Chapter 25 Alec
Alec
“We’re gaining on them.” Clementine tips her chin toward Zak, already crouched low, barking at his partner as he inches toward the wall.
I run my hands over the webbing around her hips again, pulling it snug. “We don’t need to beat them,” I say, straightening to meet her eyes. “Just qualify.”
Up close, her face is flushed tomato-red from the twenty-five hundred feet we’ve already chewed through. Four hours in, and exhaustion drags at both of us, but she still looks gorgeous, still has energy left. It’s exactly how I wanted today to play out.
“You’ve checked me a million times,” she mutters. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
“Be careful, okay?” I run my fingers over her waist, thighs, that tiny freckle at her neck, confirming, again, that she’s all in one piece and that she’ll stay that way.
“Steaks and beers at Daisy’s after. My treat.”
“Sure.”
I step back, admiring her one final time. She hesitates before scuffling forward and…embracing me? My mind takes a second to catch up. Her arms cinch quickly around my waist, and instantly I’m flooded with her warmth. I feel like a fool not knowing what to do with my hands.
“Hug me back, weirdo.” Her pulse jumps against my chest, and I like it so much it terrifies me. Without breaking contact, my strong, fearless fox presses up onto her tiptoes and pecks a kiss to my cheek. My grin breaks free.
She’s so close I can smell the peanut butter pretzels she had for breakfast on her breath. I filled my bag today with all her favorite snacks, even though it put my pack three ounces over. I’d do anything to keep her motivated.
I bite down hard against the urge to take her mouth with mine.
“What was that for?” I manage.
There’s an endlessness to her eyes, a brightness around the whites, that makes her look lit up from within. “Just—thank you.”
For a breath, I let myself imagine days with her.
Waking up and pulling her body into mine, learning the shape of how she sleeps, over and over.
The shape of a life that isn’t just transactions and rope checks.
But then reality slams into us when the first team’s bell clatters from below, the rush of voices rising up the rock.
“Let’s go qualify.” I let her go reluctantly, because if it were up to me, I’d say to hell with the race and carry her off this mountain. But this is important to her, so it’s important to me.
I peer out at the ridge. It’s only two hundred feet, with no obstacles. There are safety people and a first aid tent hidden behind the sponsorship booth. She’ll be okay.
She flashes me a thumbs-up. “See you at the bottom, Hastings.”
“You got it, Fox.” I wink, and the color in her cheeks deepens.
She exhales heavily, nodding her head and whispering a pep talk under her breath.
I wonder if this is what she was like backstage before a performance.
Except instead of a tutu, she’s in a light pink tee and a pair of her grandpa’s old hiking pants that she tailored to fit her.
She leans into the rope and pushes off the gray slate rock wall, the afternoon sun glancing off her sweat, the forest birds scattering at the movement.
When she’s about halfway down, she looks up to me and grins, and it isn’t long before her feet land solid on the ground.
“Time to show these noobs how it’s done, Satie.” Her voice cracks through the walkie, and I finally let out the breath I’ve been holding. She’s safe.
Around the cliff edge, the other teams watch, waiting for me to move, their faces tight, expectant.
This is my first time back on a wall, and they all know it.
They read the headlines. They know what I did on K2, how I went down for Finn.
Their stares press into me, but I shove them off, clip in, check metal, webbing, and anchor over and over—because if I stop moving, I’ll hear the cameras clicking, the drones buzzing overhead.
I’ll feel cold air nipping at me like winter just dropped out of the sky.
I stand facing the section I’ve been dreading the most. I’ve been telling myself I didn’t need to practice something I’ve been doing for twenty-six years. Rappelling has been built into these muscles and my hands.
Boots thud on stone, partners call encouragement, carabiners clink against harnesses. Sound after sound piling up and pulling me backward. Back to Finn. Back to when we were kids scrambling up walls, laughing at bloodied knees.
I slam the thought down. Not now.
Control.
I stretch my arms, lock my legs, and the roar of the crowd dims long enough for me to believe I can do this. Of course I can do this. Especially when Clementine’s waiting for me at the bottom, counting on me to help her. I made a promise.
I push off the wall and let gravity carry me down. The harness tightens around my hips, and the rope tenses against the anchor screwed into the stone.
Down.
Down.
I slide down the wall easily, but the closer I get to the bottom, the more the noise swells—voices, shouts, the slap of wind—and my name lifts up into it, split and scattered, echoed. Then a rope pulls taut next to me and snaps.
