Where You Find Me

Lucy

The tripod hated me.

I had reached that conclusion somewhere between extending the second leg and watching the entire thing begin a slow, treacherous lean toward the side of the mountain.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

I caught it before several thousand dollars’ worth of camera equipment introduced itself to an Austrian hillside and shoved one leg deeper into the damp earth. The tripod remained upright.

I stared at it, and it stared back in the way only an inanimate object could when it knew perfectly well it had won.

“Grant always did this part.”

The words were out before I could stop them. For a moment, the only answer was the whisper of wind through the trees behind me and the distant clinking of cowbells somewhere farther down the slope.

I closed my eyes. “Fantastic.”

Seven weeks.

It had been seven weeks since Grant moved the last of his things out of our apartment, and apparently I still hadn’t learned how to stop talking to a man who wasn’t there.

I looked over my shoulder anyway. Old habit.

There was nobody standing behind me with the camera bag slung over one shoulder and an obnoxiously cheerful expression on his face, nobody complaining that I had somehow managed to pack four lenses while forgetting the bag of trail mix we’d bought specifically for the hike. Grant wasn’t there to check the drone batteries or squint at the sky and insist we had another hour before the light changed.

There was only me, a crooked tripod, and enough Austrian countryside to make the whole humiliating moment feel very small.

I let out a breath and turned back to the camera. “Fine. I always did the hard parts.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but Grant wasn’t here to argue. The thought should have made me feel better.

It didn’t.

I adjusted the tripod again, stepped back and studied the frame.

The trail curved around the mountainside behind me, disappearing between thick stands of spruce before emerging again farther up the slope. Beyond them, the land seemed to roll forever in varying shades of green, broken by the occasional farmhouse and the red roofs of a village tucked into the valley below. Clouds had gathered over the distant peaks, but sunlight still spilled through in broad patches, turning whole sections of hillside gold-green before moving on.

Austria was showing off.

Every time I thought I’d found the prettiest village I’d ever seen, I drove twenty miles and Austria produced another one. Every road seemed to wind past vineyards, mountains, old churches, flower boxes spilling from balconies, or some impossibly picturesque collection of cows that looked as if they’d been placed there by a tourism board.

I checked the camera display.

The shot was good. Really good.

For the first time that afternoon, I smiled without having to make myself do it.

“Okay.”

I moved around the tripod and adjusted the framing slightly. The assignment I’d given myself for the day sounded simple enough when I’d written it in my notebook that morning.

Hike. Shoot. Find somewhere good for dinner. Don’t have an existential crisis.

Three out of four seemed achievable.

I had been in Austria for eight days, and so far I’d managed to avoid publicly imploding. That counted as progress.

The internet had a very different opinion.

My phone buzzed inside the pocket of my red hoodie.

I ignored it.

It buzzed again.

“Persistent little bastard.”

I pulled it out. The notification wasn’t from Grant, and that tiny, instinctive tightening beneath my ribs annoyed me more than if his name actually had appeared.

It had been weeks since he’d called. There was no reason to expect him to start now.

The notification came from Instagram.

I nearly put the phone away without opening it.

Nearly.

Instead, I tapped the screen and immediately regretted every decision that had brought me to this point in my life.

There were forty-three new comments on the reel I’d posted that morning.

Forty-three wasn’t impressive. Once, forty-three comments could have appeared in the time it took me to brush my teeth. Now I found myself grateful people were commenting at all.

The reel had been simple. Thirty-two seconds of Graz waking up in the morning. Coffee steaming beside a window. A tram rattling past. Bread being stacked behind the glass at a bakery. My shoes crossing cobblestones. A wide shot over the rooftops. No talking. No forced grin into the camera. No Grant throwing an arm around me at the end while we both told everyone where we were going next.

Just Austria.

Just me.

I had spent nearly two hours editing those thirty-two seconds.

I should have known better than to read the comments.

Love this new style, Lucy!

That one earned a heart.

Austria is gorgeous. Adding Graz to my list!

Another heart.

So glad you’re posting again.

I swallowed and gave that one a heart too.

Then I kept scrolling because apparently emotional self-preservation was another skill Grant had taken with him.

Is Grant there too?

I moved past it.

Where’s Grant?

Past that one too.

It’s so weird without you guys together.

My thumb stopped.

The next comment was worse.

I miss Wilde Chase 😭

I stared at the words.

Wilde Chase.

Two names that had once fit together so perfectly we’d laughed when we first said them aloud.

Lucy Wilde.

Grant Chase.

We hadn’t even needed to work for it. The branding had practically created itself.

