Three degrees south of the Equator, Iquitos was three degrees warmer than my blood on that September afternoon. After three days on the Gilmar cargo ship, I disembarked, greasy and ripe, onto the bustling Peruvian dock. Three-wheeled mototaxis queued alongside the open air market on Avenue La Marina, their drivers scrambling to scoop up moneyed tourists.
When I saw her there next to the blue-canopied chariot, I wished I’d had a chance to clean off the Amazonian stink that must have encircled me like a cloud. Her long, dark hair glistened like silk in the late summer breeze, drawing my eyes to hers, as she gestured for me to board. She was dressed in modest linen garments that must have once been burgundy, but were now a sun-bleached coral, and fluttered like flags as we zipped toward the city’s downtown.
We exchanged pleasantries, and I learned her name was Adela. “And what brings you to this hemisphere, Noah?” she asked over her shoulder, in surprisingly clear English.
“Archeology,” I said, being intentionally vague. One can never be too careful of swindlers, and her disarming beauty had me on high alert.
“Ah.” Her mahogany eyes were embers in the sunset. “You are interested in the Inca.”
I smiled and raised one eyebrow. “Something like that.”
“International man of mystery!” She returned my smile with high, rosy cheeks.
I’d planned to stay at one of the nicer hostels for a few days while making arrangements. As she pulled up to the entrance, I pulled out some folded bills for the ride. “It’s been a pleasure, Adela.”
Her eyes widened at something over my shoulder. “¡Dios mío!”
Before I could see what had startled her, she gunned the throttle, throwing me against the seat back. “Whoa!” I said. “What’s going on?”
Without answer, she careened down side roads at full throttle, many times taking the mototaxi up on two wheels. I grappled for balance to avoid being ejected. Behind us, men on motorcycles were shouting and gesturing with fists.
“Hang on,” she shouted over the straining motor. My knuckles were white as she wrenched the brakes while wedging into a dark alley. The vehicle fishtailed, then screeched to a stop.
“Now look, Adela, I—”
“Get down!” she hissed, pulling me onto my side. Our noses were inches apart, so close I could see the golden flecks that enriched the chocolate irises of her wide eyes. On the street behind us, the sound of motorcycles rose, then fell into the distance. Adela sat up and wiped her brow.
“So,” I said, “want to tell me what that was all about?”
She looked sheepish. “I, um, may not—technically—own this vehicle.”
“Who—technically—does?”
“Just a guess, but probably one of those guys chasing us.” One side of her mouth raised, as a smile tried to break through. “I mean, come on, the cojudo left it idling at the market to grab some tamales, so it’s his own fault, right? Anyway, I’m not going to keep it—I just needed the fare. You’re not going to turn me in, are you?” She batted her eyelashes, while slipping the cash I’d given her into a breast pocket.
“One question,” I said. “Are you always this much fun?”
She laughed, and my heart felt like toast being buttered. “Ah, choche, this was nothing.”
“Well then,” I said with a smile, “I guess that cojudo should have been more careful.”
Adela beamed.
As night fell, the pregnant equatorial air wasn’t much cooler, but at least the sun wasn’t beating on our backs anymore. Still, my desperation to get cleaned up was now directly correlated with my rising interest in this lively local. We’d left the mototaxi there in the alley and were hoofing it back toward the hostel.
“Have you always lived in Iquitos?” I asked.
“More or less,” she said. “Outside of it, really. I grew up in my abuelo’s cabin in the varzea.”
“So, you must know the river pretty well.”
She gave me a toothy grin. “Like the back of my hand.”
“How did you get so fluent in English, if I might ask?”
“Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to live in North America. I knew that learning English was going to be my ticket. So I taught myself. I used to menace the tourists with questions, stealing their books and glossy magazines. After they put in the cinema downtown, I’d work all day for admission and just breathe in the language, reciting every line. Got thrown out more than once because I would not shut up.” She sighed. “One day I am going to live in Montana.”
“It’s very beautiful there. Bit colder than Peru though.”
“Oh,” a dreamy look spread over her face, “I would give anything to see the snow.”
We’d walked in amiable silence for a while, when the aroma of chorizo wafted over us from a restaurant, making my stomach grumble. “Hey, let me buy you dinner.”
