Chapter 45
SAPPHIRE
When the stretcher touches the ground, I break down, lamenting and weeping enough tears to cause my own landslide.
I can’t stop, not even when the rescue team frees me from the helicopter stretcher and the EMTs lift me onto the gurney then cover me in another thermal blanket to warm me up. I can’t stop shaking. It’s something I don’t have control over.
A wave of relief washes over me as I finally arrive on solid ground, because the ground I’ve been trudging through for almost a day was slippery, precarious even.
After I took a tumble down the hillside, feeling sorry for myself, I thought spraining my ankle was bad enough but the worst of it was yet to come.
When the second mudslide hit, I lost my boots and socks, both getting sucked under by the mud, and now my feet are covered in cuts and scratches that burn and ache as if they have tiny paper cuts all over them.
The mud’s not just on my feet; I’m covered in it from head to toe.
I take a quick look downward, noticing how the mud that once was soft and squelchy has fused between my toes, and is now hard and cracking like dry soil.
I continue to cry for myself, and my swollen ankle that’s the same thickness as my calf, thinking about everything that’s happened since I stormed out of Eli’s office yesterday.
That feels like such a long time ago now.
That second mudslide would have taken my life had I not remembered an article I read years ago that you can never outrun a mudslide; you have to run to the side.
That’s exactly what I did: I ran sideways, never looking back as the valley behind me crumbled like a soft cookie.
I was terrified as if I could feel it chasing after me like a demon on its way to drag me under.
I kept running through the trees until my lungs felt like they were on fire, only stopping when my ankle pain became unbearable, and I hobbled for what felt like hours but was only minutes.
When the mudslide finally stopped and the rain eased, I tried to climb back up the slope, but the more I fought, the further I slid, and with no shoes on to give me the grip I needed, combined with an excruciatingly painful ankle, I surrendered to the inevitable.
Eventually, I worked my way down through the trees, each step unstable, feeling utterly sorry for myself, in shock, and in serious fight mode, until I found a tiny wooden lookout shack.
By then, it was too late to escape the cold.
The darkness had already started to move in.
Inside the shack, drenched to the bone, shivering as gusts of wind pierced the cracks in the wooden slats, I hugged my legs close, yet the eerie sounds of the forest kept me awake all night.
The hooting owls, the sounds of snapping twigs, I never knew which direction they were coming from, and they kept me on edge.
Exhausted, my body empty of strength, I didn’t care and I fled at the first light of day in search of help to discover there was none.
So I moved as fast as I could, well, as fast as my sprained ankle would allow me to, limping unsteadily down the hill, making sure I stayed as far away as possible from the edges of the mudslide that carved a path of devastation far down into the valley and into the creek below.
Being stranded in that valley alone, soaked and ill-equipped, has shaken me to my core. All I want is to go home, to bed with Ghost, and… “Eli,” I shout, my throat raspy and bone dry. I cough and cough until someone places a bottle of water to my lips, calmly telling me to take a drink.
When the cool water hits my lips, my mouth and senses leap with joy, as if overwhelmed by a rush of happiness, the receptors on my tongue firing rapidly, and I feel relief unlike anything I have ever experienced as the water wets my mouth.
I clutch the bottle of water, like it’s my lifeline, quickly chugging it down, not caring that it’s running down my chin.
Why should I, when I currently look like a swamp lady, my dress completely torn and stuck to my body like a wet rag?
I pull the bottle off my lips, the rim now covered in soil, but I don’t care, I don’t care about anything. I’m here.
They found me.
He found me.
Eli.
“Where’s Eli?” I gasp, darting my eyes left and right as the sound of rotors from a helicopter trails off, and that’s when I see him sprinting toward me.
“Sapphire,” he calls out for me, even though he can see me, pain written all over his face, his eyes rimmed with red.
I cry as he bolts toward me. My tears fall for myself, for him, for us, the fact that I thought I might not see him again.
If that mud had caught up with me, I wouldn’t have.
“Sapphire.” He’s beside me in seconds, and he stalls for a beat as if scared to touch me.
“I’m okay.” I’m not hurt. Well, I am; I’m bruised and battered, and have a sprained ankle but nothing is broken.
The mudslide tried to break me, but it didn’t.
I raise my arms in the air, and that’s all it takes to make him throw himself around me as much as he can because I’m lying down. Holding me close, squeezing me, he tucks his face into my neck, not caring if he gets covered in mud and dust.
Together, we stay like this until I have no tears left to cry. When my chest stops stuttering, he leans out of our embrace, wipes my dust-filled hair away from my face, and cups my cheek.
“I thought I’d lost you, baby,” he muffles into my neck, and all I can think about is how good he smells: like my Elijah.
“But you didn’t lose me.”
“What I said yesterday…”
I cut him off. “I don’t care about yesterday.”
“Don’t downplay what I did, Sapphire. What I said was unacceptable, and I’ll understand if you never forgive me. I should have run after you when you left, and I should never have let you go to your parents’ alone.”