Our first logo had been something I threw together on my laptop at two in the morning after too much wine during a three-week trip through Italy. I’d put WILDE CHASE across the top of a photograph Grant had taken of me standing beside a road in Tuscany and added a stupid little compass beneath it.

Grant had loved it.

I had loved it.

Apparently everyone else had too.

Three years later, Wilde Chase wasn’t a joke made over cheap wine anymore. It was our Instagram and TikTok accounts, our YouTube channel and website, our mailing list and, eventually, our business. Sponsorship agreements and affiliate partnerships followed, then hotel collaborations and tourism-board contacts. Somewhere along the way, we accumulated enough photographs of Grant and me looking blissfully happy in beautiful places to make me wonder how the hell neither of us had noticed we were falling apart.

There were videos of us everywhere. We ate pasta in Rome and learned to make croissants in Paris. We snorkeled in Curaçao. Grant laughed when I screamed the first time I went zip-lining in Costa Rica, and I laughed until I cried when he got seasick on a catamaran after spending the entire morning assuring everyone watching that he never got seasick.

We had documented hotels and restaurants, cruises and food tours, train journeys and excursions until three years of our lives could be organized into playlists, reels and thumbnails. Three years of work had become inseparable from three years of us.

And now every time I posted something alone, someone asked where the other half had gone.

I locked the phone and shoved it back into my pocket.

The mountains were still there, and somehow that helped. They didn’t care about engagement metrics or whether Grant and I were getting back together. They had also never informed me that our breakup had made them stop believing in love, which put them several points ahead of the internet.

That particular comment had earned me two glasses of wine and a twenty-minute phone call with my best friend in which she threatened to personally hunt down a woman named @TravelMama82.

I stepped behind the camera again.

“You’re Lucy Wilde.”

The wind carried the words away.

I tried them again. “Lucy Wilde.”

They sounded ridiculous.

Not the name itself. I’d lived with it for thirty-four years. I liked my name. I simply had no idea what to do with it.

My laptop back at the apartment contained a document titled REBRANDING, which currently consisted of six pages of terrible ideas.

Wilde Travels.

Too generic.

Wander Wilde.

Too much like a camping equipment company.

Wilde Away.

Possibly a perfume.

Going Wilde.

Absolutely fucking not.

I’d stared at that one for approximately four seconds before imagining the comments and deleting it so aggressively I nearly broke the key.

My friend had suggested the obvious solution.

Just use your name.

Lucy Wilde.

Simple. Clean.

Mine.

Which was apparently the problem.

For three years, I’d known exactly what Wilde Chase was. I had no idea what Lucy Wilde was supposed to be.

I turned toward the valley.

Maybe that was why I’d chosen Austria. There were easier places to restart. Places I already knew. Cities where I had contacts and favorite hotels and restaurant owners who would happily arrange a table if I sent an email.

Austria wasn’t completely unfamiliar, but it was unfamiliar enough.

More importantly, Grant and I had never done it together.

No old Wilde Chase itinerary existed for this trip. No photographs of him stood between me and anything I wanted to see. No hotel room carried a memory I had to pretend didn’t hurt.

This belonged to me.

The idea had sounded much braver from my kitchen back home. Standing alone on a mountain in Styria, it felt slightly more questionable.

I pulled my camera free of the tripod and checked the last series of photographs.

The fourth one stopped me.

Light had broken through the clouds at exactly the right moment, catching the valley while the foreground remained shadowed. The trail led straight into it, disappearing toward the brightness in a way that would have looked staged if I’d tried to arrange it.

For years, I would have turned the camera around. I would have called Grant over and asked what he thought.

He would have zoomed in, probably suggested cropping the left side, maybe argued that the previous shot was stronger.

I almost heard him.

I studied the photograph longer. “No.”

My own voice startled me.

I looked at it again. “I like this one.”

There was nobody there to disagree.

Nobody there to agree either.

Something about that hurt. Something else about it felt unexpectedly good.

I saved the image to favorites.

My phone came out again, but this time I didn’t open Instagram. I pulled up my notes and dictated while I walked carefully back toward the trail.

“Possible opening. Styria is the Austria you don’t realize you’re looking for until Vienna is already behind you.”

I stopped. “That’s terrible.”

Delete.

I tried again. “Most people arrive in Austria already knowing what they came to see.”

Better.

I continued walking. “Vienna. Salzburg. Hallstatt. The places printed on postcards and filling your feed before you’ve even booked the flight. But somewhere south of all that...”

I glanced toward the valley. “...Austria gets quieter.”

I stopped recording.

That wasn’t bad. Actually, that wasn’t bad at all.

A grin tugged at my mouth as I tucked the phone away.

There she was.

Maybe.

A tiny piece of her, anyway.

