Chapter 1 Olivia
I trace my finger over his bare chest, playing for a moment with the smattering of sandy hair in the center, damp with perspiration and gleaming gold in the midday sun.
The square diamond on my ring finger glitters, and through my half-closed eyes it shoots out tiny rainbow prisms of light.
I rest my head below his shoulder, his thudding heartbeat slowing after the exertions of a few moments earlier.
Even though it’s not yet June, his skin is already seeing a tan from two months of shirtless surfing off the North Carolina coast.
“You’re so much browner than me already,” I murmur into his chest.
Jake gives a low chuckle that rumbles through him, reverberating through me. “Time to get you out on the water. This is the summer I finally teach you to surf, right? I promised you I would after the reno was done, and now it is, so . . .”
I lift my head to look at him. His sandy mop of hair is becoming golden. Since we moved to our fixer-upper nine months ago, he’s been out at the nearest beach almost every day except during the harshest weather.
“Are you serious? With all my new clients? And the wedding less than three months away? Honey, maybe next summer.”
Jake twists his lips. “Really, Liv? I thought the wedding was all sorted. Everything booked—”
“Sure, it is.” I kiss his smooth shoulder. “But business is ramping up, so I’ll be working early mornings and late nights right up until we take the month for the honeymoon. I mean, we’ll have a few weekends together at the beach, but I don’t see me learning to surf anytime soon. Sorry, honey.”
He blows out a resigned huff, knowing I’m right.
My interior design business has taken off in the last couple of years, giving us the extra income we needed to buy our little house and renovate it ourselves.
Well, mostly myself. And if Jake wants his dream job and the renovated house a few minutes from Wilmington’s best surfing beach, and for us to have the wedding we’ve always wanted, he needs to support my working hours.
Jake may be a lawyer, but since I encouraged him to work for a non-profit helping undocumented refugees, his salary has been less than half what he earned in private practice.
Jake props himself on his elbows, his naked body stretched out on the blanket, unabashed.
We’ve been coming to this secret spot since we were eleven, ever since Jake’s dog, Ginny, disappeared from the trail and we followed her through the gap in the wire mesh.
That moment of awe on finding this old quarry with its turquoise swimming lake has barely waned for me in the seventeen years we’ve been coming here. It’s so beautiful.
Surrounded by birch forest and completely inaccessible by road, it doesn’t even have a hiking trail. It’s marked on maps as a disused quarry, not a lake, and it’s surrounded by fencing. In fact, we’ve only ever seen another person here a couple of times.
The quarry’s steep rocky sides drop into milky-aqua waters, accessed by scrambling down the old quarry road or — for the bravest of hearts — taking a running jump from the highest cliff into the deep end.
I’ve only done that a couple of times, as I’m always scared I won’t jump far out enough to clear the jutting rocks near the bottom.
Jake, utterly fearless and at one with any body of water, does it with ease every time.
This is our place. We grew up here. We shared our first kiss in the water, aged fourteen. We lost our virginity to each other on this very spot, at the tender ages of sixteen-and-a-half (me) and just-turned seventeen (him). We even got engaged here. A year ago today.
I sit upright, my stomach churning slightly after the mention of our upcoming wedding.
Sure, it’s all booked and planned to the last detail, but that doesn’t make me any less nervous.
That’s another thing Jake is so fearless about, which I don’t necessarily share.
His certainty about me. Us. Our forthcoming marriage.
He’s told me many times I’m the love of his life, and it doesn’t matter that we’ve never been with anyone else.
He knows I’m The One.
“Didn’t you ever want to play the field, like your buddies?” I used to ask him all the time when he was home from Princeton. And, it’s come up again, since our engagement. “What if you meet someone better after we’re married?”
He’d pull me close, and kiss my hair. “Not possible. There is nobody better. You’re the loveliest, sweetest, coolest, and most beautiful of them all.”
Then why do I feel the niggle of hesitation?
I love Jake: there’s no doubt about that. I’ve never met anyone better — not smarter, not kinder, definitely not more handsome. So what makes me wonder what else is out there? Not so much in terms of men — more like life in general.
Everything is familiar. Jake and I grew up near this spot in a small, rural town just outside of Wilmington, and we’ve both lived in the city since our early twenties.
Jake went off to Princeton and law school for several years, but I studied design locally, not wanting to be far from my parents and sister.
I’ve never lived more than fifty miles from here.
When people meet us and find out we were childhood friends, they often ask how old we were when we each realized we found the other attractive.
The truth is, I don’t remember exactly. Jake just looks like, well .
. . Jake. Always has. There’s never been any newness, any .
. . excitement, I guess. That thrill of the unknown.
My skin prickles. Either with trepidation or, perhaps, the effects of the sun on my still-untanned skin. Probably both.
I sit up, reach for the sunscreen, and apply it liberally to my arms and bare legs, before passing the bottle to Jake. “Do my back?”
He pushes my chestnut hair aside and trickles cold lotion onto my shoulders and back, rubbing it in with strong, firm hands.
“I meant to tell you, Dad said yes to being my best man. He was so sweet, got kinda choked up.”
“Aww. Your dad is the best.”
