook her left hand out once more, preparing to complete the crux—the hardest part because of the shift from being more horizontal to vertical over the cornice of the rock wall.

“Tom. Please. You know how I feel about you,” Kate recalled saying. It wasn’t exactly a confession of love, but that was her way. Emotions sometimes paralyzed her. She knew that about herself. She became a deer in the headlights, staring dispassionately at the vehicle bearing down on her, unaware of what was really happening. She couldn’t tell Tom she loved him. Not a chance. Her lips wouldn’t even form the words, and if they had, her lungs wouldn’t have pushed air out to give them life. Her body would never betray her like that. She had too much control.

That, or, well, a lack of control. It was hard to tell who was controlling whom: was it Kate herself, her past, or her emotions? And who was
she
, anyway, if not all those things?

“Kate, you need to move!” Audra shouted, pulling Kate out of her reverie. She groaned, irritated at being told what to do. She defiantly considered falling just to counter Audra’s orders.

“I hate you,” she whispered to the dirty stone, glittering with tiny crystals. She meant Tom, not the rock. The limestone wall was dusty and smudged, but beautiful and perfect. A contrast of the natural and the godly. That was one of the many things she loved about climbing.

Kate dipped her hand into the chalk-bag hanging from her waist and then slipped her first two fingers into the crag, feeling her skin snag against tiny warts on the rock. She took a deep breath and in one quick motion, removed her right hand, snagged the rope between her legs and yelled, “Slack!”

Audra fed her slack and Kate jerked the rope hard, lifting it up to the carabiner positioned on the end of the quickdraw. She pushed up with her feet, feeling her calves knot and cramp as she did so. A grunt escaped her involuntarily. As she moved, Tom’s final words echoed mercilessly through her head.

“That’s just it, Kate. I don’t think you love me. And you won’t tell me. I’m a guy who needs to hear it. I need emotional warmth. I love you, but I can’t go on like this.” He had stood there at the end of the bed, his shirt in his hands, his jeans riding on his hip bones. He looked good, but defiant. His blond hair stood up over his left ear as he stared at her, brown eyes hard as rocks but glinting hotly with a plea. He wanted her to beg him to stay, she could tell, to say the words that would lasso him back into her arms.

It was the worst morning of her life.

He wanted to be loved and she just couldn’t give him what he needed. High maintenance for a guy, yes. But what kind of girl doesn’t want the emotional connection, too?

Me. I guess.

Kate strained to hook the rope, her lifeline, through the gate of the carabiner. It was a gamble, this move. It always was. So far she’d never finished this route without a fall—she was Ahab and it was Moby Dick.

And it was such a dick for remaining so elusive.

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