Cutting across to the exterior door that led to the expansive chef gardens, I unlocked the handmade deadbolt and swung it wide.
Instantly, fresh air spilled inside.
Thank God.
I closed my eyes and inhaled.
Fragrant, delicious, untainted air.
Stepping outside, I crushed daisies beneath my bare feet, and the carpet of wild grass waved in the slight breeze as I left my stone prison and did what I did each morning.
Before I’d eaten a thing; before I’d drunk from the stream or done any chores, I ran.
I needed to remind myself that I was free to run. To bolt from this place, to leave if I pleased, to return only once I was exhausted and grateful for its shelter and warmth.
I didn’t need to ask why I ran. I already knew the answer to that question. However, somehow, over the years of being alone, I’d erected a wall between my memories and my present.
I did know, somewhere deep inside me, who I was, what my name had been, and why I’d done what I did. The past could never be deleted. Always there, murky and morbid.
It waited for me in my sleep, and it slashed at me in my nightmares. And while it was dark, I belonged to those memories. I relived the past I couldn’t escape. But the moment it was light, I was free. My skills at forgetting had successfully shoved aside the shadows.
I raised my face to the sun, crisscrossed with the branch ceiling high above, blocked by leaves and secrets. I hadn’t seen the sky in its entirety in years. I hadn’t dared to venture past the cave to the wilderness beyond. Why should I? Only death and misery waited.
As long as the sun rose and my bare feet could run the familiar wooded paths, then my recollections remained painlessly blank.
I was just me.
A man who lived alone.
A man who was a stranger to himself.
CHAPTER THREE
I DIDN’T GET THERE FOR dawn.
In fact, the seven-hour drive turned into ten hours, thanks to the winding national park roads, uncertain backtracks, and a fear that I might not find Kentucky’s Khalessi, after all.
Noon came and went as I continued slipping off main tracks and following old forest trails that’d long since grown over. My poor Jeep earned more scratches and a few dings as I eased it between low hanging branches and skirted past large boulders that looked as if they’d been dropped from the sky and pockmarked the earth around it.
At the beginning, the national park had been populated. The camping zones held laughing kids, bright tents, and flustered adults trying to figure out how to cook over a firepit for authenticity.
A few groups of guided tours had left on scripted adventures, and a couple of rangers, who’d been patrolling the more active areas of the park, had waved at me from their vehicles, nodding in appreciation of such a beautiful sunny day.
Now, I was alone.
My phone registered no internet, my GPS tracker on my Wrangler kept flicking with “location error,” and my bones were rattled from off-roading. At some point, I’d had to release some air from my tires, making them softer and better at creeping over rocks and ravines, hoping to spot a sprig of yellow ribbon in the trees—the markers left behind by whoever had found this new, untouched boulder. Whoever it was certainly had an adventurous spirit or somehow had the best luck in the world.
This place was dense. Dense and wild and entirely inhospitable at finding anything, let alone a climbing route.
Stopping my Jeep in the middle of yet another narrow and chaotic path, I pulled up the last comment posted in Climbers Anon. I’d screenshot it a few hours ago before my internet blinked out, scanning for clues on the boulders location.
Turn off the main drag after you’ve passed the tree that looks like Harry Potter’s scar. Go over the stream, up the hill, travel to the left when you find three rock formations covered in moss, then keep driving until you find the drop-off. You’ll have to walk from there.
Well, as far as I could tell, I’d followed the instructions. I’d found a weird lightning bolt-shaped tree. I’d turned down the overgrown trail, I’d tracked over a small river, I’d crawled past three rocks that had transformed into green molehills instead of glittering granite, and now, here I was, sitting in the forest hopelessly lost.
Josh is going to kill me.
The shared app that gave him my location always sent a snooty text when it dropped out of range, tattling on me for disappearing.
Ah, well...I guess this is the end of the road.
Inhaling, I turned off the engine and narrowed my eyes, studying the green haze of the forest. Birds flittered in spiels of sunlight, butterflies fluttered past my window while enjoying their exceedingly short existence, and a peaceful, heavy silence fell, surrounding me, enveloping me, blocking out any hint that I’d just escaped from a city.