Cold soaked my clothes. Charred pearls of ice water slid down green boughs and onto my nose.

 Lightning.

The thought lingered in my mind, bright sparks of memory that faded into the terror of a timber coffin. With a frantic kick I pushed and tore at the limbs covering me until I managed to squeeze out and lay panting in muddy rivulets beside the remnants of a trunk. The wind roared, smashing through the standing trees as if in the wake of a giant. Pain pulsed through my right ankle and wrist with every breath.

Then the rain lessened its assault on my face as a shadow blocked my view of fast-moving clouds.

"Hey."

A voice. Person. Male.

My thoughts were slow, disjointed, but not to the point where I didn't recognize the blue eyes and blond hair of my ex boyfriend.

With a shaking hand I swatted him across the stomach. Or his shoulder. Or something. Let's be honest, I had no idea what I was aiming for or what I'd hit, but the guy grunted and stepped back. "Letting go only works if you do, too, Jack," I hissed. "Shove off."

"Hey," he repeated from not nearly as far away as I'd have liked. He held his hands up, careful not to touch. "I think you're in a spot of trouble."

"Gee, thanks, Sherlock." I sat up. The moment my back straightened a sharp pain rocketed through my body and I vomited. The world spun and the man became men, but as it cleared and the doubles merged back into one face with one pair of sticky shoes, my stomach began to churn again. This time, with embarrassment.

I squinted up at the unfocused face, trying to get my eyes to work through more details. Strong cheekbones. Short blonde hair that might've had some curls or waves but lay mostly flattened by the downpour. Eyes gently sloped in the corners that made his face seem at ease and smiling despite a concerned frown.

"You're not Jack." 

"Sounds like that's a good thing." He wiggled a foot in the torrent of debris. 

A glance at his shoes had me cringing. "Oh God, I'm so sorry. At least it's raining? Let me just grab a stick or something." Expression a smile sitting somewhere between apologetic and hopeful, I reached for a small branch bough to snap. "Don't worry. It's not blood; it's strawberries." His frown deepened, and I caught myself staring more intently at the gooey mess. "Let's hope."

"It's fine, miss. No harm's been done," he insisted in a faintly southern drawl. Gently he pulled the branch from my hand and did what he could to flick off the mess. "I saw the strike and came to help. My name is-"

My hand shot up to cut him off. "Don't want to know."

"Uh..." His brow wrinkled. He slicked back his hair and tried to wipe the rain from his face. "What? Why?"

I sighed, trying to appear less dazed than I was. "Look, if you're going to help me, just help. I think we're both pretty sure I have a concussion."

He nodded, probably to avoid stressing an injured person by arguing with them, and bent to offer his arm. "Can you walk?"

Rolling my ankle from side to side, I winced. My shoe felt tight. Something was definitely fractured in there, if not worse. "Maybe it just needs to be stretched out," I lied, more to myself than him.

 I stood slowly, trying not to reactivate the nausea, and balanced on one foot. Almost instantly he was at my side, not at all tentative as he wrapped an arm around my waist. With my wrist shaking it hurt so bad, I tried to get my hand on his slicked jacket.

"This isn't gonna work," he said through our baby steps. "I'll call for help."

The lightning and thunder clashed in  almost instant rebuttal, a white hot flash that dissolved into shuddering vibrations beneath our feet.

"Or not," I said, suddenly aware of every swaying tree, suddenly aware of wooden crashes all around us.

"Sorry about this," the man murmured. He grabbed me at the knees, hefting me into his arms. I didn't have the energy or venom to protest.

We made it to a sorry excuse of a shelter, a collection of fallen boulders the trail had woven around over the years. He lowered me to the ground, pulling off his raincoat and holing it over our heads as he eased into the space beside me. The storm seemed a hundred times worse from within those shoddy walls. I huddled beside my rescuer, trying to inch close enough to steal some warmth but not be creepy about it, either. He was a stranger, after all. While my gut suggested he was a comfort and safe, it'd also thrown up on his shoes, so I wasn't exactly about to trust that particular voice of reason.

For a few minutes we sat in silence, consumed by the sound of summer's fury, and then, quietly, he must've sensed my chills because he edged himself close enough for our bare arms to brush against each other.

I tried willing my goosebumps away. The last thing I needed was for him to think he's sitting beside a rinsed chicken.

"I'm really sorry about your shoes."

He almost, almost laughed, a little chuckle caught in his throat. "There are a few things more important than sneakers to worry about."

"Those things are exactly what I'm trying to avoid thinking about," I said, rubbing my wrist. It wasn't swollen and didn't feel as bad as my ankle, thank God. "But hey, if you've got any aspirin, now's the time to tell me."

He shook his head. "How bad does it hurt?"

"Scale of one to ten?"

He shrugged. "Sure."

"Eight. Nine, if you count the emotional trauma of almost being flattened by a tree."

"You're pretty lucky."

Picking a splinter from my palm, I frowned. "No, I'm not."

He seemed confused, glancing from the splintered trunk to me and back. "You could have died."

"Trust me, it would make a lot of people happy if I got squashed." That was the truth, and bitter though it sounded I meant every word. I disappear and a lot of problems don't get fixed, but they become a little easier to handle. Justice, I'm sure, in some cosmic way. That's what Jack's friends would say. My life lost for taking away his.

My companion held his tongue at least for a little while, at least until he picked up, gingerly, the injured hand and cradled the muddy mess in his lap. "You shouldn't think of yourself that way."

I flinched away, sharp in tone as I wiped my hand on my shirt. "Does it matter?"

He ran a hand through his hair, lips pulled taut, like he wasn't sure if debating would make it worse or better. "I guess not."

Silence. More time for me to breathe and hurt and stew in abysmal thoughts.

Wasn't I a jerk, snapping at the one person on this mountain that'd tried to help me from my own stupidity? With my good hand I traced imaginary constellations out of the grey-green lichen coating our ceiling until I knew my voice was calm. "Look, I'm sorry. You seek shelter in the woods and you find yourself a bear."

"As long as you aren't going to maul me, I don't mind," he said, with a bright smile that made me realize how young he was; he couldn't have been much older than myself, and with a grin like that he was attractive. So much so that I almost felt awkward about leaning up against him. He was someone's boyfriend, I was sure. Good ones, like knights in shiny armor, have a castle and a princess to return to every night. "I've never been in this situation before. I'm not sure what's normal."

"Me neither." The thunder rolled through, a little softer, a little further. Moving away, I hoped, meanwhile dredging my mind for any topic to take the focus off what my body was feeling. "You've got yourself an accent. What are you, from Texas or something?

"Yes and no."

"So where are you from?"

"Press pause on that for a moment." He shuffled around to turn his torso towards mine so he could meet my eyes, really stare into them. Instinctively I pushed my back against the distant wall, trying to create space where there wasn't any. "You want to know where I'm from, but you don't want to know my name?"

"Nope."

I refused to meet his eyes, afraid that in all their searching, they might determine the truth. 

The lightest touch, just a fingertip, lifted my chin. "Why not?"

Oh, boy. Here we go. I took a deep breath as memories of Jack, the last man who'd been this close to me, crept to the forefront of my imagination.