Teagan felt better and better on the path up the mountain, but that brief sensation of well-being did not last through the descent. One of the other guests—a record executive from LA, two months sober—had told him the trail was five miles long, and that had sounded just perfect to Teagan. He regularly ran five miles on the treadmill at the gym, sometimes with an incline. And walking the trail sounded much more restorative than another round of yoga or meditation.
The goal of Teagan’s typical exercise regimen was “enough cardio to let me sleep tonight,” not the development of strength, endurance, or—most relevant to the yoga—flexibility. He’d winced through the entire uncomfortable hour-long session, worried that his ass was hanging out of his loose sweatpants, the most appropriate clothing he possessed here.
Sloane hadn’t done a terrible job at packing his clothes, but his gym clothes were all he owned that were even vaguely suitable to the ranch lifestyle, and they weren’t very suitable. His body wasn’t suitable either. His hips didn’t flex. His back didn’t bend. His knees pointed nearly at the sky when they sat cross-legged for the five minutes of meditation that concluded the hour of poses.
And the meditation was a whole other thing. Teagan was pretty sure being left alone with his thoughts was what had gotten him into this situation—sitting and dwelling on how awful he felt was probably the opposite of productive, if the goal was to return from Montana as a functional human being. So when it had come time for Midafternoon Meditation (Rachel’s cheerful pronouncement suggested capital letters), Teagan did a thing he had never done during school: played hooky.
The waterfall at the top of the trail had been breathtaking. Well worth the hike. He hoped Sloane made it up here with him before they left, although his sister was usually thrifty with her energy when it came to long walks. If he’d been allowed his phone, he would have snapped a picture to send to his friends and colleagues to reassure them that he was doing well. Even without one, he did his best to appreciate the scenery. It was beautiful here, though Teagan shouldn’t have been on a glorified vacation in the first place when he had so much to do back in New York.
Now he was teasing his way down the mountain in his running shoes, which he’d purchased with pavement in mind, not hillside. Going up the mountain had alerted him that hiking used some muscles he wasn’t activating at the gym, but on his way downhill, new parts of his body were protesting, and mental fatigue was setting in as well.
He’d managed a solid seven hours of sleep the night before, but he was still tired. On Lexapro, sleep was like cat fur. It clung to him as he tried to brush it off, fuzzed the world’s colors, and softened the edges of his thinking. The benzodiazepines he was tapering off probably did not help either. He supposed he’d better get used to the feeling, because detached was decidedly preferable to lying awake in a cold sweat every night.
Teagan’s calves started to cramp as he came around a switchback and saw a wide expanse of wild raspberry brambles. He wasn’t a botanist, but he remembered eating handfuls of wild black raspberries in Vermont as a child.
All the food at the ranch was vegan. That wasn’t a problem in and of itself, but one small square of wild mushroom lasagna with cashew cheese and nondairy béchamel had really not cut it in terms of lunch. He was hungry. The sweatshirt he wore—the logo said “Yale School of Management,” which made him feel like a douchebag, wearing it out in public—had a front pouch pocket. He decided it was time to do some gathering. A few minutes of berry picking would give his calves time to get with the program and stop complaining, and Sloane would be happy if he brought some back to treat her. She’d loved raspberry-jam sandwiches as a toddler.
Teagan waded into the bushes, eyes on his feet to avoid getting stuck on the brambles. He picked whole clusters of berries, dividing them between his pocket and his mouth. They exploded in little starbursts of flavor on his tongue, the taste sour but somehow fruitier than the kind you could buy at the store.
This is so wholesome, he thought to himself. He imagined explaining it to Rose—in this fantasy, she hadn’t told anyone else where he’d been—saying, “Yes, I think the past couple of years just caught up to me. So sorry for the lack of notice. I just needed a quick break. It’s wonderful up there, anyway, you should go—I went hiking, picked wild raspberries, slept with the tent open to see the stars. Highly recommend it for your next vacation. Now, what was the return this month on the international equities portfolio?” Nobody would remember that he’d abruptly disappeared in the middle of a work week.
It was with that thought foremost in his mind that he took a long step to skirt a clump of white-barked trees and approach a particularly promising hedge of raspberry bushes. His eyes were on his feet, and so it wasn’t his eyes that alerted him but his ears, which registered only a single guttural HRRMPH.
Teagan had spent most of his life within the boundaries of the Greater New York metropolitan area, but some primeval part of his malfunctioning brain recognized that sound and sent a wave of adrenaline coursing through his body. He looked up from his feet and nearly met the bear eye to eye.
A grizzly bear. An absolutely enormous, brown-furred, humped and clawed and growling grizzly bear. It was halfway crouched on its back legs, head higher than his own, even though Teagan was a tall man. He’d interrupted it raiding the same cluster of berry bushes he’d targeted. It was hungry too. It also liked berry bushes. He’d interrupted a hungry bear in the berry bushes.
Teagan’s mind, which had not been at all helpful for days now, began hanging—distant, removed—on the realization that oh shit was probably the last thing that most people thought before they died.
Oh shit, Teagan thought. Oh shit.
The bear growled or snorted again and reached out with an almost casual swipe of its dinner plate-sized paw. More of a fuck off, I was here first gesture than a serious attack, but as the paw was attached to a nine-hundred-pound apex predator, it sent Teagan reeling backward when it made contact with his hip. Sharp, tearing pain radiated through his left side.
