Because Meg couldn’t function.Couldn’t breathe.Couldn’t help.
She was failing him.
The thought sent another wave of panic crashing over her.Her vision tunneled further.The cave walls pressed closer.She was suffocating.
Drowning in the darkness and her own inadequacy.
Liam was back in front of her with his hand on her arms.His face filled her field of vision.
“Breathe.Stay with me.Good.”
Was she doing it?
Light was returning again with colors bleeding back into the gray.She must be breathing.Must be getting oxygen somehow.
Liam guided her over to Noah, his hand firm on her elbow.“Kneel and talk to him.”
She knelt.The stone bit into her knees through her pants.She focused on Noah’s face.His eyes were open—those beautiful deep-brown eyes—but his gaze was unfocused.
She could do this.
She had to do this for Noah.Had to be strong for him when she’d been weak for everyone else.
“Don’t fight them,” she finally squeezed out as she brushed a shaking hand across his face.His skin was cold.Too cold.Clammy with shock.His short hair was soft against her palm.“Try to stay still.They are getting you to a hospital.It’s going to be…”
She couldn’t say it.
Couldn’t form the wordokaybecause it felt like a lie.Because right now, nothing felt like it would be okay ever again.The word stuck in her throat.
“Secure.”Liam guided her back—hands gentle but insistent.“You have to back up, Meg.”
“Clear,” Teague shouted just before the rope went taut.Noah’s board lifted, his body sliding toward the shaft opening.Teague was ascending with him—one hand on the rope, one guiding the basket—making sure he didn’t catch on the rough stone.Making sure the knife didn’t shift.
Then Noah disappeared into the vertical darkness above and was swallowed by the shaft.
Gone.
Meg’s vision blurred with tears—hot, tracking down her cheeks and mixing with the cave dust and blood spatters on her face.
She hadn’t told him it would be okay.She hadn’t even told him she loved him.
When Noah had said he needed her—I need you—she’d been too shocked, too overwhelmed to say it back.She had kissed him, but she hadn’t said it.Hadn’t given him the words he deserved.
And now he was dying and she’d never get the chance.
He’d risked everything down here to protect her—thrown himself between her and a gun, fought a grieving father, and taken a knife meant for her—and when it counted, when he needed her, she’d failed.
Failed like she’d failed her father.Like she’d failed Lydia.Like she failed everyone who needed her when the pressure was too much and her body betrayed her and the panic swallowed her whole.
The pattern of her life carved in stone and blood and darkness.
Thirteen
Liam had gone up with Alex, and Teague had come back for Meg.
He clipped the rope to Meg’s harness, his hands moving with muscle memory from hundreds of rescues.She was still pressed against the cave wall, her breathing ragged and shallow and her chest hitching with each inhale.Her eyes were unfocused.
He’d seen it before in rescuers who’d hit their breaking point.That thousand-yard stare.The way the body kept functioning while the mind checked out.