“You are too generous,” she said, “I did not even deliver you to your hostel properly.”
“Please, don’t think of it as a transaction, but rather … well, just because I’d like to know you. Seems you’re a bit of a thrill-seeker, like me. And I could use the company.”
She accepted, and we enjoyed Tacacho and some local beers at a quiet table. The spicy chorizo and the starchy plantains were a pleasant change from the slop I’d eaten on the cargo ship for the last three days.
“So tell me more about your mysterious archeology,” she said, running her finger around the edge of her beer bottle.
I was intoxicated, and it wasn’t only from the alcohol. As much as I feared double-dealings, I suspected I didn’t need to fear Adela. I reached into my rucksack and withdrew a leather-bound cylinder.
“I traded my Kawasaki for this, from a man in Miami.” I loosened the laces and flattened out the edges. “It’s a map. To a fabled Inca temple called Inti Uturuncu. Many believe the Inca did not settle this far inland in Peru, but I intend to prove otherwise.”
Adela studied the map with an intensity that both awed and unsettled me. “Noah, I recognize many of these landmarks. I have been to many of these places.”
“In that case,” I said, “you simply must be my guide.”
“Oh, no. I could not. I have intruded on you too much already. In fact, I should really leave you alone. It is late, and surely you are tired.”
“Adela, please. You have been nothing but a pleasure. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a wonderful day. You would be a perfect guide. You said yourself you know the river, and you recognize these places on the map. I expected my search for a guide to take days. With you, I—we—could begin right away.” She hesitated, so I added, “I can pay you.”
A darkness fell across Adela’s face, and her mouth pressed into a line. “I am sorry, Noah,” she said, “but I cannot. I must go.” She stood and hurried to the door.
Bewildered by her precipitous exit, I rolled up the map, tossed several bills on the table, and dashed after her. As I pushed outside, I saw Adela being pulled, writhing, into the back of a rusted van.
“Hey!” I shouted, but the van squealed into the night. I jogged for a while in the direction it had taken, despairing over Adela’s capture. Then I remembered we’d left the mototaxi in a nearby alley, and I reversed course.
As I plunged into that dark passage, I was surprised to find the vehicle was still there. I revved the motor and circled back onto the streets of downtown Iquitos, gridding through the roads from where I’d last seen the van. Adrenaline-charged and bathed in cold sweat, I jumped every time I heard another motorcycle, fearing the return of the men who’d pursued us before. As the fuel tank spit its last vapor, the motor sputtered to a stop, and I found myself at the curb beside a decrepit warehouse—with the rusted van in the parking lot!
I climbed onto a crate to peer through one of the broken windows. In the center of a cavernous room, under a naked lightbulb, Adela was slumped in a chair, bound with rope. Her captors were nowhere in sight. With great care not to make a sound or impale myself on the glass, I pulled open the window frame and dropped to the dusty floor inside.
Adela had heard my footfall, and her terrified eyes locked onto mine. There was a ball-gag in her mouth, and her face was bruised and streaked with tears. She motioned with her eyes to a doorway on my left, where I could hear faint Spanish voices. I hurried to her side, withdrawing my pocket knife to sever her restraints.
As I removed the gag, she whispered, “It is the man from the market. He intends to sell me to recoup the theft of his mototaxi.”
I placed the vehicle’s key and a brown twenty-Sol note on the now-empty chair. “There,” I said. “Now it wasn’t stolen, it was rented. Let’s go!”
I boosted Adela through the window, and then she pulled me up after her, and we sprinted into the shadows, breathless and wild. When we had put ample distance between ourselves and the warehouse, we slowed to a jog, and then collapsed beside a dumpster, panting.
“I cannot believe you came to find me,” she said, looking at me as if I had two heads.
“What was I supposed to do—just dust off my hands and go about my day? Oh, Adela’s probably being tortured—or worse—but hey, it’s not my problem. Who does that?”
She shrugged. “I thought this is what all men do.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Not this man.”
She pulled my face against hers and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. “Noah, I am sorry for running off like that. As for being your guide, I have been propositioned for such things before, and it has … always ended badly. What you saw was a learned reaction. After what you did for me tonight, I believe I need not fear you. I would be delighted to guide you on the river—if you will still have me.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” I said, but then an acrid scent billowed up from my shirt. My face soured. “Except maybe a shower.”
