Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lemon
Time crashes over destiny, air assaults my skin, and tiny metal charms slap my wrists.
The gorge roars beneath me, a thirty-foot drop to raging rapids and boulders cut like glass, but nothing spikes fear more than the thought of losing one of these girls.
This is my family.
My home.
I choose this goddamn adventure whether it’s the end of me or not, and even as I fall, my heart flies, knowing I did everything in my power to preserve it.
My body slams violently against the sideways cypress, my knees taking the force disgracefully, but nothing could slow me while Cami fights not to fall to the thunderous whitecaps beneath.
“Lemon! Lemon, help me, I can’t hold it anymore!” She coughs on the water rising above her chin.
“I’m coming, Cam!”
I’m up in an instant, fuck the pain that stings my shins, or the splinters in my palms, and screw the fate that thinks it can take one more person I love without a fight.
“I got you, Cam! I’m coming.”
I shimmy up the trunk. Slabs of deadwood sluff to the water below, and the farther I travel, the narrower my support beam becomes.
Distantly, I hear the man I love focusing my fears, calming my chaos. His words of encouragement easing through the brush as the branch bows beneath me.
“You can do this, Lem. Help is coming!”
We were right. I fit right through the section that traps her. “I’m through!” I yell up. “Cami, can you reach my hand?”
Her fingers brush mine, but…
Crack!
The branch breaks completely, and her fingers slip through mine. Everything in my body wars against my brain. What I see can’t be what it is. What it is can’t possibly be what I see.
Stringy brown hair wisps around a small porcelain face, peppered with freckles beneath two icy blue eyes that look like his, and all I can do is pray.
“Why?” I scream to the God, who takes and takes and takes from me despite everything I try to give. “Why her? Fucking take me!”
Oliver’s sobs echo in the distance, and I can’t bear the thought of him losing her after he’s lost so much.
“Take me!” I launch my body from the branch and leap to the river, grabbing hold of her and wrapping her tiny body in my arms.
I will not let her go.
We fall.
Fast and hard.
Tears in our vision and blood over our skin, and we cry together. We scream and we hug, and we pray.
And just when everything feels like it could end, I’m yanked back.
Suspended in air at the end of a whiplash.
Not flying. Not falling.
Not ending this adventure before it’s over.
I twist my neck and search the skies to find an orange rope wrapped around her sandal.
“The hammock…”
We dangle by the grace of God and a sparkly pink shoe.
But relief is only momentary.
“My shoe! It’s slipping!”
“Cam, I need you to trust me,” I decide. “I’m gonna let go with one hand to grab the rope, but—”
“No! I’m scared! Lemon, don’t!”
“I need to, sweetie. It’s the only way, okay? Can you trust me? I’m very strong. I lift bigger weights than your dad.” I offer her the best smile I can while we hang horizontally over our potential end, and I wish I could change this for her.
But that’s the thing with adventures. With life… isn’t it? You just never know.
“You know how Kimmie says things with her eyes?”
“Y-yes,” she sobs.
“Look at my eyes, Cami.”
I’ve got you.
“Okay,” she whispers.
In one swift motion, I tighten my grip on Cami, wrapping my legs around her tiny body, and swing my arm up to the rope around her foot, gripping it in my palm just as her sandal strap brakes.
I twist my wrist, coil the rope around it, and squeeze Cami between my legs and other arm as tightly as I can. The rope cuts and rubs between my bracelets, bending metal and flaking charms into the water like confetti, but all I can think is we’re okay.
“Your bracelets.” Cami sniffles. “I’m sorry, Lemon. I shouldn’t have tried to get the hammock by myself. I thought I could reach it. I—”
“It’s okay, shh,” I soothe. “You took a risk. You chose to follow your heart, and you ended up on an adventure. Sometimes they turn out a little more than we planned. I know how that goes.” I squeeze her tighter as my muscles burn. “Can I tell you something?”
“I don’t have a choice while we’re like this.”
I laugh at that. “You’re so much funnier than your dad.”
My wrist burns from the circulation being cut, and two more charms split from their metal loops as the rope digs deeper into my skin, but that’s what I’m trying to tell her.
“None of those charms matter, Cam. I’d toss every one of them right now to keep you safe. My whole hand, even.”
“You would?”
“I would,” I say. “Someone once told me you should never settle for a life you don’t love with every breath. Well, you girls and your grumpy old dad are the reason for my breathing, and there’s not a charm on those bracelets more important than the five of you.”
Before long, a fireman from the neighboring camp is sent down with a harness.
He cuts my wrist from the coiled rope, and my hand immediately throbs as feeling comes back to my fingertips.
“I’m Dom,” he says. “I’d shake your hand, but I need to rescue you first. And your hand looks bad.
We’ll get it fixed up. Hold on tight.” He wraps his arms around us, and we’re hoisted back to the bank.
“Thank God!” Jeremy screams, scrambling past Oliver to wrap me in a bear hug. It doesn’t bother me, though, not when I peer over and see the look of a miracle in Oliver’s eyes as he rocks his baby girl in his arms.
“Wait, why are you here, Jer?”
“Excuse you!” He scoffs. “Forgive me for coming to my best friend’s aid when she’s dangling to her fucking death by a rope. What have I told you about leaving kink toys around? It’s dangerous.”
“It was a hammock rope.” I swat him. “Thanks for coming to my aid, but seriously, why are you here?”
“Cheer camp,” he says. “Bryar came and got me when your sugar daddy sent for help.”
I snort. “Wow. How is that for fate? She wanted nothing more than to go to that camp, too.”
“I heard.” He smiles. “Look, we have plenty of food, and there’s a special ceremony tonight. Why don’t you all come and fill your bellies by the fire once the EMT dude checks you out?”
I eye the man in question. Dom, the firefighter. “He’s kind of hot as fuck, right?”
“That’s what I said!” He leans in. “And I have intel that he’s got a serious thing for your cousin.”
“The fire daddy!” I gasp.
“Mhm.” He smirks. “They have been canoodling at the neighboring soccer camp we do recreation stuff with. I guess they’re coaching or whatever.”
“Katie, coaching a sport? In nature?”
“Right? Isn’t it going to make the best story? Anyway, get your knees and hand cleaned up. You look highly unattractive, this way. I’ll see you at camp.”
“Bye, Jer.” I shake my head as he shimmies away, and I step back into Oliver’s arms.
“Sour Patch,” he rumbles in my ear. It’s painful and passionate, the most feelings I’ve ever heard him share in one sound. “Thank you.”