Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Tabitha
“Rock! Fuck, Zac, move!”
They say when you experience danger, time slows down and you see things in chillingly slow motion. But for Tabitha, the dislodged rock fell with terrifying speed and those four words barely left her lips before it landed on the ledge below with a sickening crack.
“Zac!” she shrieked, too scared to look down and see her once-was-lover smashed by the small boulder.
“I’m ok, tabby cat!” he called up with shock sticking to each syllable.
“Thank god,” she muttered into the warm afternoon air.
Her heart slammed against her ribcage as though it were trying to escape.
Sweat beaded on her upper lip, her palms. When she saw how much her hands tremored, she grabbed onto the rope to steady them.
Her grip tightened as though she could stop the shaking if she squeezed hard enough.
“Are you in one piece up there?”
“Yeah,” she assured him, trying desperately to quiet her pulse and regain her breath. “Startled and shaky but fine considering.”
“Good.”
“Give me a bit to relax and I’ll be ready to finish the pitch.” Her form would be sloppy but getting to the top was all that mattered. And fortunately, the final route rated only slightly harder than the first pitch they’d climbed. “All I need is, like, five minutes—”
“Uh. About that . . .” Zac’s words trailed off and Tabitha’s gut plummeted nearly as fast as that falling boulder had.
“About what?” she asked, trying her damnedest to maintain the sliver of calm she’d managed to gather with her breathing exercises.
He didn’t respond right away. From where she hung, she could see the top of Zac’s helmet and everything behind him but nothing ahead of him on the inner part of the ledge.
Tabitha extended her legs and pushed away from the wall to get a better look.
He appeared to be fiddling with the rope and emitting quiet expletives that she couldn’t quite make out.
“I say again . . . About what, Zachariah Sebastian Hartford the third?” Her agitation bubbled to the surface and she wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.
Containing it would have been best, but that ship had sailed so far out of the harbor that it was a blip on the horizon.
Panic was nipping at her heels and without anywhere to run, she was at the emotion's mercy.
Zac stepped back and craned his neck to look up at her. Even from so high up Tabitha could see the constricted line of his knitted brows.
“The rock,” was all he said.
“What about the rock?”
“It didn’t land in a great place.”
“Can we quit with the clues and give me the freaking answer already?”
“It’s on the flaked rope.”
His statement ricocheted in her ears with increasing volume that she believed it would burst her eardrums. Either that or her slamming pulse would finish the job.
She wasn’t stuck. She couldn’t be. She was twenty-some-odd stories off the freaking ground. At least fifty feet from the ledge Zac belayed from. Was there not enough to lower her?
"And . . ." Zac trailed off.
"And? What?" Tabitha barked, shocked by the vibrations of her own words in her chest.
"The—um—rock knocked my pack off the ledge."
A throb developed in her face from pinching her eyes shut so forcefully and clenching her jaw. It all had to be a joke. Some cruel prank to fuck with her. But no. There was no way Zac would be that childish.
The rope was stuck and his pack long gone.
She had to focus on one thing at a time.
“Can you move the boulder?” Asked.
Zac’s dry chuckle bounced up the rock face. “I love that you think I’m that strong, tab-tab, but no. I can’t move it. Even if I did, no doubt the rope’s damaged underneath.”
“So . . . what now?” She tried to swallow the hysteria, really, she did.
Zac needed to think and her panicking would do fuck all to help the situation.
But having kept her emotions in check for so long was quickly causing them to boil up and spill over.
Tears welled in her eyes. This time she refused to chastise herself for feeling a certain way. The situation was scary, damn it.
So she let the fear sink in, allowing the terror to consume her in the bone-chilling realization that she may not survive the day.
Let it gnaw and gnash at the composure she always fought to maintain.
Tears trailed down her checks, wicking away the accumulated sunscreen and dust from the day that had been going so well.
She could have screamed. Thrown something.
She entertained the idea to dissolve from the fear—right then and there—into a useless puddle.
And then she cast it out.
Because she refused to die on this rock.
Tabitha wiped her eyes and scanned the section she had just fallen from.
While challenging, she was certain she could unclip the top bolt and downclimb to the next.