I adjusted the camera strap across my chest and continued along the trail.

The clouds had thickened while I’d been shooting. I noticed it now that the sun had disappeared completely, leaving the air cooler than it had been twenty minutes ago. I reached for the zipper of my hoodie and pulled it higher.

Bright red.

My mother had given it to me two Christmases ago because she’d decided every item I owned was beige, black or white.

People need to be able to find you if you get lost in the woods, Lucy.

I’d laughed at her.

Standing alone in the Austrian mountains, I had to admit the woman might have had a point.

The trail narrowed ahead where rain from the previous night had left the earth dark and damp beneath the trees. I slowed automatically.

I wasn’t new to hiking. Grant and I had logged enough miles over the years, both for work and because I genuinely loved being outdoors, that I knew how quickly a beautiful trail could become dangerous when someone stopped respecting it. I had checked the route and weather before leaving that morning and packed water, food, a first-aid kit, an emergency whistle, a portable charger and an actual paper trail map because my father remained convinced smartphones were one solar flare away from becoming expensive rectangles.

I had proper hiking boots on my feet and a waterproof shell within reach instead of buried at the bottom of my pack. I’d even told the woman who owned my rental which trail I planned to hike and roughly when I expected to return.

The roughly part was the only piece of my preparation that felt less responsible in hindsight.

I stepped over a slick root and moved farther toward the inside edge of the trail, the camera bumping lightly against my hip as rain began as a faint patter against the leaves overhead.

“Of course.”

I looked up through the branches. The forecast had given me another two hours. Apparently Austrian weather had not consulted the same app.

I reached back for the waterproof shell stuffed into the outside pocket of my backpack.

One drop hit my cheek. Another landed on my nose.

I laughed. “Fine. You win.”

I pulled the shell free.

The sound came before I understood what it was.

A soft crack beneath my right boot.

I looked down as the edge of the trail shifted.

Not dramatically.

There was no cinematic roar, no avalanche of dirt, no warning that gave me enough time to make a sensible decision.

The earth simply gave way.

My foot slid, and I grabbed for the nearest branch. For one hopeful second, it held.

Then it snapped.

The camera struck my ribs as I went backward, knocking the breath from me as the world dissolved into wet earth, green leaves and gray sky. Something tore beneath my hand before my shoulder slammed into the ground and sent me rolling. My right foot caught between two roots, twisting hard enough that pain exploded through my ankle and tore a scream from my throat.

The roots released me almost immediately, and gravity took over again. Branches clawed at my hoodie as I slid and rolled down the slope. My hip struck something hard, followed by the side of my head, and a brilliant flash of white swallowed everything I could see.

The fallen tree stopped me.

For several seconds, the mountains, the rain and everything that had occupied my thoughts before the fall disappeared beneath the strange, distant awareness of my own breathing. I concentrated on that until the world slowly came back around me.

When I opened my eyes, the leaves above me blurred together. I blinked until they separated into individual shapes and resisted the instinct to immediately push myself upright.

“Okay,” I whispered, although my voice sounded smaller than I liked. “Okay, Lucy. Stay put.”

I gave myself several seconds before taking inventory. My head hurt where I’d struck it, and pain radiated through my shoulder and hip from the tumble. Something burned along my lower leg, but my ankle worried me most. Even without moving it, I could feel the deep, sickening throb gathering beneath my boot.

I knew better than to test whether I could stand on it.

I stared up through the trees as rain began slipping between the branches and landing cold against my face.

Somewhere above me was the trail.

I couldn’t see it.

I reached carefully for my pocket and found my phone still there. A laugh escaped me, thin and shaky.

“Thank God.”

The screen wasn’t cracked.

I unlocked it.

No service.

I stared at the empty bars in the corner. “No.”

I lifted the phone.

Nothing.

I moved it to the other side of my body as though six inches might somehow reach an entirely different cellular network.

Still nothing.

“Come on.”

I tried the emergency number anyway.

Nothing.

My breathing changed. I could hear it, too fast and too shallow, and forced myself to stop and look around.

I was conscious.

I knew where I was.

Austria.

Styria.

Mountain trail.

Friday afternoon.

My name was Lucille Wilde. I was thirty-four years old. I had fallen.

My head hurt, but I knew who I was.

That had to be good.

I looked down and saw blood soaking through the right leg of my hiking pants.

“Less good.”

I carefully touched the fabric. The cut burned, but the bleeding didn’t appear catastrophic. My ankle was already swelling above my boot.

I knew enough to know I shouldn’t take the boot off.

I also knew enough to know I needed help.

