Chapter 22 #2
It was hard to tell with how weird my vision was swimming and the warped shapes that moved while I tried to focus on the dark blob of a man leaning over me.
How long had we been down here for?
It was almost around noon when I fell and now it was pitch dark out.
How many days were long gone?
There were no sounds of a helicopter approaching, blades beating against the silence of the night. Outside of the man next to me and his soft breathing, I couldn’t pick up on anything else.
Normally, that would be the promise of a peaceful night if not for the absolutely heinous amount of pain I was in.
I was wrapped up in some kind of cocoon, the silver tinfoil-thing covering me was bouncing light off from the lanterns in an annoying way.
It was tight-locking all of my limbs to my sides, along with something having been tucked under my chin and sides of my head to prevent me from moving it—a towel, maybe?
—which felt constrictive and not at all comfortable.
My body hurt but I wanted out.
Someone farther away from us snorted softly. “He falls forty feet and still wakes up a motor mouth.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“Far enough.” Fingers grazed along my forehead and up through my hairline, the feeling soothing, cutting against the sharp stabs of pain spidering through my body. “Too far.”
“Can you please apologize to Blake for me?” I asked.
“You don’t need to apologize to me, Marlow. Stop it.”
My eyes widened as reality hit me. “Blake.”
He was so hard to see but I recognized that soft laugh immediately.
Why did it sound so choked up?
“Yeah...”
“You made it.”
“I did.” He trailed a finger along the bridge of my brow and down under my eye, circling gently until my lashes fluttered against his skin. “You didn’t warn me you’d be surprising me with jumping off the side of a cliff.”
“Technically, I was jumping away from a snake. The edge of the cliff just happened to be there. Poor planning on my part, I’ll admit. Man, I’d kill for my heating pad right about now. Everything fucking hurts so bad.”
His touch was retracted almost instantly, my gut tightening in response.
His face was hard to make out with how the lantern was shining behind him, only really highlighting the outline of his body.
He hunched over to curl his hands up close to his face, sucking in a sharp inhale that sounded caught between a cough and a soft cry.
Why was he upset?
Was it something I said?
The outline of him was all I had to go off of. The shaking in his shoulders was visible while he fought back whatever was trying to burst out of him.
“Blake... I’m not going to let them sue you. I swear.”
He breathed out another laugh. This time around, it sounded less amused and held on to much more sorrow than I’d ever heard from him before. “I’m not worried about that, Marlow...”
The pounding in my head made it so damn hard to hear his softly spoken words.
I twisted my hands at my sides, the sore digits hard to flex from the healed-over cuts and scrapes of being dragged along the rough terrain on my way down. “Can you hold my hand?”
I needed to feel connected to him somehow. Chase whatever it was making him upset away for good and get my dry-humored Blake back. This overly careful, subdued version of him was freaking me out more than my broken body was.
He straightened slowly, clearing his throat. “I can’t, I’m sorry. We have you wrapped up in a space blanket so you don’t freeze out here.”
That explained the tinfoil. “What about you?”
“I’m okay.”
“No you’re not,” I argued. “You’re shaking. Get under here.”
“I’m fine, Marlow.”
“Please?”
He seemed to hesitate, fighting with himself to give in to my pleas and pull away this straitjacket so I could finally breathe again. All I wanted was to feel him curled up next to me like we’d been in my cabin two mornings ago—safe from the world and tucked in where only the two of us existed.
I barely registered the distant beating of a drum coming up over the horizon, a humming sound that just narrowly cut through my clogged ears.
“I’m so sorry,” was all he replied with. “I should’ve been here. You wouldn’t have...”
I hated how hopeless he sounded. Distress and anguish were two things I never wanted to associate him with and up until now, I never had to.
What was he even talking about?
In no world could either of us have predicted a damn snake appearing out of nowhere from between a rock formation and deciding I was its next meal. Being here would’ve prevented nothing, and if I was being honest, it may have resulted in him going over the damn edge with me.
Twenty feet from us, something flared to light and quickly shot up into the air. When it popped, the entire sky exploded in a red, smokey haze, lingering long enough for me to turn to get a good look at the man sitting next to me.
He was looking up at the sky, his tear-stained face bathed in a morbidly red glow.
“Blake...” Come here.
I wanted to kiss those tears away. They weren’t right.
His gaze shot down to me, lips parting for a moment. The call from a nearby radio was a loud and shrill noise that cut through the quiet of the night. Three trills chimed off on it before being prematurely cut off from Talos speaking into it.
“Flare’s up,” he said. “ETA?”
“Two minutes out,” was the static-y reply.
“They’re going to transport you back to Ellington Heights,” Blake told me, brushing his hand along my cheek once more. Time was moving too quickly now and I was severely running out of seconds to grasp at. To stay here longer with him. “They’ll take good care of you. You’re going to be okay.”
“You’re coming with me.”
He forced a smile, his eyes brimming with unshed tears again. What a horrible expression on such a lovely face. “You’re going to be okay, Marlow.”
He can’t leave me. He can’t go back to his life and forget all about me.
The drums on the horizon were drawing closer—the unmistakable countdown to my life changing once more for what I would argue was the worst.
After this, I was never going to see him again. Banned from the property would be an understatement, along with whatever else I’d be forced to deal with once I was cleared from Wakefield’s air space and out of the Austin family’s hair.
And if not from Blake, there would definitely be imposed sanction from Silas and Avery.
I couldn’t let that happen. Not when there was still so much of him I needed to know.
“Blake.”
“Shhh.” A single tear fell down his cheek.
My anxiety choked me, crushing my voice into something small and childlike. “Come with me.”
Another flare shot off right as the trees around us hummed with a heavy force of wind whipping and beating against the thin branches. Dust kicked up from the ground, along with whatever fallen brush was littering the well-covered area.
Blake leaned over me to shield me from debris, his eyes forced closed while he curled his hands around the side of my face protectively.
“They’re sending down a stretcher!” Talos yelled over the noise.
I fought the blanket’s captivity, every single part of me screaming.
If this was the last moment I was ever going to get with Blake, I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to touch him one more time.
To hold his hand like I wanted to before I was strapped to a damn gurney and catapulted through the air to where Silas was no doubt waiting in the ER for me at Ellington Medical.
My entire arm shook as I forced it up and out from under the blanket, the strain agitating whatever was wrong with my shoulder as I moved it. Even under the flare’s lighting, I could tell how swollen and heavily bruised it was—maybe it was even broken from trying to slow my fall.
None of that mattered the moment I grasped my disfigured hand around Blake’s wrist and held on tight. His eyes shot open the next second, surprise reflecting in them while he locked onto me.
There was so much I wanted to say, so many things I wanted to thank him for, yet none of them were coming to mind. My body was so damn tired, my energy reserves fading faster than I could force them to keep up with me.
Stay with me...
While falling back into that dark pit of nothingness, where pain and my consciousness evaporated, the last thing I felt was Blake’s lips brushing against mine before everything else faded away completely.