Adela laughed again, and again I was buttered. “Allow me to escort you to the hostel, as promised,” she said. “We will agree that this,” she waved her hand, “was all part of my thrill-seeker package.”
It was close to midnight when we finally knocked on the hostel door and obtained a key from the grumbling proprietor. The room was about as meager as I’d expected, but it seemed clean enough. As I dug into my rucksack for my toiletries, a realization tapped my mind.
“It’s gone.”
Adela had been thumbing through a Spanish-language magazine on the nightstand, but perked up. “What is gone?”
“The map!”
“The map to the temple?”
“Of course the map to the fucking temple! What other map could possibly matter?” I dumped out the contents of the rucksack, rummaging, grumbling, frantic.
Adela sat, a horrified look on her face.
I sighed. “I didn’t mean to snap at you, Adela.”
“It must have fallen out when you came to rescue me. I fear this is all because of me. Lo siento, Noah.”
“It’s not your fault.” I flopped onto the mattress. “Well, I guess this whole trip has been a total bust.”
“Maybe not,” said Adela. “Noah, I can guide you to the temple without the map!”
I bolted upright. “How?”
Adela nodded, tapping her temple. “Eidetic memory. I can picture the map in its entirety. But—if someone else has found it, they could get to the temple before you. We must go right away.”
My first impulse was to head back out the door, but exhaustion had wormed its way into my last reserves, and I yawned. “It will have to be in the morning. You’re welcome to stay here on the bed. I’ll take the floor. But I’ll need to register myself as a biological weapon if I don’t get in that shower immediately.”
Adela pinched her nose and giggled.
What was now four days’ worth of rainforest funk swirled down the drain, as I scrubbed myself under the lukewarm trickle that masqueraded as a shower. I felt a sense of rejuvenation that almost qualified as a second wind. But when I got back into the room, Adela had turned down the bedsheet for me, and was herself snoring on the floor. I collapsed onto the mattress and was asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.
The calm but insistent Amazon was blonde glass that mirrored the lush canopy on the far side, topped by platinum cumulus clouds. A twenty-foot motorboat bobbed alongside a rickety dock. While Adela negotiated with a man called Diego outside his thatched hut, the man’s many children whispered and giggled, pointing at the strange man with pale skin and a long, golden ponytail.
When I awoke that morning, Adela had been pressed up against my back in the bed with her arm draped over my torso. At some point in the night, the floor must have become as unpleasant as I’d feared it would be. I’d lain there for many long minutes, relishing her musky but feminine warmth, before she stirred and apologized profusely for intruding in my space. I did my best to make it clear that it was the furthest thing I could imagine from an intrusion.
As pleasant a companion as she was, though, I was struggling with the amount of control—and trust—I’d afforded her. Even now, she’d insisted on taking charge of the negotiations for the boat ride, over my fervent objections. Being in control was much a more comfortable position for me. She could have been conspiring for my untimely demise, for all I knew.
“He agreed,” said Adela, “for fifty Sol. But fuel and provisions will cost extra. His uncle will make the arrangements. We should be able to get on the water within the hour.”
I nodded.
“But there is something else, Noah. He said two men were here at dawn to commission passage to the same river bank. They departed on his cousin’s boat three hours ago.”
“The map,” I said. “They must have found it.”
“Si. And they have a head start,” she said. “We will have to make up time once we get off the river. I know a route that might bring us ahead of them.”
“I trust you,” I said. While we loaded up the boat, paid Diego and his uncle, and set off on the water at mid-day, those three words echoed endlessly in my head. Did I trust her?
I know I wanted to.
While the outboard putted and skipped, Diego’s craft slid upstream through the earthen-scented water, opaque from the cloying, alluvial runoff of the Iquitos varzea. Pink-skinned botos breached and played in the distance, very much like their saltwater cousins of Flipper fame. Adela perched on the bow, face to the wind, eyes closed. Her billowing hair shimmered under the high sun like polished onyx. The quiet moment would be etched in my mind to my dying breath.
The sun was low on the horizon by the time we pulled ashore at the confluence of three tributaries, where the map in Adela’s brain would have us start our trek. After unloading all our gear, I shook Diego’s hand, and he floated away downstream. We were well and truly alone now, in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. The degree to which I now depended on this woman for my very survival made my heart rise a few inches up my throat.
