Chapter Twenty-One
With my eyes cast forward, I was trying to breathe through the humidity and the unease churning in my gut when a few more resort guests boarded the shuttle.
I scanned them quickly—no familiar faces.
Relief. For about two seconds. Then Keith climbed up the steps, followed by a couple of his family members with the same receding hairlines and distinct chins, and then finally . . . Matty.
AHHH! No!!!
I wasn’t sure whether I should duck behind the seat and attempt to crawl into my own handbag or fake diarrhea and bail, but before I could do any of those things, the bus driver sealed the doors behind Matty and lurched us into motion with a groaning grind of gears.
Why was he here?! He was supposed to be on a catamaran, sipping rum punch and making poor choices to a Bob Marley soundtrack.
He shouldn’t be here. Not on this bus. Not effortlessly breezy with his headphones dangling and his legs stretched confidently into the aisle like a man who looked like he’d just escaped from a GQ cover shoot.
The blood drained from my face, pooling somewhere around my ankles, and I sank lower in the seat, out of sight, and tried to figure out whether I could will myself into another dimension or at least into the luggage compartment below.
I planned to make myself as travel-size as possible during the ride, hang toward the back of the crowd as we exited the bus, and just hope to God Matty was so far up front and ahead on the course that I’d get by with him never even knowing I was here.
The next forty minutes were a slow, vibrating crawl down a jungle road, the heat doing nothing to dull the awareness of him just a few seats away. I spent the whole ride trying not to be sick in my own lap or accidentally make eye contact. Both, I feared, would end me.
When we finally rattled to a stop at the ropes course and zip-lining grounds deep in the Belizean jungle, our guide, a woman with the shoulders of a linebacker and the calm authority of someone who could and maybe had wrestled a crocodile before breakfast, stepped in front of us and clapped.
“Alright, folks, listen up! We’re short a couple of guides today, so you’ll need to partner up. Two people per zip. Double the fun, right?”
Panic surged. I scanned the crowd. Most of the families and couples already paired off, chatting and laughing like extras in a travel brochure.
And then, of course, I caught Matty’s eye.
His face lit with excitement and he half lifted a hand, like he was about to wave me over, while every cell in my body screamed, Absolutely the fuck not!
I sidestepped Matty’s gaze so fast I nearly sprained something, and pivoting hard, found myself facing the only other unpaired person in sight.
Keith.
Awesome.
I glanced between Matty and Keith, Matty and Keith—gah! dammit! But when Matty advanced toward me, instinct took over and I made a beeline for Keith, whose eyes brightened as he spotted me approaching.
“Hey, partner!” he chirped, way too brightly. “Didn’t see your name on the roster until this morning. Kinda thought you were more of a rum punch on the open water kind of a gal?”
“Then clearly you don’t understand the chaos I’m capable of when emotionally compromised,” I snarked, trying for jovial but coming out a bit sharper than I’d intended.
He chuckled, which caught me off guard, and gestured for me to lead the way through the path over to where thick ropes and neon harnesses were set out along a massive tree line.
While we were getting strapped into gear that looked better suited for a mission to Mars, Keith checked his straps and buckles with the casual confidence of someone who’d done this before, which according to Marin, he had back in his Navy SEAL days.
All while I stood there, trying not to get distracted by the sensation of Matty’s eyes on me.
I shifted my attention to survey what I was getting myself into, and suddenly my chest grew tighter against the straps of the harness.
Desperately, I tried not to hyperventilate.
The vibrant greens of the expanse started to swirl together like an oil spill, my pulse warbling in my ears.
I glanced up. The first platform looked .
. . fine. Manageable. But each was secured progressively higher, and somewhere around station four, I officially lost the plot.
I swallowed past my nerves and hiked with the group up a short trail to where the ropes course began, an obstacle gauntlet strung through the branches like some deranged jungle gym designed by Tarzan himself.
Keith moved through each phase with practiced ease, calling out an occasional, “Watch your footing here,” or “Left rope’s more stable than the right,” like he’d done this a thousand times.
Meanwhile, I was clinging to every cable and narrow wooden plank as I was suspended thirty feet in the air, sweating through my tank top, and reevaluating every life decision that had led me to this moment.
The wood creaked under my sneakers. My palms slipped. At one point, a monkey darted across the line in front of me, and I screamed, nearly drop-kicking it into outer space.
Keith glanced back. “You good?”
“Totally!” I wheezed. “Just communing with nature. At great heights. With primates. Over the void.”
He chuckled but didn’t tease. Just waited patiently until I made my way across, step by agonizing step.
Finally, we reached the launch platform for the zip line, and that’s when my body gave out.
I stood frozen, heart racing, the canopy below a sea of leafy doom.
My hands trembled as I reached for the cable, then pulled back. I couldn’t do it.
Keith stepped beside me, his tone calm. “You okay?”
“Nope. Not okay. Not even a little okay,” I managed, breath shallow.
He didn’t laugh. Didn’t downplay the feeling.
Instead, he bent over a little to meet my eyes.
“You’re scared because your brain’s doing its job,” he said gently.
“It sees a drop and says, ‘Nope, danger, abort.’ But the thing is, fear isn’t always accurate.
Fear doesn’t know you’re suspended by gear rated for thousands of pounds and checked by someone trained for it. ”
I blinked at him. “Fear might not be accurate, but damn, is it convincing.”
He smiled. “Sorry. Force of habit. Navy SEAL training. We had this phrase: ‘Calm is a choice.’ You don’t fight fear by pretending it’s not there. You breathe through it to give it less power.”
I stared at him, this man I’d written off as a generic ex-military Dad Type with a corny laugh and a suspiciously easy smile. And here he was, grounding me like some kind of Zen master.
“I . . . I don’t trust the cable,” I muttered.
“Don’t have to trust the cable. Trust yourself,” he said, his voice low and kind. “You won’t fall.”
I swallowed hard but nodded. Clipping us in, he double-checked the gear with slow, steady hands, and when he wrapped an arm around me to brace us for takeoff, it wasn’t intrusive. It felt solid. Safe.
The platform swayed underneath me, and my stomach dropped, my eyes slamming shut. But Keith continued to coax me quite literally off the ledge. “Just breathe. You’re doing great. Look out at the horizon and enjoy this incredible view! You ready?”
And before I knew it, we stepped off the platform and into the open expanse, together. The wind roared around us, and somewhere between trees blurring beneath me and Keith’s calm voice in my ear, I realized I wasn’t panicking anymore.
I was flying.
By the time we landed on the other side, my legs were jelly but I was laughing, like actually laughing, the sound echoing through the trees, unfamiliar and wild, like it had been hiding in my chest for years.
Keith grinned. “Told you you’d crush it.”
“Thanks,” I said, quieter now. “For . . . getting me through that.”
Keith gave a small shrug, adjusting the straps on his harness with a forceful yank. “You did the hard part. I was just here for support.”
I studied him in profile as we continued on the course and he turned to help a little girl behind us adjust her helmet.
There was something weathered but gentle in the way he moved.
The kind of man who’d seen a lot, maybe more than he’d ever say out loud, but didn’t need to make a show of it. Not flashy, not slick.
Just present.
Keith clipped me in for the next obstacle and offered me a warm smile of encouragement. I gripped the rope and took a breath, surer this time.
Not perfect. But thanks to Keith, a bit more steady.