His body began moving without his conscious control, twisting to avoid landing in the bushes, yelling a garbled string of nonsense to the effect of “NO! BEAR! STOP! BEAR! NO!” and kicking with desperate effort as his feet scrambled for purchase. This unfortunately sent dirt flying at the bear, which snorted in alarm.
He was going to die. For the second time in a week, he believed he was going to die. He had met Death in Big Sky after fleeing him at the Metro-North platform.
Teagan managed to get his feet back underneath him and began scooting backward as fast as he could, given the uneven terrain and the berry brambles pulling on his clothing and tearing into his legs. The bear followed him, still huffing and growling.
He recalled hearing advice to fall down and play dead if confronted by a bear. Also advice to flap his jacket and make himself as intimidating as possible. These two pieces of advice seemed directly contradictory, not to mention somewhat implausible. Falling down and playing dead was practically asking to be eaten, and flapping his arms at the bear seemed like a challenge he couldn’t possibly win.
Teagan heard shouting. He wasn’t sure if it was coming out of his own throat, but just in case it wasn’t, he shouted back: “BEAR! BEAR! BEAR!”
He was nearly back to the trail now, and the bear still hadn’t bitten his head off, but that situation could change at any minute, as the ground was most level immediately next to the switchback he’d stepped off of.
He could run faster back up the trail. He needed to run. His legs were probably longer than the bear’s; maybe he’d make it. But terror was making his muscles stiff and slow, and his knee turned just as he stepped into the pea gravel of the trail. He slipped, knocking his head against the hillside as he fell. Oh shit, again—this was it. He’d somehow materialized his end.
From opposite directions, he heard a woman’s yell and the bear’s definitive roar, both very close. Stunned on the ground, Teagan tried to crane his neck backward to see who was yelling but noticed only the great spray of something orange and liquid approaching him and the bear. His sinuses caught a bare moment’s whiff of pepper before his nose and eyes and mouth were seared by the bear spray, and he lost the ability to sense anything from those parts of his body except blistering heat and pain.
Someone seized him under the arms and hauled him up. His feet dragged in the dirt for a couple of yards before he got them underneath him for a second time. His left leg wasn’t working very well; that was the side the bear had swiped and the side where his knee had twisted. But after a moment, his unknown rescuer stuck her head under his left arm and pushed her hip against his so that he could hobble forward. They were going back up the mountain. They stumbled together for what felt like a dozen yards, Teagan’s rescuer pulling him back to his feet every time he put a foot awry and tripped.
“Come on, come on,” the woman puffed. She supported most of his weight on the inside curve of the switchback, but somehow, she held him upright. Teagan couldn’t speak, because almost everything hurt. His eyes, his nose, his chest from the spray, and also his knee and the slash on his hip. He gritted his teeth against whimpering, but he still wheezed as his throat burned.
They reached a level section, and she dropped his arm to take his hand. Tugging him at first, she urged him into a stumbling run. He clenched her fingers tightly as he picked up speed, trusting that she wouldn’t lead him off the cliff. Together, they ran. He couldn’t see a thing. For all he knew, the bear was right behind them. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs just to expel something from his body: fear, pain, desperation. It all felt stuck inside him.
After maybe ten minutes of lurching uphill, his rescuer gradually slowed until she stopped, still holding his hand.
“It’s gone,” she said.
Teagan sagged in relief. He wavered on his feet until his rescuer pushed him up against a broad tree trunk, finally releasing him.
“Okay, you can sit,” she panted. “Let’s look at you.”
Teagan slid down until his ass was on the ground, his legs splayed in front of him. Some of the bear spray had gone down his throat, and he coughed and hacked to get the burning taste out of his mouth.
The woman crouched over his knees, straddling him. She adjusted her position until she was comfortable on his thighs. He heard a lid being unscrewed. His rescuer wiped his face with what felt like the lower hem of her T-shirt and then, as he blinked, poured water directly into his eyes to flush them out. He’d kept his eyes screwed shut against the pain as he climbed, but he tried to clear them enough to squint at the woman who’d saved him.
Her features were very fuzzy at first. He was facing southwest, and the sun had dipped to backlight his rescuer. His clearing eyesight gave her a halo that his giddy relief mentally seconded. She was his age or a little younger, cheeks flushed with exertion over olive skin. Her long, wavy chestnut hair was caught in a high ponytail, with little tufts escaping to stick to her temples and neck. The sun had bleached it golden at the tips and around the perfect oval of her face. Large chocolate-brown eyes regarded him with concern, and full berry-red lips were pursed under a dramatically arched nose. She looked like a pre-Raphaelite angel. Like an altarpiece.
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked from her perch over his knees.
Teagan took stock of his injuries. Nothing fatal, probably.
“Yes, I think so,” he said, his abused throat making his voice hoarse and gravelly. He tried to wipe more water and tears off his face. His hands were shaking.
His rescuer shifted her seat on his legs, letting more weight fall on them. He heard her breathing begin to slow. She must have run when she heard him start yelling, and she had a large backpack that she’d carried up the hill in addition to most of his body weight.
They locked eyes again, and Teagan felt his heart clench in his chest. She was beautiful.
His rescuer exhaled, shoulders relaxing. Some of the fear and desperation began to trickle out of Teagan’s body too. He was going to live, actually. He did not get eaten by the bear. He did not die alone on the mountain.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, gathering himself. “I’m okay.” He forced his eyes to open and his mind to focus so that he could catch her next words. She leaned in, fists resting gently on his torso.
“Motherfucker,” said the angel, with feeling.