Chapter 67: Mid-Climb Confession
The old forestry road gave way to a proper trail, narrow and edged with granite. The air grew thinner, sharper. Behind Bell, the line of his team stretched out like a tired convoy. David had laid out the logistics that morning at the base: the whole summit house was theirs, five bedrooms with private baths, a shared common space with a view that supposedly dropped straight into the clouds. He’d mentioned, almost offhandedly, the private cabin-lift service that could ferry them from the parking lot to the peak in twenty comfortable minutes.
Bell had listened, nodded, and then cheerfully declared, “Nope! We walk. The whole point is to earn the view together!” His energy had been a solar flare, undeniable. So they walked.
Three punishing hours later, the midpoint clearing was a sanctuary of flat ground and a single, weathered picnic table. Bell, standing at its head, was vibrating with vitality. “See? The stratification here is incredible! You can read the millennia like a book!” he said, patting a giant slab of rock as if it were a friendly dog.
The rest of his team did not share his geological fervor. They collapsed. Leo and Ben slid down against their backpacks, faces flushed. Mark sat with his head between his knees, breathing deliberately. Priya and Sara were prone on a flat rock, staring at the sky. Maya and Anne eased onto the table bench with audible sighs.
“I brought snacks!” Bell announced, swinging his pack down. He produced a box of melt-resistant ice cream bars, still cold thanks to an excessive number of freezer packs. He passed them out like medals. “Fuel!”
He enjoyed his, leaning against the stratigraphic slab, beaming as he took bites. The others ate theirs with the slow, focused movements of the utterly spent. A communal, exhausted silence settled, broken only by the wind and Bell’s happy chewing.
“Bell,” Maya finally said, her voice soft with fatigue. “Honey. Sit. There’s half the mountain still to go.”
“I’m okay!” he chirped, but his eyes landed on Anne. She wasn’t just looking at him; she was fixing him with a stare that had the gravitational pull of a small planet. It was the same look that had preceded the ‘summit only’ rule. His gaze flicked down to his hiking clothes—the moisture-wicking shirt, the sturdy trousers. He had a sudden, vivid understanding. This was not the summit. The neon green thong in his pack was not authorized for deployment.
Anne said nothing. She just stared, her expression flat and implacable.
Bell’s shoulders drooped a fraction. He swallowed the last of his ice cream and obediently sat on the ground, cross-legged, trying to contain his boundless energy into a single, still point. “Right,” he murmured. “Recharging. Waiting for the team.” He looked like a spectacularly fit child put in time-out.
“Thank you,” Anne said, her tone coldly pleased. “Now sit still and let the others breathe.”
A low groan of agreement rippled through the group. This was the mandated hiatus. Bell fidgeted, tracing patterns in the dirt.
David watched this exchange, then caught Mike’s eye. He tilted his head slightly toward a cluster of massive, moss-covered boulders that stood a dozen yards off the trail, offering a sliver of privacy from the clearing. Mike gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
“Gonna… scout the trail ahead a bit,” David said, his voice a little rough. He pushed himself up.
“Me too,” Mike grunted, following.
They didn’t look back. They moved past the boulders, the sounds of the tired team fading instantly, swallowed by the dense, quiet air of the woods. Once hidden, David pressed Mike back against the cool, damp stone, his hands already pushing up under Mike’s hiking shirt, fingers splaying over the hot skin of his stomach.
The kiss was desperate, a release of hours of forced normalcy. It tasted of salt and sugar and thin air.
“Fuck,” David whispered against Mike’s mouth, his hands scrambling for belt buckles. “That cabin lift. I booked it for us. For later. After they’re all asleep. It goes back down at midnight.”
Mike’s head thumped back against the rock. “We tell them we’re checking the perimeter. For wildlife.” His voice was a low rasp, his own hands yanking at David’s cargo pants. “A private ride back down… twenty minutes alone.”
“The driver’s compartment is sealed,” David breathed, his mouth on Mike’s neck. “Soundproofed. They advertise it for… private conferences.”
They understood each other perfectly. The plan was ludicrous, risky, electrifying. The image of it—the dark cabin moving through the starry void, the two of them hidden inside—was more potent than the thin oxygen.
David got Mike’s trousers open first. He shoved his own down just enough. There was no patience for finesse. He spit into his palm, his movements hurried, rough. He pressed against Mike, who turned his face into the granite, his shoulders tensing.
“Now,” Mike hissed, the word swallowed by the moss. “Just fuck me now. Before I lose my mind thinking about it.”
David pushed in. The tight, burning heat was a shock that ripped a choked sound from both of them. It was uncomfortable, urgent, sublime. Mike’s knuckles were white where he braced against the rock.