The whistle was clipped to the shoulder strap of my backpack. My pack had twisted partly beneath me during the fall, and reaching it without moving my injured leg took more care than it should have. I worked my hand backward until my fingers found the strap, followed it by touch and finally closed around the small plastic whistle.

Three short blasts.

I knew the international distress signal. I’d carried the whistle on more trails than I could count and had never once needed to use it.

Until now.

I brought it to my mouth and blew three sharp blasts into the trees.

The sound cut through the rain with startling force.

I waited, listening for an answer.

Nothing came.

After a minute, I blew three more.

Still nothing.

“Hello!” I called, unwilling to rely on the whistle alone when someone on the trail might be close enough to hear my voice. “Can anyone hear me?”

Rain whispered through the leaves.

I waited before calling again, louder this time. “Help! I’m down here!”

My throat already felt raw, but I kept alternating between calling out and using the whistle, three short blasts at a time. I knew better than to scream continuously until I had no voice left, but knowing the correct thing to do didn’t make lying injured beneath an empty trail feel any less frightening.

For the first time since arriving in Austria, being alone had nothing to do with bravery or reinvention. It wasn’t proof that I could rebuild something without Grant.

I was simply alone, hurt badly enough that I couldn’t get myself back to the trail, hoping someone was close enough to hear me.

I raised the whistle again and gave it three hard blasts, then shouted, “HELP!”

I was reaching for the whistle again when something moved far above me.

I froze and listened.

At first I thought another branch had given way, but the sound came again. Footsteps moved somewhere along the trail above me before abruptly stopping.

A man’s voice carried through the rain.

“Hallo?”

Relief hit so hard my eyes burned.

“Hello!” I shouted. “I’m down here!”

“Did you signal with the whistle?” he called.

“Yes!”

“Are you injured?”

“Yes.”

There was only a brief pause before he answered, his English carrying a distinct accent even over the rain. “Don’t move. I’m coming down to you.”

I looked at my rapidly swelling ankle and let out a shaky laugh. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Silence followed, then branches shifted high above me.

I tilted my head back as a man appeared at the edge of the embankment.

Even from where I lay, my first coherent thought was that he was enormous.

My second was that my mother had been right about the red hoodie.

Someone had found me.

The man disappeared from the edge almost as quickly as he’d appeared. My relief faltered until his voice came from farther to my left.

“I’m still here,” he called. “There’s a safer way down.”

A moment later, I heard the scrape of his boot against rock and the rustle of branches as he began working his way toward me. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

Of course he hadn’t abandoned me. The route I’d taken had involved collapsing earth, a broken branch and approximately fifteen seconds of uncontrolled falling. Following it would have been an excellent way for both of us to require rescue.

I shifted my head enough to see through the trees, careful not to move anything else. The motion sent a dull ache across my temple, and I closed my eyes until it passed. My ankle had settled into a deep, relentless throb that seemed to have its own pulse now, while the cut along my leg burned every time rainwater found its way through the torn fabric of my hiking pants.

The adrenaline that had kept everything distant immediately after the fall was wearing off. Apparently my body had decided that since another human being had arrived, it could stop being helpful and begin cataloguing every injury individually.

By the time I heard him getting closer, I was shivering.

I told myself it was the rain.

It probably wasn’t entirely the rain.

He emerged between two trees several yards above me and descended the remaining slope with an ease that made me resent him a little. He didn’t hurry, even after he saw me.

That struck me as strange at first. I’d expected someone finding an injured woman at the bottom of an embankment to rush the last few feet, but he studied the ground before every step and tested his footing where the mud was deepest.

He had already learned from my mistake, apparently.

As he came closer, my earlier impression that he was large became considerably more specific. He was tall enough that the lower branches forced him to duck, with broad shoulders beneath a dark waterproof jacket and the kind of build that suggested hiking was nowhere near the most strenuous thing he did with his spare time. Rain had darkened his shaggy brown hair and curled the ends around his ears and the back of his neck, while a short beard covered his jaw without hiding the strong shape of his face.

He wasn’t smiling. His attention moved over me with an intensity that might have made me nervous under different circumstances, but there was nothing invasive in the way he looked at me. I’d seen emergency crews at accident scenes use the same swift, methodical assessment.

His gaze went first to my face and the position of my body against the fallen tree, then to my legs, the blood soaking through my trousers and the camera lying several feet away before briefly tracking the slope above us.

By the time he reached me, his expression had settled into the calm concentration of someone who already knew what he needed to do.

“Don’t try to sit up,” he said as he slipped his backpack from his shoulders and set it on a relatively dry patch of ground.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were thinking about it.”

Despite the ache spreading across my temple, I frowned at him. “You got all that from looking at me?”

