“I don’t believe that we have the same father,” I said. “I truly don’t. I know that you want hard proof of it, but I have this gut feeling that just tells me that it’s not true. You and I are meant to be together. We have a bond and a connection, and we were fated to be with each other. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I can feel it.”
“But what if that bond that you’re feeling is because we are brother and sister?” he asked.
“We aren’t,” I said. I turned my head and leaned up to kiss him.
I was all done with letting this baseless claim of familial ties keep us apart. It wasn’t true. We were meant to be together as lovers, not as siblings. For a moment, when our lips touched, I felt Michael’s chest stop moving and he held his breath. Our soft, cold lips pressed together, and we lingered right there as if we were tasting the nectar of gods. I felt him trying to hold back. I could feel the tension in his muscles and the trembling of his body. But when his tongue slipped inside my mouth, I forgot about everything other than how much I had missed kissing him. I reached up to put my hand on his jaw and twisted my body around to face him as much as I could. I pulled his mouth toward mine and wound my tongue inside of his mouth. The pain that was shooting through my leg was unnoticeable now. The only thing that I felt was his mouth on mine.
Michael’s kiss was frenzied. His swirling tongue and pressing mouth relayed an urgency as fierce as if he was gasping for his last breath of air. He was unrestrained and ruled by the pent-up desire that had been building within us both.
But then, he pulled away. As quickly as an electric shock, Michael pulled his mouth back and held his hand against mine, slowly pulling it down from his face and setting it back against my lap. His whole body was shaking, and I knew that it wasn’t from the cold.
“I can’t,” he said breathlessly. “You have no idea how much it tortures me, physically and mentally tortures me, to try and resist you. But we can’t, not until we clear up the issue between us.”
“But what if we never find out for sure?” I asked in a panic. “We can’t stay apart from each other forever. I would rather die.”
“Trust me,” he said. “So would I. But I think there’s got to be a way that we can find out for sure. Maybe a DNA test or something. As soon as we get back to the cabin, and your leg heals, we’ll go into town and get it sorted out.”
“Promise?” I asked.
I just couldn’t keep this up for much longer. I needed us to be back together; all the way together.
“Promise,” he said.
He wrapped me back up in his arms and I laid my head back down against his chest.
“At least we have this for right now,” I said quietly against him.
I could hear his heart beating as he tried to calm himself down.
“I love that we have this,” he said.
After that, the exhaustion finally settled in for both of us. I felt the pain start to creep back in and luckily it couldn’t catch up with my sleep and I drifted off within seconds. The two of us slept in each other’s arms and I didn’t even have any dreams that night.
In the morning, Michael looked at my leg again as soon as we woke up. He used the rest of my pantleg to make some makeshift bandages.
“It actually doesn’t look quite as bad as it did last night,” he said. “It’s much easier to see it clearly in the daylight. I don’t think it’s broken; I just think that you got pretty banged up.
The pain was still there, but it was more of a dull ache now than a sharp, stabbing pain.
“Can you put weight on it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure but I can try it and see,” I said.
“Just be careful, not a lot of weight - just a little.”
He helped me to stand up while holding onto his shoulder, and then I tried to put weight on both my legs and stand by myself. I did manage to do it, although my leg was still very sore and felt a bit weak in the knee.
“I can put weight on it,” I said. “But I feel like my slow pace of trying to walk is an impediment. It’s going to be even slower than being carried.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We can do a little of both. You can try to walk a bit, and I’ll carry you if it gets to be too much. Either way, I think we need to start heading back before we end up having to spend another night out here.”
“Agreed,” I said. “I really want to see if Adam or Rob have made it back to the cabin yet.”
“So do I,” he said. “But if Rob isn’t there, I really don’t think we should keep searching the woods by ourselves anymore.”
“But you said that we would resupply and head out in the other direction,” I said, worried that he was giving up on finding Rob at all.
“Yeah, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to keep hiking right away with that leg.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I can do it.”
“Lisette,” he said patiently. “If you really want to help find Rob, then limping around the forest isn’t the way to do it. Once we get back to the cabin, and get you fixed up and meet back up with Adam, we’ll go into town and get the help of the police.”
My skin bristled at the thought of involving the cops.
“Do you really think that’s the best idea?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I do. There’s just too much wilderness to cover and with this many days passed, Rob could be anywhere out here. We need more resources and more manpower, and they have those things.”
I nodded in agreement even though I wasn’t quite sure that I agreed with going to the cops. I didn’t trust police.
It was a slow hike back to the cabin, and it took longer than just a day. But Michael was right about his route being shorter and we made it there just before we were both ready to pass out from exhaustion and hunger and thirst. I was ecstatic to see that Adam was already there too, just like Michael had predicted. It made me have hope for a second that maybe Rob was there too, but he wasn’t. He whereabouts still remained unknown.
“Yeah, I figured that you two would likely end up finding each other and coming back here,” Adam said when we got inside the cabin. “What happened to you?”
He reached to take me off of Michael’s shoulder since Michael looked like he was about to fall over at any minute. Between carrying me fully half the time and putting my weight onto him as he helped me walk the other half of the time, Michael was pretty shot. That terrain in the wilderness is a difficult hike even when you’re doing it alone. It’s even more taxing when you have to drag another person along with you. Adam set me down onto the couch and Michael plopped right down beside me. Then Adam went to grab us both some food and water.