“The cabin,” David grunted, his hips finding a brutal, shallow rhythm. “It’ll be smooth. No one can hear. I’ll be able to watch you the whole time. Watch your face when I…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. Mike shuddered, a full-body convulsion that clamped down around him. “Tell me,” Mike begged, his voice muffled. “When we’re in there. Tell me exactly how it feels. Every second.”
They moved together in a frantic, secret syncopation against the ancient stone. Their breaths came in sharp, searing gasps, swallowed by the vast, indifferent quiet of the mountain. Each thrust was a silent punctuation to their whispered, impossible plans—a private conference, a soundproofed ascent into the dark, a detailed explanation waiting in the void. They were a hidden circuit of want, buzzing violently behind the boulder, while just out of sight, their brilliant, innocent leader sat obediently on the ground, waiting for them all to recharge.
The circuit shorted out in a final, shared tremor, a silent confluence of breath and release against the cold stone. They dressed quickly, fingers fumbling with zippers and buckles in the thick quiet. The world beyond the boulders—the wind, the distant chatter of the team—rushed back in, making the last ninety seconds feel like a hallucination.
They walked back into the clearing side by side, their steps slightly less steady than before. David ran a hand through his hair, which was damp with sweat not entirely from the hike.
Maya’s sharp eyes tracked them from the picnic table. She watched David take a long, deliberate drink from his water bottle, his Adam’s apple working. She noted the fresh scrape on Mike’s knuckles where he’d braced against the granite.
“You two look like you ran a sprint,” Maya observed, her voice dry. “Find some different wildlife back there?”
Anne was watching too, her gaze softer but no less perceptive. She saw the unusual flush on Mike’s normally placid face, the way David’s eyes were bright and avoidant. “You seem more exhausted. But also… lighter.”
David swapped a glance with Mike, a flicker of understanding passing between them. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugged, a casual, practiced motion. “Just needed a minute. We recharged. In our own ways.”
“Yeah,” Mike added, his voice even but carrying a faint, satisfied roughness. “Found a second wind. We’re good.”
Bell sprang up from his seated position as if launched. The imposed stillness had wound him like a coil. “Excellent! Team recharged? Snacks consumed? Geological marvels appreciated?” He beamed at them all, his energy instantly rewriting the group’s atmosphere. “Then we are ready! The summit awaits its conquerors!”
His cheer was infectious, a wave that lifted the weary group to their feet. Groans turned into determined smiles. Backpacks were shouldered with renewed, if reluctant, purpose.
“Remember the rule!” Anne called out as Bell bounded toward the trailhead.
“Summit only!” Bell sang back without turning, giving a wave of acknowledgment. “I am a paragon of patience and appropriate attire!”
The team fell into line behind him, a ragged procession of bright technical fabrics against the gray-green landscape. Their boots crunched on the gravel path, the rhythm a slow, steady beat marking the ascent. Conversation dwindled to necessary gasps about footing and encouragement. They rounded a bend where the pine trees grew denser, their shadows stretching long and blue across the trail.
One by one, they disappeared from the midpoint clearing, the sound of their progress fading into the forest’s embrace.
Silence reclaimed the outcrop. A chipmunk skittered across the picnic table, investigating a forgotten wrapper.
From behind the largest, most distant boulder—a different one than David and Mike had used—a figure detached itself from the deep shadows. It was swathed in a matte black hoodie, the fabric swallowing the light, with a tight black mask covering everything below its eyes. It moved with a stiff, careful deliberation.
The figure watched the empty trail for a long moment. Then, with a slow, almost ceremonial gesture, it pulled back the hood and tugged down the mask.
Non’s face was pale, pinched with something sharper than the cold. His eyes, hard and bloodshot, tracked the path where Bell had just vanished. He breathed out, and the plume of vapor hung in the air like a ghost of his old boasts.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he whispered to the emptiness, his voice a dry rasp unfamiliar to his own ears. He wasn’t smiling yet. The realization was still settling, cold and perfect.
A smirk then, thin and ugly, twisted his chapped lips. It wasn’t about joy. It was about alignment, a finally correct configuration of the universe. The mountain, their isolation, his purposeless rage—it all clicked into a terrible, obvious plan.
“Finally,” he breathed, the word carried away by the wind that had once carried Bell’s laughter.
He pulled the mask back up, the hood over his head, becoming a shadow again. He took a first, quiet step onto the trail, then another, his movements deliberate and slow. He let the distance grow, a predator allowing the herd to move ahead, confident that the path was now his to follow.