“I saw your hand move,” he explained.

I glanced down and discovered I’d planted my palm against the ground beside my hip without realizing it, apparently preparing to do exactly what he’d told me not to do.

“Fine,” I admitted. “Maybe I was considering it.”

He crouched several feet away rather than coming directly to my side. Up close, I could see that his eyes weren’t as dark as I’d thought. Brown, but lighter toward the center, almost amber in the gray afternoon light. They moved over my face before settling on mine.

“My name is Mateo. I need to come closer and examine you. Is that all right?”

It took me a moment to answer.

Not because I wanted him to stay away. At that particular moment, I would have welcomed an entire marching band if they’d arrived with medical supplies and a working phone.

It was the fact that he’d asked.

I was alone with a strange man in the woods, hurt badly enough that I couldn’t get myself back to the trail. He could have crossed the remaining distance without my permission, and there wasn’t much I could have done about it.

Instead, he waited.

“Yes. Please.”

He set his backpack within reach and lowered himself beside me, somehow managing to make the movement look comfortable despite the wet ground. There was a faint scrape across one of his knuckles and mud along the knee of his hiking trousers. I found myself noticing stupid details because looking at him was preferable to looking at my ankle.

“Tell me your name.”

“Lucy Wilde.”

His eyes flickered briefly at the surname, although he didn’t comment on it. “How long have you been here, Lucy?”

“I checked right before you found me. It had been about sixteen minutes since I took my last photograph, and I fell right after that. So maybe twenty now. Twenty-five.”

“Good. Do you know what day it is?”

“Friday.”

“The date?”

I gave it to him, then added, “Austria, Styria, somewhere below the hiking trail I was supposed to remain on, and I am thirty-four years old in case we’re doing the whole concussion questionnaire.”

For the first time, the severity in his expression eased slightly. “You have done this before?”

“Hit my head? No. I watch a lot of Grey’s Anatomy.”

“Television has apparently taught you something useful.”

“Please don’t tell my mother. She’s spent years claiming the opposite.”

That almost earned me a smile.

Instead, he shifted closer to my head and pulled one glove off, tucking it into his jacket pocket. “Did you hit your head?”

“I think so. Somewhere on the way down. I remember my ankle twisting, then I rolled and hit something. There was this white flash behind my eyes.”

“Did you lose consciousness?”

“I don’t know.”

His attention sharpened.

I hated how uncertain my own answer sounded, so I tried to reconstruct the fall again. The branch breaking. My camera slamming against my ribs. The sickening wrench in my ankle. Dirt and leaves and sky switching places too quickly for my eyes to follow. My head striking something hard enough to fill my vision with light.

Then I remembered lying still and listening to myself breathe.

“I don’t think it was long if I did. I remember stopping. I remember opening my eyes. There might be a few seconds missing between those things, but I honestly can’t tell you.”

“That’s enough. Don’t force yourself to remember.”

He leaned closer, but his hands remained on his own thighs. “I need to feel your head and neck before we move anything else. Tell me if the pain changes or if you feel numbness or tingling anywhere.”

“Okay.”

The first touch of his fingers against my temple made me flinch. His hand was warm against skin that had become colder than I’d realized. He moved carefully through my wet hair, feeling along my scalp until he found the place I’d struck.

Pain bloomed beneath his fingertips, and I sucked in a breath.

“There?”

“Definitely there.”

He immediately eased the pressure. “There is swelling, but I don’t feel an open wound.”

“That’s something.”

“It is.”

His voice remained quiet as he continued the examination, explaining what he was doing before his hands moved to my neck and shoulders. There was nothing tentative about him. He wasn’t guessing where to touch or watching my face because he was unsure what reaction he should expect.

By the time he asked me to squeeze his fingers with both hands, I’d stopped wondering whether he simply knew more first aid than the average hiker.

“You do this professionally,” I said.

Mateo glanced at me while I squeezed against his hands. “Yes.”

That explained the backpack too. When he’d opened the top compartment, I’d caught sight of medical supplies arranged in compact pouches rather than the crushed box of adhesive bandages and antiseptic wipes I carried in mine.

“You’re a doctor.”

“I am.”

Something about the answer made me study him again. The medical supplies explained one part of him, but not the boots, the build or the controlled efficiency that hadn’t changed even when he’d first seen the blood running down my leg.

“Military too?”

A slight pause followed before Mateo nodded. “Yes.”

“A military doctor?”

“I was a trauma physician before I joined the military. I serve in a medical role now.”

I waited, expecting more, but apparently that was all I was getting.

“That’s it?”

His brow furrowed. “What else do you need?”

“I don’t know. Unit? Rank? Mysterious Austrian military secrets?”

