Chapter 68
AMBER
‘Wait!’ I grab Dominic’s arm.
He flinches at my touch and I realise he’s barely holding it together.
‘There’s something else, Dom. Before you arrived, Simone told me we were alike. What did she mean? I’m not like her, am I?’
He turns back to me and cups my face in his hands. ‘You are nothing like Simone. You hear me? Nothing.’ His lips brush mine and he takes my good hand. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
I pull back. I have no idea if we’re going to make it off this damn ledge and there’s something I need to tell him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I blurt.
‘What for?’
‘Not believing you. I thought you still loved her. I thought… I thought you asked me out because I was a younger version of her, or because you wanted to make her jealous. And then, the other night, I was convinced you slept with her.’
‘Oh, Amber, you couldn’t be more wrong.’
‘But you said—’ My eyes sting, and I brush the tears away impatiently. ‘You said you would always have her back. You told me never to ask you to choose.’
His face is troubled. ‘I was drunk when I said that. And stupid. I’ve spent half my life believing it because it’s what she wanted. But it was habit. Guilt. Whatever you want to call it.’ He thumbs a stray tear from my cheek. ‘It’s you I love, you crazy girl.’
He crushes me in his arms and I melt against him. ‘I love you too,’ I whisper, because I have never been more sure of anything in my life.
Eventually, he pulls back. ‘Ready?’
I’m not. My legs are weak as jelly, my head is spinning and my right hand is throbbing like it has a life of its own. But I smile at Dom, my brave, handsome boyfriend who was prepared to risk his life to save me. I nod.
‘As I’ll ever be.’
Every step sends pain shooting through me, but I try to block it out. All that matters is climbing off this rock face, inch by sodding inch. I shut out the roaring sea and the screeching seagulls and I focus on Dominic’s instructions as he guides me from bush to bush.
When he finally drags me over the edge of the cliff, I collapse onto the ground, sucking in air.
Neither of us speaks. Then Dom lets out a long, laboured breath.
‘If I ever suggest we come to Pelagia again, you have my permission to shoot me,’ he deadpans, and I laugh so hard my stomach hurts, the pain in my wrist forgotten.
Soon Dom is laughing too: at the ridiculousness of our situation, the bullet we have dodged and the fact that we are both still irrefutably, undeniably, gloriously alive.
And then I hear a rustle in the scrub. A shadow falls over us. I shield my eyes from the sun and look up, and there she is, Simone, looming above, her face a mask of fury.
A glob of spittle lands on my face as she snarls, ‘Please, do share. What’s so fucking funny?’