16. Ladder, Chandelier, Freefall
Ladder, Chandelier, Freefall
Falon
Frank calls out a little too early today. He’s been like this all week.
Someone really should talk to him about time frames, and when it is and is not okay to announce the morning at what I can only describe as o’-dark-thirty.
I lay there for several minutes, hoping he’d reconsider.
Maybe, if I were lucky, I could go back to sleep for at least fifteen more minutes. But he didn’t.
I glare at the window, sigh in resignation, and get up. Should I kill Frank the rooster tomorrow or give him a little more time? I’ll let him live. Usually, he’s a good rooster. I growl. Something must have woken him.
By the time I get ready and make it downstairs for some much-needed coffee, I am already mentally tallying everything that needs doing.
The squeak on the seventh step, I thought I fixed last week.
The barn door was being overdramatic after I tapped it with the tractor yesterday.
That wasn’t entirely my fault. The brake stuck.
There was really no stopping it. I’ll have to take the tractor over to Jake at the garage tomorrow, but that’s tomorrow’s problem.
I flick on the temporary hallway light I’d installed when I first moved in, only to discover the original fixture didn’t work.
The temporary light is dim enough to double as a scary movie; it sometimes flickered, but it was better than nothing.
The new chandelier had sat boxed in the entryway for months: an old, cast-iron, five-armed antique salvaged from a barn sale two counties over, rewired by a guy in Billings.
It belonged above the staircase, hanging where the first one had hung for sixty years.
Every morning, I tripped over that box on my way to the kitchen.
Yet, always telling myself not today, I kept walking.
Then I stepped off the last stair and hear it.
A loud, terrifying, piercing squeak that makes my heart drop to my toes.
Rowdy’s squeaky toy was left on the bottom step. Almost lying in wait.
I let out a sound that is not my finest moment, stumbling sideways trying to get away from the killer toy, and grab the banister hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
I stand there for a second, hand on my chest, glaring at the toy.
“That’s it,” I say to no one. “I’m fixing that light today.”
I pick up the toy and throw it across the room. The barn door can wait. The tractor is already on tomorrow’s list. But that dim, flickering, horror-movie hallway situation was getting resolved if I had to break my neck doing it.
I had no idea how prophetic that would turn out to be.
The chandelier’s hook can’t go into drywall; it needs to go into a stud or joist, and the only ladder tall enough to reach is the twenty-foot extension ladder that lives in the barn.
I’ve used it plenty. The issue is the entryway.
It is a narrow staircase cutting into the floor space.
This means the ladder base only fits in one specific spot, and that spot is not ideal.
I know I’ve put it off for months just because even thinking about that entryway setup gives me a knot in my stomach.
This morning I decided that’s no longer my problem. I am going to do it anyway.
Bo and Rowdy had just come back from their Monday morning meeting with Sam and had headed straight out to the east pasture. I watched them go from the kitchen window. Bo, with his coffee still in hand, Rowdy trotting ahead, making a beeline for the cattle.
That was forty-five minutes ago.
The house is mine. The chandelier is right there. And I am done waiting.
I drag the ladder in from the barn.
The entryway is cool when I set up the ladder.
The light from the side window pours in, letting me see the ceiling clearly.
I check the ladder feet twice and confirm the angle.
Pulling on my work gloves, I start climbing.
The chandelier bracket sits in one hand while my stud finder remains clipped to my belt.
The joist is exactly where I marked it when I hung the temporary light.
I know this because I double-checked it twice. I’m not stupid.
I locate the joist, mark the drill point with a pencil, and start working.
The entryway is quiet except for the sounds of the house breathing around me and the whir of my drill.
Old wood, old plaster, the creak of the ladder when I shift my weight to reach slightly left.
I find the angle I need, lean into it, and for a minute, everything is fine.
Then the ladder shifts beneath me.
It’s subtle at first. Just a small slide, the base shifts a little on the hardwood, my foot skidding along the newly polished floor. Then the ladder shifts more. I react quickly, grabbing the rung above me with my free hand as the whole ladder rocks once under me.
There’s one terrible moment when I lose my grip and reach out, grasping only air, my heart jumping into my throat.
As the ladder slips but doesn’t fall, I lose my balance and start to fall.
It tips just enough. Just that one slow, terrible degree.
I lunge for the only thing I can reach, the banister rail on the staircase landing.
