I heard a cry that might have come from me, maybe from someone else, but its desperation and terror was clear. For one heart-freezing moment, I remembered coming home years ago and finding Malcolm’s unmoving body sprawled at an awkward angle on the couch. He had been half hanging off it, his eyes wide open and filled with blood. The scream ripped out of me as I had flown across the room to collapse beside him, holding his cold body and shaking it as I screamed just like that.
Except I didn’t fall immediately; I watched the ledge disappear and faced a wall of rocks instead. Then something closed around my wrist, and I was yanked, slamming into the wall and then slid down a little further. I looked up to see Marc dangling dangerously off the ledge as he held onto my wrist with a grip that ached, but it was the best feeling in the world as I scrambled to find purchase.
“I got you,” he said in a tight voice, but his eyes widened when the ledge he was dangling over crumbled, and just before it gave way, he managed, “Oh fu?—”
Once more I was tumbling into the abyss, but this time it was with Marc’s hand closed around me. Somehow, against all logic, I felt him closer, his arms holding me tight…and we fell together.
MARC
The world tumbledand spun as I held tight to Reggie. Everything had happened so fast, and I had no idea how much time had passed from the moment I’d heard Reggie’s alarmed shout and then he’d been moving. Now we were both helpless to gravity as it dragged us down, and I knew it wouldn’t be too long before we?—
Pain exploded, and I heard something crack as Reggie grunted harshly in my ear, a harsh breath of air as my back slammed into something solid.
“Agh!” I cried as I tried to move, and my left leg screamed with an agony I had never felt before. White exploded in the center of my vision, blotting out the blue sky as Reggie shifted on top of me. “Stop! Wait!”
Reggie froze as I panted, on my back with rocks digging in as the white disappeared and the foggy edges of my vision the agony had brought evened out. My breaths were still coming out in hard pants as I tried to think around the pain that felt like it had become my entire existence. I focused on his face, seeing it smeared with dirt and a cut down his cheek as he looked around with eyes wider than plates.
“Marc?” he asked softly, and I could feel his fingers digging into my arm as he stared down at me, worry and fear in his eyes. “I think…we’re okay?”
“Relatively speaking,” I ground out. “Is it…safe for you to get off me?”
He looked around again and nodded grimly. “Yeah, we, uh…landed on a shelf. Didn’t know there were any around here.”
“Life is full of surprises,” I said as the pain, still great and demanding, eased enough that it wasn’t taking over my thoughts. Enough that I could see he was right, we had landed on a shelf that jutted out from the rock face and barely had enough space for us. Where we had fallen from was perhaps twenty feet above us, not enough to kill us depending on how we landed, but far enough that rescue…would be difficult.
Reggie glanced over his shoulder, and I followed to see what he was looking at as he scoffed. “Jesus, talk about luck.”
In a sense, I understood what he meant. The shelf would look small from above, but that’s because the angle wouldn’t allow us to see that it retreated into the rock face, forming a shelter if we wanted to squeeze in there. There was the fact that my leg felt like it was on fire and filled with glass, so luck hadn’t truly been on our side.
Maybe. “Are you okay?”
He looked down, patting himself and nodding. “Kind of got smacked around when I fell but…Jesus, you…holy shit, your leg!”
“Do I want to look?” I asked, having been lying on my back for just that reason. “How bad is it?”
“Uh, well,” he said, and the paleness in his face wasn’t encouraging. “You are definitely going to the hospital, fucking hell.”
Well, I was going to have to face the mutilation of my leg at some point, and with a breath to brace myself, I pushedmyself up. I forgot what goes into trying to pick yourself up and instinctively used the leg I’d hurt. The pain almost made me pass out as I flopped back, not caring when I felt my head smack the rocky shelf.
“Don’t, Jesus,” Reggie chastised. “Here, hold on a second; don’t move.”
Not that moving sounded appealing, but I did what he said without a fuss. He shuffled behind me to pick my head up and place it and my shoulders in his lap. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, but his lap was better than rock, that was for sure. It also allowed me to see my leg without needing to move, and I groaned as I stared down at the white bone sticking out near my knee, red smears tracing down as my jeans soaked with blood.
“Well, that’s…not supposed to be on the outside,” I hissed as I closed my eyes.
“You won’t be salsa dancing anytime soon, that’s for sure,” he said grimly and peered up at a shout from above. “We’re okay! Well, we’re alive.”
“Dad!” Jude’s voice echoed down, and I could see the paleness in his face.
“Don’t,” Reggie scolded as he felt me draw in a breath to call back. “He’s okay! He’s alive!”
“Jesus Christ, I’m so fucking sorry!” Jude shouted, and I wanted to scramble up that rock face, broken leg be damned, when I heard tears in his voice.
“Cut that shit right now,” Reggie barked back with a shocking amount of authority. “Split into two. One group to go back and get someone to get us out of here, and we need the rest to stay here with us just in case. The group staying, there’s some rope in my bag that you can lower the first aid kit down with…and some bottles of water.”
“My bone is sticking out of my thigh; I’m in the worst pain I’ve ever been in,” I began in exasperation. “And I’m getting turned on because you’re being bossy.”
Reggie stared at me with wide eyes. “Don’t you fucking dare go into shock, Marc? I swear to God, not after what you did, don’t you dare.”
