“Because they don’t know you. They don’t know your courage, your strength.”
Her skin burned. Several times he’d accused her of being afraid, and now he praised her courage? He knew nothing about her. Nothing.
“Your certainty of who you are.”
She stood up abruptly. “And that’s exactly what we need to find for you,” she said. “Certainty of who you are.”
He looked away, sparing her too late. “Is that even possible?”
Her discomfort withered into chagrin. She was not the one with the mountain to climb, the emptiness of not knowing what lay on the other side. “It’s possible,” she said. “More than possible. We’ll do it, Kieran. I promise you we’ll do it.”
But his face was so still, so bleak. Damn her clumsiness. She looked around, desperate to find some way to break through his melancholy.
In the special place, before they met the wolves, he’d been remembering good things about their times together as children. They’d been communicating so well. To recapture that…
To recapture that, as with her own childhood, meant taking risks. Letting go.
She knelt and began to unbuckle her snowshoes. “I’ve been thinking, Kieran,” she said, “that you and I never got to play in the snow.”
She felt more than saw him turn, a dark shape against the sun. She hesitated only an instant. It wouldn’t be so hard, so strange, not if she thought of herself as the old Alex. She plunged her hand into the snow and gripped a chunk between her fingers, molding it to fit in the curve of her palm.
Something firm and cold bounced against the back of her head, trickling wetness under the collar of her jacket. She spun around on her knees.
Kieran crouched a few feet away, grinning at her. Grinning. He’d beaten her to it, as if he’d read her mind.
Suddenly, just like that, the rest was easy. She finished making her snowball and threw as hard as she could. The missile shattered on Kieran’s thigh, leaving a round wet spot on the denim.
Alex laughed. She heard herself with wonder—the unexpected sound of joy in such a simple thing. She let herself laugh again, as loud as she could.
With a mock growl, Kieran stalked toward her. A very small but well-packed snowball promptly caught her square on the shoulder.
Alex let herself fall backward into the snow. Kieran stood over her, teeth showing. “Who’s alpha now, Alexandra?”
She rolled to her knees, coated in crystals that were rapidly melting with her body heat. He remembered! That had been one of her favorite games with Shadow. “I always beat you before,” she said.
“Because I let you.” He smiled, and the little knot of joy she felt was mirrored in his eyes.
“Oh, yeah?” She glared up at him and began to form another snowball behind her back. “I’m not a clumsy kid anymore, my friend!”
He went very still for a moment, his expression arrested. “No,” he said, and then shook himself like a wolf shedding water from its fur. “Now we are evenly matched. Can you beat me, Alexandra?”
She bared her teeth back at him. “Just watch me!” The battle was joined in earnest then. Alex abandoned herself, scooping up snow and running and laughing while Kieran chased her with soft little mock snarls. It wasn’t Kieran she saw, but Shadow; her eyes were fixed in a child’s vision. It was Shadow’s voice she heard; her own was raised in high-pitched squeals.
There was nothing left of the Alex who had forgotten how to play, who had become isolated by the looks of pity and her own unhappiness in those lonely years after the accident. It was as if she’d gone so far back in time that even her scars had vanished.
“Shadow,” she cried gleefully, forming a huge snowball with both hands, “watch out for this one!” She stood up, squinted at his dark shape haloed by sunlight, and began to run toward him.
A buried branch snagged at her toes. She gave a little squeak as she pitched forward, arms pinwheeling as she lost her grip on the snowball. She fell into solid and familiar warmth.