Chapter 22
Marlow
Voices faded in and out along with my consciousness—hard to understand through the sharp pounding in my ears, making everything seem like I was underwater.
Light danced on the inside of my eyelids, strange shapes twisting into odd figures that almost looked inhumane the more I tried to focus on them.
I parted my lashes just long enough for the shapes of the trees to come into view overhead, a cool breeze rustling the leaves to allow for sunlight to peek through in speckled moments.
And then once more, it all faded away. Gone again to return me to that inky blackness.
There wasn’t much in my life I regretted up to this point.
Having always lived under the belief of going out in a blaze of glory being the better choice compared to wasting away behind the safety net of sense and stability, I had very little in the ways of true remorse for what I’d accomplished these past thirty-five years.
Choosing to embrace every thrill that came my way and push the limits on what life had to offer no matter the cost, I chased the rush and the risks and hardly ever looked back on the consequences that followed close on my coattails.
It was the illusions of a life well-lived that I’d once believed were proof I’d somehow beaten the odds, unlike my dad whose carefully cautious lifestyle had put him into an early grave.
A real carpe diem that had soon fallen short the moment the rocks beneath my feet had crumbled away and I’d plunged to my demise.
At least there was no pain now or a slow, agonizing pull into death to endure.
I supposed that should’ve made me happy. To have died in a quick accident rather than a long, drawn out one. A snap of a finger and the blink of an eye, my life snuffed out far too soon, just like my father’s was.
Poetic. Ironic. And a little bit macabre.
Was that the way the Knight men were meant to leave this world?
Here one minute and gone the next?
Did my mom ever suspect I’d follow in her husband’s footsteps so soon after?
God, my poor mom...
She was going to lose it when Silas called her to tell her the news. Both of her family members dead within two years of each other.
How was she going to cope?
She was a mess at my dad’s funeral. Soaked from the rain drenching the funeral procession while she cried against his coffin before I finally had to peel her off of it so the groundskeepers could lower it into the ground.
Burying me was going to kill her. She wasn’t supposed to outlive us both.
I never even told her I’d come up to Wakefield to spend the summer at a wilderness adventure camp, figuring what was the point in worrying her when I’d be back soon enough and with plenty of stories to entertain her over dinner.
Regret seized me hard.
To think the last time I’d stepped outside my house and into that cool, morning air had been just that.
Getting drunk at the dive bar with Avery and Silas while they listened patiently to my romantic woes was the last time I’d ever see them.
Talking on the radio to Blake to convince him to come up to Craigleith’s peak, only to find me already long gone.
What would he think?
What news had accosted him the moment he’d finally made that final ascension up to where our campsite was?
Sheer panic?
Confused worry?
Neither he, nor his staff, were at fault for my stupid moment of panic that ultimately ended with me going over the edge of that rock shelf. There was nothing anyone could’ve done differently. Not Elaine, or Talos, or any of the other fifteen who were there simply trying to enjoy the view.
I hoped my death wasn’t the end for his business. Having something like that on their record, even if it was a simple and tragic accident, wouldn’t matter to the masses of people who would see it reported in the newspaper and demand for the place to be shut down for negligence.
All because of a fucking snake.
Something brushed against my cheek causing my skin to tingle.
“I’m so sorry,” someone whispered from somewhere.
Yeah, me too.
I hoped Blake didn’t hate me. I hoped my mother could forgive me.
“They just called. Helicopter is being dispatched in five,” someone else said, farther away.
Another gentle stroke along my cheek. The voice was closest to me. “How long until they get here?”
Wait, helicopter?
“Hard to say. I’ve got a flare I’m going to shoot off when they get close enough so they can find us down here. I’ve got their dispatch on standby.”
“Thank you.”
Wasn’t I dead?
Why the hell were they calling a helicopter if all they needed to do was belay my dead body up the ravine or wherever the fuck I ended up?
Sure, it was going to cause a little bit of an emotional scar to those there witnessing everything, but that was far better than wasting resources trying to do things ‘respectfully’.
Who cared about that when I was gone?
“Ivan’s going to start taking everyone back down. Lydia finally made it up.”
“Good.” A soft sigh. “Good.”
Why did all of this feel so very real and not some far off dream?
My heart thudded hard in my chest.