“We should set up the tent here,” she said. “Trust me. We don’t want to be making a lot of noise in there when it’s dark.” She motioned toward the trees.
As if on cue, the distant snarl of a jaguar echoed through the low valley where we’d soon be headed. I began hammering the tent stakes without delay, while Adela rummaged the higher shoreline for desiccated driftwood.
We toiled in silence until at last we could relax by the crackling fire, warming a richly spiced stew that reminded me somehow of Christmas.
“The map will have taken those men through there,” said Adela, pointing toward the valley. “But we will go there.” She pointed at a steep, rocky cliff. “You climb much?”
“I’ve scaled a hill or two,” I said after a dry swallow. “But not without gear.”
“Follow my lead, and you’ll do fine. If we can clear that summit tomorrow, we’ll be half a day ahead of the others.”
After we ate and cleaned up, we chatted until the glow of the dying campfire painted everything orange. My pulse quickened as I considered how we would soon be pressed together inside a cramped tent. Adela’s shy glances suggested her thoughts were much the same. In the distance, lightning flashed, followed by a slap of thunder several seconds later.
“Guess we’d better get in there,” I said.
“Guess so,” said Adela, blushing redder than the hot embers.
We both moved toward the tent, then stopped to allow the other in first. Then repeated the awkward dance.
Adela groaned. “Enough of this!” She took the front of my shirt in her fists and pulled me against her, mashing her mouth against mine. “There. That’s out in the open, right? Now let’s go to bed.”
She pulled me into the tent and zipped it closed, just as fat raindrops began to pelt the canvas.
Halfway up a hundred-meter cliff face is a terrible place for an argument.
Adela and I had spent the better part of the morning alternately notching our bodies and our gear from ledge to ledge, with only a limited length of rope. Roasting in the late-morning equatorial sun, salted and basted with sweat, we’d evidently made the gross miscalculation of attempting to converse like decent humans. Lovers, even, who had just discovered their bliss not twelve hours earlier.
“Admit it,” said Adela, as she stretched for the next handhold. “This is all about money for you.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” I’d just told her about the Cristal del Alma—the Soul Crystal—rumored to be among the artifacts in the temple, and how I expected that it would set me up financially for life. “I mean, sure, I do expect there will be some money in it. But that’s not the only reason.”
“Figures.” She grunted as she swung a foot across a two-meter gap, and I sputtered as she kicked down a sprinkle of dirt—probably by accident. “Typical American exploitation.”
“Says the woman who steals mototaxis for a living,” I said, sizing up the same gap, trying to ignore how high up we were. “And who herself wants to one day be an American.”
She huffed. “America could use some more people like me.” She sucked a fingertip that she’d scraped on a broken branch. “And I rented that mototaxi, remember? He got it back.”
Without warning, the stone outcropping below her left foot snapped off, and she clamored for balance. I gasped, watching the rocky foothold tumble down into the misty infinity, imagining it might have been Adela.
Or me.
“So what is your other reason,” she said, unfazed by her near peril, “if it is not just about the money?”
Because I don’t want to be a failure, like my loser of a father?
“It’s personal,” I said.
“Well, I’m sure the Incan spirits that you’re stealing from would be so pleased to know they were able to help you with your ‘personal issues.’”
“Hey, will you cut me some slack? If it isn’t me, it will just be someone else,” I said. “Assuming Inti Uturuncu even exists.” The faint sound of the loose foothold’s impact at the bottom echoed up the cliff face.
And if I live long enough to find it.
Adela groaned. “I wish you’d never shown me that damned map. Curse my eidetic memory.”
Of course, without that memory, we wouldn’t even be here, since the map itself had fallen into someone else’s hands—and we had reason to believe they had a head start on us, which is why we were dangling on the edge of a cliff at all, to make up time. I hoped that Adela’s memory of the map was as perfect as she said it was, or this would all be for nothing.
“Adela, what did you think would happen, when or if I found the temple? Assuming those guys haven’t already looted it, I couldn’t very well leave the artifacts in there, could I? Once word got out, they’d be gone in within a week. So it’s either take them with me, or forget the whole thing. Forget my dream.”