A flash of Finn’s blue lips, his milky white pupils, the emptiness I felt finding his limp, lifeless body. I cling onto my rope.
Get it together! I scream at myself, but my mind glitches, my world tilting sideways. Wind claws up the wall, not steady but ripping, stealing the icy respirator from my mouth.
This isn't happening.
Under my palms, a crack, a slight vibration, and I snap my eyes shut. This isn’t real. The camera flashes flicker into snow, white and stinging, needling my cheeks. The air turns to knives in my lungs. The rock crusts slick beneath my boots, and the rope thickens, heavy, wet, and wrong.
I hear a scream down below. “Alec!”
It’s not Clem’s voice. It’s deeper, frayed at the edges. I know that voice in my bones.
Finn.
The rock face melts in front of me. The walls vanish, replaced by a glare so bright it swallows the sky. Screaming wind reaches my eardrums, and my breath seizes in my throat. One more blink, and the bottom below becomes a jagged slope of wind-scoured ice.
I’m not in Alaska anymore.
I’m back on K2.
The crowd below me is gone. I’m back on the mountain, at the hundred-foot drop with a silent best friend dangling from the rope. Breath shreds itself out of me.
He’s fine. I’m fine. I repeat it, but it’s useless.
“Alec!” Clementine now is cutting through the static, tethering me. “Look at me!”
The roar of the wind eats every sound except words layered over each other until I can’t tell which one is real.
“Just let go of the wall. I’ve got you.”
I want to believe her. I want her voice to reach the part of me that’s still frozen in that moment, but everything in me is locked tight. Letting go means falling. Letting go means last time.
“I’m here, I’m right here,” she calls out.
Her voice threads into the whiteout, warm where everything else is cold. Solid where the rope is not. With my eyes still closed, I bend my knees, press my boots hard into the wall, shift my weight inch by inch. I choose her voice, not the wind, not the crack that won’t stop replaying in my mind.
I move, unnatural and slow. Don’t let her down.
“That’s it.”
When I hit the dirt, my knees nearly buckle. I catch myself before I fall. I can’t get the harness unclipped fast enough. My hands feel like they belong to someone else.
“Alec,” she says again, gentle, behind me now.
“Don’t,” I say tersely. Her face pinches. I hate that. I hate that I made her look like that. “Can you sprint?” I ask her.
“Yes.” Her eyes search mine, questions rising, but the race is already surging past us. Who knows how many teams I let pass us. We need to move.
The crowd’s roar comes back, but it’s muffled like I’m underwater.
Clementine’s hand catches my sleeve, her voice threads through the static, and we run, sprinting the hundred meters from the rock face to the arched finish line.
A red screen hangs overhead, ticking closer to a hundred with each team that crosses the finish line before us.
Ninety-two. The number burns above the finish line, proof of how close I came to screwing this whole thing up. How close I came to letting her down.
Hands slap my shoulders as we push through, strangers yelling congratulations. They don’t know what just happened. They didn’t hear the crack, the rope, or Finn’s voice bleeding into hers until I couldn’t tell which one was real.
The air goes thin. Every breath is shallow, greedy, useless. My hands twitch like they’re still on the rope.
“Alec?” Clementine’s voice cuts through.
“I—” But I can’t seem to reach the words.
“What happened up there?” A mic presses under my face. “Where’s Finn? Why Alaska?”
The questions batter me harder than the crowd, harder than gravity, and I can’t face them.
“I have to go,” I mumble.
Clementine doesn’t flinch or let me bolt. Instead, her soft hand finds mine, and before I can shake her off, she’s pulling me out of the noise, past the questions, toward the dark stretch of the parking lot.
The stale air from the truck’s AC hits full blast. I’m leaning over the steering wheel, head pressed into the leather, pulse still hammering like the climb never ended.
Mozart drifts from the speakers, a soft swell against the chaos coursing through me.
Clementine sits in the passenger seat, knees folded up, head tilted, eyes catching the light as if she’s always known exactly where to be.
“I’m here if you want to talk.” Even her voice is soft, and I wish there was a way to escape into it. Escape into her and forget the past hour.
I shake my head, but her hand lands on my arm anyway. Goose bumps flare along its path; her humming threads through the commotion of the qualifier outside. It’s not pity in her smile. It’s patience, steady, as if she has all the time in the world to sit here with me.
The words have sat inside of me for so long, I’m afraid of letting them out.
I chide myself. When have I ever let fear win?