“And I should have checked the weather report.” I feel so foolish, but what happened happened, and I can’t change it.
I breathe him in, clutching the fabric of his T-shirt to ground myself, to prove that I’m here and so is he.
“I’m so sorry, Sapphire. I never meant to hurt you. I called you over and over to apologize, and to tell you I love you.” His voice is husky, breaking in places.
“My phone’s in Mistee’s car. The mudslide washed her car down the valley.”
“Oh my God, how did you escape?” He backs away, looking deep into my eyes, and the pain reflected in his cuts me wide open. He’s so distraught, as if imagining what I’ve been through and wishing he was there to help.
“I jumped out of the car before it hit the car fully.”
He wraps himself around me again, this time squeezing me tighter. “I almost lost you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m a fuck up. I fuck things up and I never meant to hurt you,” he keeps repeating like a mantra.
For a man who struggles with his feelings, he’s letting them bleed out of him right now, all over the asphalt.
“You hurt me because you’re hurting, Eli. About your dad’s accident and his illness, it has been a lot for you to deal with. I know deep down you didn’t mean what you said.” It still hurts, though. A lot.
Although, since my brush with death, it all seems so insignificant now.
“No.” His voice is strong and clipped as he shakes his head adamantly. “That’s no excuse. I was out of line, and I’m a complete fucking idiot.”
I manage a faint smile. I’m so tired and all I want to do is close my eyes and go to sleep, my body completely exhausted from being in permanent fight mode all night. “I suppose you were a bit of an idiot,” I admit, shrugging my shoulders.
Unconsciously, he strokes my matted hair tenderly, like he doesn’t want to stop, making sure that I am, in fact, here.
“I know what I want, Sapphire. I never needed time to decide, I didn’t need space to think, because from the first day I met you, all I’ve ever wanted is you.
And while I can’t take back what I said, I will spend a lifetime making it up to you; that’s if you’ll let me.
Don’t leave me, please give me another chance. ”
We naturally pull apart, and I look up at him, studying the face I’ve memorized: every childhood scar, freckle, wrinkle, and the exact shade of his eyes: steel blue.
“I’m not leaving you.” Is that what he thinks?
“You’re not?”
“No.”
My words seem to catch him off guard. I watch his eyes widen slightly, the tension in his jaw betraying his surprise.
I take a slow breath, steadying myself. “We never broke up, Elijah,” I say, my voice soft but firm.
“We just… hit a rough patch. Your dad’s accident.
” I stall, glancing away for a moment, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“It triggered an OCD episode in you. It made you lash out… because you didn’t know how to handle it.
” My fingers clench unconsciously at my sides.
I look around, noticing that the others have drifted away, giving us a bubble of privacy.
Encouraged, I continue. “You need tools to help you manage it. And you’re going to have to get help, because the way you spoke to me… that can’t happen again.”
He swallows hard, his gaze dropping for a second before snapping back to meet mine. “It won’t. I promise,” he says, stepping a little closer. His voice trembles slightly, but there’s a sincerity in it that makes my chest ache. “I’ll get help. More help… better help.”
For a moment I study him, seeing the vulnerability in his eyes, combined with the raw honesty in his words, and I let myself hope that this time, things could really be different. “I know you will.”
Then he’s back, touching my face, my arms, anything he can smooth his hands over as if checking I’m real and here, then he’s hugging me again, crushing me to him. “I love you, Sapphire. I’m so in love with you.”
“I love you too.” I never thought I’d get to tell him again.
“Your bright and bubbly personality is what I love about you the most. Your laugh, your smile. There isn’t a single thing I don’t like.”
“Not even Ghost?” Because he peed in Eli’s tennis shoes last week and that did not go down well when he discovered that half an hour before he had to leave for a game with his brothers.
“I might love you more because of Ghost. He makes us a little family.”
I shake my head at his absurdity, then let out a long, drawn-out yawn. I’m so tired, I could sleep for a month.
“Let’s get you home.”
Home.
That one tiny word sounds so good.
A thought pops into my head. “How is your dad? Is he okay?”
Eli’s eyes fill with tears and I worry for a second until he says, “He woke up at lunchtime. He’s going to be fine. He’s good.”
Oh, thank God for that.
Eli’s phone begins to ring and he smiles when he reads the name across the screen and shows me who’s calling.
“Lydia?” How does he have her number?
When he presses accept and puts the call on speakerphone, I can’t control my emotions and start crying again when my mom’s and then my dad’s voices come through the speaker, telling me they love me and that they’re only thirty seconds away, being driven to me by the rescue team, and how Eli hired a search and rescue helicopter with the help of his friends.
There’s a lot of information to absorb.
Last night, when I was all alone and cold, I thought no one was looking for me. But I was wrong. I’m surrounded by people who love me, and I’m safe now.
With the man I love by my side and my parents’ love around me, I finally know I have everything.