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “Fine. You might have a point. But now we must focus and get to the top, OK? We’re wasting daylight here.”
The last leg of the climb was a rare form of torture. By the time I dragged myself onto the summit, every muscle in my body felt as shredded as sausage meat, and I lay face down in the grass, burning from both the sun and the lactic acid. I could hear Adela close by, panting the same as me.
“Noah,” she said.
I grunted.
“Noah!”
“What?” I grumbled. With great effort, I raised my head.
Standing at the edge of the small clearing at the summit were two men, holding machetes. They spoke with some insistence in an unfamiliar Spanish dialect. Amazonic Spanish, I assumed.
“It is the men from Iquitos,” said Adela. “They say I must go with them.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” I said.
Adela sighed. “They only want me.”
I struggled to sit up, impotent to intervene, resigned to my fate. Connecting the dots.
This must all have been orchestrated. Suddenly, my folly was so clear to me. The beautiful and exciting Adela was but a wishful delusion. She’d dialed into my desires from the beginning, gotten me to relax my inhibitions, loosened my tongue. I’d been her pawn from the moment I got in that mototaxi.
I doubted any of them had any idea how valuable of an archaeological discovery Inti Uturuncu was to the scientific world. They’d loot it for precious metals and gemstones, and just like that, nine hundred years of history would be gone. Trashed, like my affection for Adela—who had obviously been nothing but an irresistible lure in these bandits’ hunt for pathetic, gullible foreigners like me.
I’d been taken for a fool and ruined just like my father, when his loose lips had cost our family the mining rights to a rich vein of copper on our land. I’d become the very thing I’d despised my whole life.
My revulsion at them—no, at myself—must have shone on my face, because Adela turned on some Oscar-winning waterworks. “Noah, please, it’s not what you think. I don’t have anything to do with this.” She sobbed. “You have to believe me.”
“¡Cállate!” said one of the men, holding his rusted blade against her throat. The other man gathered up our backpacks, and the three of them headed off into the foggy ravine.
Now I was alone in the rainforest, with no sense of time or direction, no food or water, literally nothing but my clothes. I flopped onto my back in dehydrated, exhausted, total defeat.
I awoke in darkness. The full moon had replaced the sun in the sky. The voices of thousands of insectine, avian, and mammalian species wove a tapestry of presence and sound that emanated from the surrounding flora, suffusing my senses.
I was no longer on the summit of the cliff, but in a forest clearing, sprawled on my back beside a snapping fire. A clay pot warmed on a wooden fulcrum, suspended over the flames. Whatever was bubbling inside it saturated the air with an acrid, earthy aroma.
Through the flames, the squinted, rheumy eyes of a crimson-painted face watched me. He wore a crown of colorful feathers, and dozens of beaded necklaces hung from his neck across his leathery, naked chest—some adorned with the hooked claws and talons of what must have once been imposing predators. Through each of his dilated ear piercings dangled bleached and hollow bones.
The cross-legged man raised a pompom of leaves in one hand that rattled when shaken. With this crude instrument, he marked a rhythm while alternately whistling and chanting something unintelligible, yet strangely reverent. The forest fell silent as he performed his unfamiliar and ancient-sounding song.
As the last syllable faded from his throat, he poured an oily, brown liquid from the clay pot into two hollowed gourds and extended one toward me, nodding.
“Thank you—gracias,” I said, raising the cup to my lips, blowing to cool it. The bitter brew repulsed me, but in my circumstances, I wasn’t about to decline anyone’s generosity. It was either accept this man’s hospitality, or face the jungle on my own. I figured my chances were better in numbers, even a number as small as two.
I swallowed the contents of the gourd in a single gulp. It tasted like salty, concentrated espresso, and had the consistency of vegetable oil. Nausea roiled in my belly almost instantly. The man across the fire smiled with several missing teeth, and let out a wheezing chuckle at my expense, then savored his beverage in small sips.
We sat in silence for some time as the forest came back to life around us.
And grew louder.
And louder.
And louder still.
Colors bloomed from within the monochrome canvas all around. Colors I’d never seen. Colors that didn’t even exist. I could smell the trees. I could smell the musk of the nocturnal rodents that scurried all around us. I could smell the moonlight itself. Then I became the moon, looking down on the little stamp of life where my insignificant body sat slack-jawed by the fire.