If she did that at least three times she’d be much closer to the ground.
Well within a survivable fall distance. Escaping with a broken leg was better than dying up there.
“I have a plan,” she called down to Zac.
“I’m all ears because my plans are shit.”
“I’m going to get up to the last quickdraw to unclip and downclimb to the next one and then the next and the next. Easy as a picnic on a Sunday morning.”
“Tabitha”—again with the formal name—“that’s . . . that’s not going to work. What if you fall?”
“You’re a skilled belayer. I know you can take up the slack to keep me safe enough.”
Safe enough.
The words hung heavily in the air for a while. He waited for her to agree with him. She waited for him to concede because she really needed his full buy-in to make the plan work.
“You feel confident? With the downclimbing?” he asked with all the trepidation.
Barely. “Absolutely.”
“Tabitha.” He was calling her bluff. But she wasn’t going to back down. Scared or not, it was the best plan—the only workable plan.
“Zachariah.”
Again with the silent stalemate.
Until finally, “Fine. But you take it one clip at a time. Focus. Don’t get too caught up in the—”
“Potential for dying?” Look at her trying to make a funny.
“Goddammit, Tabitha. Don’t you dare say shit like that,” Zac said with abrupt fury.
Ok, so not funny.
“Sorry. Bad joke. I’ll make it up to you when I get down there. But I know what I’m doing. All right?” Climbing had always been about visualization for Tabitha. If she could imagine she was downclimbing at the gym, maybe she could focus enough to keep cool. Steady.
“Fine.” His anger had already cooled as he accepted. “We’ll do your plan.”
“Perfect.”
She chalked her clammy hands and returned them to the granite. It was still warm as the sun was high in the sky, about to tip over and make its lazy descent in the west.
Here goes nothing.
“Climbing.”
“Climb on.”
Tabitha retraced her moves up to the last bolt she’d clipped into before falling.
Muscle memory took over, and she found herself face-to-face with her target in no time.
She called down that she was unclipping so he’d give a little slack rather than pulling her off the wall.
As she placed the retrieved gear on her harness, she imagined Zac scolding her for not just leaving it behind.
But her instinct had taken over and she snagged it out of habit.
Next came the trickier part.
The downclimbing.
She shifted slowly, only making a move when she identified the best holds to assist her descent.
The route was twice as hard in reverse, and her muscles wailed in protest. But she maintained a slow, steady pace.
Zac took up slack with each of her movements, never once taking too much.
He knew what he was doing. Knew how to keep her safe.
Throughout her progress, he tossed out encouraging words.
“Keep it up, tabby cat.”
“Great work.”
“You’ve got this.”
“I’ve got you.”
Soon, she was at the next bolt. She dangled freely for a moment to shake out her arms and hands and wipe the sweat from her brow. She ached for a drink of water. All the more reason to get back to the ledge.
The next couple of sections were manageable, and she worked her way lower and lower.
Until finally, she reached a bolt far enough down the face that Zac could lower her to the ledge.
The second her toes touched the ground he slammed into her.
Those big arms crushed around her, one at her waist, the other at the back of her neck.
Her helmet smacked the side of his jaw, right below his ear.
The apology she muttered was quickly dismissed.
“You scared the shit out of me, you know that?” he said with anguish, pulling himself back so he could look at her face. His deep brown eyes were glassy with emotion, likely all the worst-case scenarios had flipped through his mind as he thought of the ways he could have lost her.
Tabitha settled her fingers on his cheek, allowing the texture of his beard in her palm to ground her. The scent of sunshine and sweat and citrus reminded her that she was alive. He was alive.
She pushed to her tiptoes and placed a gentle kiss on his lips. Whether it was merely a thank you for helping her get safely to the ledge or an offer of something more, Tabitha didn’t know. Both maybe.
All she knew was that it felt like a dagger to the chest when he didn’t return the gesture. And as she pulled away, he shook his head.
“I can’t—we . . .”
“I know,” Tabitha reassured. It sucked, but the reunion was the wrong time. There was too much at stake.
The torture on Zac’s face mimicked exactly what she felt in her heart.
Until his jaw took on a resolved clench.
“Fuck it.”