My hands close around it. The ladder clangs sideways into the wall.
I’m left hanging, feet swinging, the chandelier bracket swinging from my wrist by its loop.
Both palms grip weathered wood like it’s the only thing in the world. Because it is.
“Falon.”
I hear Bo’s voice from somewhere below me, then the screen door hitting the wall, Rowdy’s nails scrambling on the porch boards, and Bo’s boots crossing the entryway floor in about four long strides.
Rowdy’s nails skid in behind him, and he crashes into the fallen ladder with a clang that echoes off every wall in the entryway.
“I’m fine,” I say immediately.
“You’re hanging from a banister.”
“I have a good grip,” I say breathlessly.
A pause. “You’re fourteen feet off the floor.”
“I am fully, painfully, aware of how ridiculous I look right now,” I squeak out, internally praying I’ll dissolve into the floor before Bo can comment.
Another pause, shorter. “You can let go. I’ve got you.”
I look down. He’s directly below me, both arms up, steady.
“I can’t.” My voice squeaks again.
“Yes, you can.”
“Nope.” My voice comes out teary this time. “It’s too far. I’ll break your… something.”
“Falon Williams.” His voice is calm and certain. “You are going to let go, and I am going to catch you. I promise.”
My grip is failing. My hands burn. I know I can’t hold on like this for too much longer.
My grip finally slips, and I let go and let out a squeal as I fall into Bo’s arms.
Bo catches me easily. His arms close around my waist. My back hits his chest, and we both absorb the landing. His knees bend. His arms tighten around me. A low sound between a grunt and pure relief exhales from him. For a second, neither of us moves. My feet find the floor.
His arms don’t leave as I take in a few shaky breaths.
I am very aware of exactly where his hands are.
One at my waist. Another just below my ribs.
His warmth seeps through my shirt. My heart is still hammering, but it’s not from the fall.
It’s because every fiber of my being is very aware of the tingling sensation his firm hold has on me.
I should step forward, put some air between us, and act like a normal person.
You know, the type who doesn’t squeal into a man’s arms from fourteen feet up.
But I can’t move. I don’t want to.
With a quiet, almost resigned exhale, Bo’s hands slide from my waist to my arms, checking me over in that steady, methodical way of his. I miss the warmth of his arms immediately. More than I want to admit. I’ve crossed the friend line in my head, and now, I can’t even see where it is.
Rowdy plants himself directly in front of us and barks once. I jump at the loud sound. And Bo’s grip on my arms tightens just enough to let me know he still has me.
“We’re fine,” Bo tells him, chuckling.
Rowdy barks again.
“Buddy.”
Rowdy sits, but his ears stay up, and his eyes stay on me, unconvinced.
Bo’s hands are still on my arms. “Talk to me. Are you okay?”
I look down at my leg, which is starting to burn a little. There’s a scrape along my right calf from where I caught the ladder frame on the way down. It’s not deep, just raw, and my skin is striped pink across the surface.
“Yep, I’m good. That’s nothing,” I say.
“Sit down.”
“Bo—”
“Falon.” He says it quietly, and I can hear in his tone that there’s no room for argument. “Sit.”
He leads me to the second step of the staircase, then disappears into the kitchen and returns with the first-aid kit from under the sink.
Working on a ranch since birth should make me less accident-prone, but alas, no.
That’s why I keep a first-aid kit on every level of the house and even stash a few in the barn.
He kneels in front of me, opens the kit, and his hand closes around my ankle to tip my leg toward the light. His focus is on the scrape, but the touch of his hand has me focusing really hard on anything but that.
The furrow between his brows. The way his jaw sets when he’s concentrating. The particular steadiness of his hands.
Get a grip, Falon. Now is not the moment to obsess over how his brow furrows or his jaw sets. Focus on literally anything but the fact that I’m fixated on every move he makes. Why can’t I stop noticing?
He cleans the scrape. Presses a folded square of gauze against the worst part, holds it there for a moment, and the motion and whatever he put on it stings a bit. I inhale through my teeth.
“Oh, it’s not that bad.”
“Yeah, easy for you to say, you’re not the one on the other end.” I smile a little as our teasing starts to make a reappearance.
“Anywhere else? Or is it just your leg?” Bo smirks, and a little more of me melts.
“Nope, just the leg.” And my ego.
Rowdy pads over and drops his chin on my knee. I put my hand on his head. His tail wags, slow and content.