A woman’s voice rose above the cacophony of the forest—from both nowhere and everywhere. She narrated the entire universe to me, and I understood it all. I moved between the organisms of the land, becoming each of them in turn. The trees—I knew how it felt to have leaves; the snails—I felt the sticky mucus beneath my undulating foot; the cicadas—I rasped into the night with my brethren. I was one with everything, and everything was one with me. I knew every purpose, and every dream, of every creature that ever was, and ever will be.
Then a jaguar appeared before me—and I knew at once it was Adela’s spirit. She had glistening fur of the darkest onyx, and the same almond eyes of gold-flecked hickory. She spoke to me without words; beckoned me to follow her. I took on the form of an Andean condor and flew after her, shrieking with elation. Together we vaulted the unseen trails, over hills and through ravines, past every landmark on the map I’d lost—until at last the enormous stone pyramid of Inti Uturuncu rose from the forest floor before us. All through the night, we danced around the temple, seeing into each other, seeing every thought, tasting every wish …
Being one another’s very soul.
When I awoke in the misty morning twilight, I knew the way to the temple. But more importantly, I knew that Adela was not a party to the treachery of those machete-wielding men. I could not rest until I found both her and the temple.
The shaman clapped his hands together, extended them toward me, then spread his arms wide and smiled. I imitated the gesture, then turned to begin my journey.
Through the day and through the night, I followed the path I’d flown in my vision. Everything was exactly as I remembered. Forest creatures peeked at me from every crevice, from behind every tree, from high within the branches. I felt camaraderie with each of them, having experienced their very lives the night before. I no longer felt any threat from this perilous land, of which I had always been a part, but had only now come to realize as such.
In the morning of the second day, I broke into a clearing at the base of a gentle hill. At its crest sat the crumbling ruin of an Inca temple, covered in moss and overgrown by crawling vines.
It had to be Inti Uturuncu.
The massive square cuerpo at its base rose in narrowing stories, higher and higher into the diffuse morning fog. A towering center stairway led to a portal in a room at its apogee that was open to the sky. The low sun behind the edifice shone through the portal, giving the illusion that it was casting mystical beams from within.
As I approached the periphery of the structure, three figures emerged into focus. The first two were the eviscerated and burned corpses of the men who had abducted Adela.
The third was Adela herself, kneeling at the foot of the temple with her head in her hands. Had she overtaken these men with their own weapons? Had she somehow set them aflame?
Was she going to do the same to me?
“Adela,” I said, and she turned with a start.
“Noah!” She jumped up and threw her arms around my neck. “How did you—?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, not really sure how to explain it myself. “What happened to them?” I nodded at the twisted, grotesque forms nearby.
“It was Inti Uturuncu,” she said. “The Sun Jaguar. These men wasted no time invading the temple, and came out with armloads of gold artifacts. As soon as they stepped off the bottom … oh, Noah, you will think I am crazy.”
“You might be surprised,” I said.
“It was the temple itself! It came alive, transformed into a giant, fire-breathing jaguar, and smote them with fire and fang! It was terrible, and yet so beautiful at the same time.” She looked at the temple in awe. “So beautiful.”
Far away, somewhere in the trees, came the throaty rumble of a jaguar’s territorial roar.
“Oh, Noah, you mustn’t go through with it. I do not think Inti Uturuncu wants to be discovered. Please believe me, no treasure can be worth upsetting this living place.”
I smiled, and wrapped my arms around her trembling body. “There is only one treasure I wish to take from here.”
“But you mustn’t, Noah! The temple … it—”
“Adela.” I placed my finger on her lips. “The treasure I wish to take from here … is you.”
Adela’s whooping laughter echoed through the canyon. I slid behind her as we careened down the packed powder on snowboards. We threaded between trees, and launched over boulders, spinning and flipping. She was a natural, and I almost couldn’t keep up with her.
We’d scraped up enough to open a sporting goods store in Whitefish—one of the top ski resort towns in Montana. With access to all the gear we’d ever need, our adventures like this were almost weekly.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this,” she said, breathless, as we wedged to a stop near the base of the hill. The thrill in her gold-flecked eyes still made something inside me flutter every time.
“Me neither,” I said, sweeping my gloved hand across her silken hair. “Me neither.”