The faintest hint of amusement touched his mouth. “You hit your head ten minutes ago. I don’t think my military biography is relevant.”

“Fair.”

His attention returned to the examination, and I had the distinct impression that Mateo had just told me exactly as much as he intended to.

Apparently Mateo wasn’t the kind of person who felt compelled to fill silence.

“You’re Austrian,” I said as he continued examining me.

“I am.”

“Mateo doesn’t sound particularly Austrian.”

That finally brought the faintest curve to one corner of his mouth. “My mother is French. My father is Austrian.”

“Mateo isn’t particularly French either.”

“No.”

When nothing else followed, I stared at him. “You really make people work for information, don’t you?”

“I’m supposed to be getting information from you,” he reminded me.

“Ah. So this is an interrogation.”

“A medical assessment.”

“That’s probably what interrogators call it too.”

The almost-smile returned, but his attention had already shifted toward my leg.

Humor had made it easier to ignore what was happening below my knee. The moment his gaze settled there, my own followed.

The blood looked worse than it had a few minutes ago.

Not pouring. Not anything dramatic enough to make me think I was going to bleed to death in the Austrian woods. It had simply spread through the fabric, mixing with rainwater and running in a thin pink line toward my boot.

Mateo must have seen the change in my face because his voice softened. “It looks worse because your clothes are wet. I don’t think the bleeding is severe, but I need to see the wound.”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

“I will have to cut your trousers.”

I stared at him, then at the pants. Of all the things that should have mattered, I found myself thinking about how much I’d paid for them.

“Those are new.”

His eyebrows rose slightly.

“I know. Stupid.”

“Not stupid.”

“They were expensive.”

“Then I will try to make a very attractive cut.”

A startled laugh slipped out of me, followed immediately by a throb behind my eyes that made me regret it.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“That makes it worse.”

He reached into his bag and found a pair of trauma shears. “May I?”

“Save the leg. Sacrifice the pants.”

He began at the torn section rather than cutting from the hem, working carefully enough that the metal never touched my skin. I watched his face instead of what he was uncovering. The concentration had returned completely, leaving me with the absurd realization that this man had become the most reassuring thing I’d seen all day.

When cool air touched the open cut, I couldn’t avoid looking any longer.

“Oh.”

It was longer than I’d expected, beginning several inches below my knee and cutting diagonally across the outside of my calf. Dirt and tiny pieces of leaf clung to the blood around it.

Mateo examined it without touching. “This will need to be cleaned properly and probably closed, but it is not deep enough to concern me right now.”

“Right now?”

His gaze lifted.

“Bad wording?”

“A little.”

“You are not in danger from this wound.”

“Much better.”

“I’ll remember.”

He reached for supplies from his bag, and I watched him arrange what he needed on a clean cloth rather than placing anything directly on the wet ground. It was strangely fascinating. Maybe because I needed something to concentrate on other than the pain. Maybe because competence was attractive under normal circumstances and apparently became wildly more attractive when I was the emergency.

I immediately pushed the thought aside. Seven weeks after the end of a relationship that had consumed nearly seven years of my life was probably not the ideal time to start noticing the eyes and hands of a stranger kneeling beside me on a wet mountainside. The fact that I was injured only made the timing more ridiculous.

Mateo glanced up. “This is going to sting.”

“How much?”

He hesitated just long enough to answer the question.

“Oh, wonderful.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re apologizing before you’ve done it. That’s terrifying.”

“I prefer you know what is coming.”

I braced one hand against the ground as he began cleaning the wound.

Sting turned out to be a gross understatement.

Pain ripped hot and sharp through my calf, and my other hand moved without permission, closing around the front of his jacket.

Mateo stopped immediately.

“I’m fine.” My voice came through clenched teeth. “Keep going.”

“We can wait.”

“No, because then I’ll sit here anticipating it, and that will be worse.”

His eyes held mine for a moment. “All right. Look at me.”

“That sounds suspiciously like something people say right before doing something horrible.”

“Lucy.”

“I’m looking.”

His jacket remained bunched in my fist, and he didn’t mention it.

Instead, he began talking while he worked, asking why I’d been hiking alone and what had brought me to Styria. At first I answered because he kept asking questions. It took me longer than it should have to realize what he was doing.

“You’re distracting me.”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

He continued cleaning the cut. I tightened my hand in his jacket but managed not to swear this time.

“Perhaps a little.”

“Then tell me why you came to Austria.”

“I’m working.”

“What kind of work brings you alone into the mountains?”

“The poorly planned kind, apparently.”

“Lucy.”

There was enough dry patience in my name that I almost smiled.