“Is your sister happy about being maid of honor?”
“Yeah, Charlotte’s totally into it. She’s already planning a bridal shower. And I have all the dresses and flowers ordered, so she doesn’t have to do anything except on the Big Day.”
Jake pulls a strand of my hair aside. “She’d probably like to be given more to do. I get the impression she’s at a loose end, now she’s single again.”
I nod, pulling my hair out of the way. “She’s so disappointed it didn’t work out. She’s desperate to be a mother, which, I dunno . . . It’s a bit soon, right? I mean, she’s six years younger than me. Twenty-two. And I know even I’m not ready to be a mother yet.”
Jake’s hands still — and I know I’ve hit a nerve.
It’s a bone of contention between us. He’s more than ready to be a father, hoping there will be a baby before we’re thirty, but I’m not so sure.
I want to travel the world first, and I’m not convinced our month-long honeymoon in Asia will satisfy that itch.
He puts the bottle down. It’s obviously an effort for him to stay quiet, but I know he won’t say anything more about it — not today.
Not when we’re celebrating our anniversary, with a picnic and champagne.
Followed by a skinny dip that got very heated, and some spectacular clifftop lovemaking.
For somebody who has been making love to me for twelve years, Jake never fails to impress me with his skills.
Anybody inadvertently coming across us today would’ve gotten a real show, that’s for sure.
It’s a wonderful life. What more could a girl want?
“You wanna finish the strawberries?” Jake asks.
“No, my stomach is starting to feel weird.”
I swing my legs to the side, nearly squishing the white roses Jake surprised me with earlier. They’ve been my favorite flowers since I was a kid, and Jake always remembers to buy me them. He’s so sweet. So thoughtful . . .
And maybe a little unoriginal? Something different, once in a while, would be nice.
Still naked, I stand and reach my arms toward the sun, stretching. My engagement ring casts glittering fairy lights on the rocks.
Jake looks up at me, shading his eyes. “You okay?”
I force a smile. “Yeah. Just going to stretch my legs for a minute. Along the cliff. Would you mind packing up? I have a call at three and I need my swatches.”
A tiny crease appears at the top of his nose. He can always tell when I’m feeling off. “Sure. Just be careful on those loose rocks. I’ll never forget having to save you when you slipped over the edge. It was terrifying.”
I scoff a little. I was twelve and barely remember the incident.
But the way Jake tells it, I fell off the side of the highest rock, and was clinging perilously onto a ledge, when he hauled me back up, saving me from plunging to certain death on the rocks below.
I don’t recall exactly what happened, but I’m sure it wasn’t that dramatic. Jake just loves to be a hero.
“I’ll be fine.”
I leave Jake packing up our picnic as I tread over the rocky ground, heading straight for the high point Jake warned me about.
He’s not the boss of me.
This is my favorite section of clifftop, anyways.
It’s where I’ve watched Jake for years taking those huge, scary leaps into the deep pool.
I’m always drawn to it, to that side of him.
The fearless adventurer. The man I love, the one I want to adventure with.
Less so the guy who wants to settle down and have kids while we’re still so young.
I need to talk to him again about putting our plans for babies, and maybe even our careers, on hold for a couple of years. This wedding, our steady jobs, and our newly settled life in a finished home has me feeling antsy. Perhaps a year or two traveling the world would fix that.
I reach the highest point and lean over, my bare feet gripping the warm stone.
How far out would I need to jump to clear the rocks at the bottom?
How fast would I have to run before jumping?
I did it when I was sixteen, moments before I gave myself to Jake for the first time.
But that was twelve years ago. I’m not so fearless now.
The cliff I’m on juts out, obscuring my view of the pool below. I shuffle sideways onto some loose stones to get a better view of the bottom. The stones are sharp on my soles.
“Ow,” I mutter, lifting a foot to see if I’ve drawn blood. As I adjust my weight onto the other foot, the scree shifts below me.
Time slows. It slows enough for me to realize I’m off-balance and, as I begin to return my raised foot to the ground, the other is sliding out from under me.
It slows enough for me to understand I’m not getting my balance back, and that my only hope is to fall onto the clifftop rather than over the precipice.
It slows enough for me to know it’s too late to fall onto the clifftop. I’m definitely going over the edge, and there’s nothing but air below, as I desperately claw around for a ledge to save me.
It slows enough for me to realize Jake was right about needing to be careful, and to be irritated with him for it.
It slows enough for me to acknowledge I’m in freefall, and to recognize this is what it feels like to have your last moments. I’m almost fascinated by the experience. So unexpected.
It slows enough for me to think about how much I love Jake, and my family, and my beautiful life. I see Jake’s clear blue eyes, and the devotion in them.
And it slows enough for me to notice my body isn’t dashed on hard quarry rocks, but instead plunged into cold water. Instantly deep, instantly dark. Down and down. So much deeper than I thought.
But I don’t come up again. I keep plunging. Darker, colder, the noise of rushing water and bubbles intensifying, the pressure increasing.
Maybe I am dead, after all. Maybe this is what death feels like, and my body is in pieces on the rocks above.
Then total darkness.
Total silence.
Time stops.