This was no out of body experience. I was trapped somewhere, not floating above it all like a ghost drifting in the wind attached to the place its corpse passed at. Like the kind of spirits mediums saw on the side of the highway after a major car accident.
My consciousness was grounded with no sense of anything other than this black void surrounding me.
How was that possible?
If I was still alive, wouldn’t I be in pain?
No way I landed all right and ended up with only a slight concussion.
Or—
Holy fuck, was I paralyzed?
My eyes shot open immediately, my sense of being having slammed back into my body with a kickstart that had my body twitching against the cold, solid ground.
It was dark all around where I was, faint outlines of the trees and other brush I’d landed in hard to make out, even with whatever lantern lights were set up and trying to illuminate this little piece of land.
Pain ricocheted inside of my body the moment I became aware of this not being some kind of fucked up ferry to the afterlife, so intense it stole the air from my lungs.
Minutes before this, I’d been in some kind of void inside of my own mind, free from whatever mortal shackles bound me to my own flesh and bone that I’d somehow shattered the moment I’d forced my eyes open.
A groan rumbled past my lips.
Holy fucking shit—
Now, I felt it all. Every single scrape, bruise, break, and slice inflicted onto my body as I’d dropped and rolled against the sharp rocks below the base of the rock shelf.
Whatever I’d landed on and eventually slammed up against to prevent my body from rolling all the way down to the base of the valley had cracked me apart in several things, making it nearly impossible to pull in a full lungful worth of air without causing my eyes to water.
“Marlow?” The voice near me sounded choked up with emotion, hard to make out through how clogged my ears still felt as blood rushed through my skull.
I groaned again.
“Oh my god.” A shadow passed over me, blocking out the light from the lantern closest to me. “Tell me where it hurts.”
Fucking everywhere.
Was it normal to feel like your body was simultaneously on fire and frozen to the core?
Or was that just a special gift given to me?
“Hey, hey.” A hand stroked my cheek. “You’re okay. We’ve got search and rescue on the way to airlift you. They should be here soon. Try not to move your head too much. We need to keep your neck stabilized.”
I swallowed thickly.
Was my neck broken?
Wasn’t that code for, don’t move or else you’ll paralyze yourself more?
“Are my toes wiggling?” I asked.
There was a pause. “What?”
“Are. My toes. Wiggling.”
The shadow disappeared from view, the light from behind him blinding me suddenly and forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut to save my poor retinas from the assault.
A hand ghosted over my ankle on the left side, tapping down to the bridge of my shoeless foot.
I forced my toes to strain for it, meeting the curved palm as pain shot up my leg in an excruciating way.
Wow, fuck that was rough.
But I could feel it. That meant my brain was still firing off those goddamn neurons up and down my spinal cord.
“Yes?” he said. “But don’t move your leg too much, okay? It... we have it in a splint—”
I let out a massive sigh of relief and then laughed, a nearly hysterical sounding one.
I lived.
I fucking fell down the side of a goddamn cliff and lived.
Oh, Silas was going to owe me more than an IOU. He was going to give me that pretty little savings account he had stashed with enough money to buy a small country and he was going to let me play around with it while I threw most of it at the stock market.
“Marlow?”
The only thing that would make any of this better was if Blake was here.
My heart ached. I missed him so goddamn much.
The pain was making me delirious, tricking me into believing if I reached out, I’d be able to touch him.
Wherever he was, I hoped it was far away from here.
This wasn’t exactly the alluring image I wanted him to have stuck in his brain after I’d promised an unforgettable night nearly forty-eight hours prior.
“Hey. Can you do something for me?” I asked.
The shadow came back into view. “Anything.”
“Can you tell Blake I’m sorry. He’s the director of the place. Tall, tan, light brownish hair that looks kinda dark blonde in the sunlight. Cute little freckles under his eyes. Brown eyes that turn golden during a sunset. You know who I’m talking about?”
There was another long, drawn out pause. “Why in the world would you be sorry?”
I let out a long, mourn-filled sigh. “I think my friends are going to sue this place. I swear I’m going to try and talk them out of it, you can tell him that, but one is a billionaire with too much time and money on his hands and the other is a hardass who believes in ‘an eye for an eye’.”
Was I making any sense?