“Travel. I write, photograph, make videos. Restaurants, hotels, hiking trails, tours, cruises. Anything people might want to know about before they spend their money and limited vacation time doing it.”

“You are a travel journalist?”

“Sort of. That’s one piece of it.”

“Photographer?”

“Also one piece.”

He glanced toward my camera, still lying where it had landed. “I’ll get that before we leave.”

The fact that he’d noticed me looking at it made something inside my chest loosen.

“Thank you.”

He returned to my leg. “You make videos too?”

“Yes.”

“For television?”

I stared at him.

He looked genuinely serious.

“How old are you?”

That finally produced an actual smile. It wasn’t large, but it changed his whole face when it appeared.

“Thirty-five.”

“Then you know YouTube exists.”

“I know it exists.”

“Instagram?”

“Unfortunately.”

“TikTok?”

His expression gave me my answer.

I laughed softly, careful of my head this time. “Okay. So that’s a no.”

“I know what it is.”

“That’s what my father says too.”

Mateo secured a temporary dressing over the wound. “You do all of this by yourself?”

The humor left before I could stop it. I looked past him toward the trees, where rain slid from the branches in silver drops, darkening the earth where it landed.

“Now I do.”

Mateo’s hands paused for only a moment.

He didn’t ask why.

I appreciated him for that more than I wanted to.

He finished the dressing and moved toward my ankle. I watched his expression as he studied the swelling above my boot, hoping to find reassurance there. His face gave me nothing.

“That one is bad, isn’t it?”

“I need to examine it before I tell you.”

“That’s medic for yes.”

“That is medic for I don’t guess.”

Fair enough.

He checked the circulation in my foot first, then sensation, asking me to move my toes before carefully feeling along my lower leg. His touch was controlled enough that I relaxed between each movement until he reached the outside of my ankle.

Pain tore through me so suddenly that my breath caught, and Mateo stopped before I could tell him to. He waited until I could breathe normally again before changing the position of his fingers and checking another area with considerably less pressure. The pain there wasn’t as sharp, but it went deep enough to make my stomach turn.

“Fractured?” I asked.

“Possibly,” Mateo said, easing his hands away. “It could still be a severe sprain, but you need imaging before anyone can tell you for certain.”

“So I’m going to a hospital.”

“Yes.”

I let my head rest back against the tree.

There went the hiking portion of Austria. Probably half the itinerary I’d spent three weeks building too.

The absurdity of it arrived all at once. Eight days into the trip that was supposed to prove I could rebuild my career alone, I’d managed to tumble off a trail, destroy a pair of hiking pants, possibly fracture my ankle and give myself a concussion.

A laugh tried to escape, but I swallowed it before my head could punish me.

“Eight days.”

Mateo had begun taking a compact splint from his bag. “What?”

“I’ve been in Austria eight days.”

“Is there a rule that accidents may only happen after nine?”

“No. I’m just appreciating the efficiency. I really thought I’d make it at least two weeks before everything went to hell.”

He looked at me then, properly looked at me, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he understood I wasn’t only talking about the fall.

I didn’t give him time to ask.

“How exactly are we getting out of here?” I asked as he reached for the compact splint in his bag.

“I contacted mountain rescue before I came down to you.”

I stared at him. “You called them before you even knew how badly I was hurt?”

“I heard the distress signal, found where you had gone over the edge and could see enough from the trail to know you weren’t walking back up.”

“I don’t have service.”

“Neither do I.”

That made even less sense. “Then how did you contact them?”

Mateo nodded toward his backpack. “Satellite communicator.”

For several seconds I could only look at him. The relief was so immediate and enormous that it left me lightheaded.

“Okay. I may actually kiss you.”

One of his eyebrows lifted.

“Metaphorically.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve had a difficult afternoon.”

“So I noticed.”

“Your satellite communicator is currently the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ll try not to be offended.”

That was when I realized I still didn’t know his last name.

The thought seemed ridiculous given everything else happening, but he’d given me a first name and nothing more. If I was going to spend the next hour waiting in the rain with a stranger who was currently holding my injured foot as carefully as if it were made of glass, I wanted more than Mateo.

“What’s your last name?” I asked.

His hands stilled briefly over the splint. “Wolf.”

I blinked. “Wolf?”

“Yes.”

“As in the animal?”

The resignation that crossed his face told me he’d endured some version of this conversation for most of his life. “Exactly like the animal.”

“That’s actually a great last name.”

“You think so?”

“Lucy Wilde is hardly in a position to criticize anyone else’s surname.”

Something shifted in his expression, and I could almost see him putting the names together in his head at the same moment I did.

Lucy Wilde.

Mateo Wolf.

And then I remembered what I was wearing.

Before either of us could say anything, my gaze dropped toward his hands, and bright red fabric filled the edge of my vision.

My hoodie.

I looked at it, then at the trees surrounding us, then back at Mateo.

He followed my gaze to the bright red hoodie, glanced at the trees surrounding us and closed his eyes briefly.

“No.”

I hadn’t said anything yet, which made it infinitely funnier.

“Don’t,” he warned when he opened them again.

“I’m wearing red,” I said, already fighting a laugh.

“I can see that.”

“In the woods.”

“I am also aware of where we are.”

“And your name is Wolf.”

“Yes, Lucy. We’ve established this.”

I pressed my lips together, but there was no saving it. “Little Red Riding Hood gets injured in the forest and gets rescued by the Wolf. You have to admit that’s incredible.”

“The wolf does not rescue her,” Mateo pointed out.

“Maybe he was misunderstood.”

“He eats the grandmother.”

“That’s a difficult detail to overcome,” I conceded.

His mouth twitched.

I pointed at him. “There. You think it’s funny.”

“I don’t.”

“You almost smiled.”

“You have a head injury,” he said, returning his attention to the splint. “Your observations are unreliable.”

“That’s extremely convenient for you.”

“It’s also medically accurate.”

I was still smiling when he returned his attention to my ankle, and for a few precious seconds I forgot how cold I was.

Then a shiver ran through me hard enough that my teeth nearly clicked.

Mateo noticed immediately. His gaze traveled over my wet hoodie, the rain collecting in my hair and the trembling I could no longer pretend wasn’t happening. He stood long enough to remove his waterproof jacket, revealing a dark long-sleeved shirt beneath it.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re cold.”

“So are you.”

“I’m not the one lying on wet ground.”

Before I could argue, he draped the jacket over me, arranging it carefully so he didn’t disturb my injured leg. The inside still held his body heat. It surrounded me almost immediately, carrying the faint clean scent I’d noticed when he first leaned over me.

I hated how good it felt.

The surrender.

That was the part that frightened me a little.

For seven weeks, I’d been telling everyone I could handle whatever came next. The breakup, the business and Grant walking away from the brand we’d spent three years building had all received the same determined response. I could start over. I could come to Austria alone. I could figure out what Lucy Wilde looked like without Grant Chase beside her.

Whenever anyone worried, I’d reassured them with some variation of I’m fine. I’ve got it. I’ll figure it out.

I’d become so practiced at saying it that sometimes I almost believed it myself.

Now I couldn’t get myself off the side of a mountain.

There was no clever workaround. No rebranding strategy. No spreadsheet or contract or new username that could solve the immediate fact that I was hurt and needed another person.

Mateo crouched beside me again and began preparing the splint.

“How long until rescue gets here?”

“The rain may slow them. Perhaps an hour.”

My stomach sank, and he must have seen it because he stopped what he was doing.

“Lucy.”

I looked at him.

“You are safe here.”

The words were simple enough that I almost dismissed them.

Then I realized he wasn’t promising that nothing hurt or pretending the situation wasn’t serious. He wasn’t telling me I was fine when we both knew I wasn’t.

He was giving me facts.

“The bleeding is controlled. Your circulation is good. You are alert. Rescue knows where we are, and I am staying with you until they arrive.”

The knot beneath my ribs loosened slightly.

“You don’t have to stay,” I told him.

Mateo looked up the embankment before returning his attention to me, his brow drawing together as though the suggestion genuinely confused him.

“Of course I stay.”

He said it without making the decision sound noble or expecting gratitude for it. To Mateo, apparently, staying with an injured stranger until rescue arrived wasn’t something that required discussion.

Leaving had never occurred to him.

I looked away before the sudden sting behind my eyes could turn into something embarrassing. “Okay.”

Mateo returned to the splint, giving me a moment without making it obvious that he was doing so.

The rain continued to fall around us, softer now, tapping against his jacket where it covered me. Somewhere beyond the trees, cowbells carried faintly from another hillside, impossibly ordinary against the wreckage of my afternoon.

Eight days earlier, I’d arrived in Austria determined to prove there could still be a Lucy Wilde after Wilde Chase. I had expected that to involve photographs, articles, awkward solo videos and probably more than one night drinking wine while pretending I wasn’t reading comments asking where Grant had gone.

I hadn’t expected to be lying beneath a fallen tree while an Austrian doctor named Mateo Wolf splinted my ankle in the rain.

His hands remained steady as he worked, and every so often his eyes lifted to my face, checking me with the same quiet attention he’d given me since reaching the bottom of the embankment.

My mother had been right about the red hoodie.

Someone had found me.