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“Once,” I admit. “Some idiot kid dared me, said I was chicken, so I couldn’t back down. It was terrifying, I was certain I was going to break every bone in my body, I screamed all the way down.”
“So, no extreme sports for us then,” Reeve says with a grin. “Noted.”
Us.
I swallow back another wave of emotion, and get to climbing, scrambling carefully up the trail in the rocks. After all my stubborn outbursts, this man is still following me up a sheer cliff and planning for a future together.
He really is the partner I’ve been wishing for.
I huff for breath, forcing my attention back to the climb. A wrong step here could end in disaster, and sure, plummeting to my death with "I love you, too” on my lips would be tragically romantic, I’d prefer for us to live a long and happy life together instead.
More romance, less tragedy.
So, I go slow. The spray from the falls has made the rocks slippery in places, so I take my time, going hand over hand and calling down warnings to Reeve behind me. I’m sweating through my jacket by the time I finally pull myself up onto a level platform right near the top of the waterfall.
Reeve follows, straightening up. He says something, but it’s lost under the roar of the water. “I said, how did Earl get the treasure up here?” he tries again, louder this time.
“He could have used ropes to winch it up,” I reply. “Like they did down in the mines.”
We make our way carefully along the platform, edging step-by-step until we pass behind the plummeting sheet water, right behind the waterfall. I’m half-soaked from the spray, but my heart is pounding with excitement now, the sense of anticipation and possibility I always get when I’m close to a find.
It’s here, I can feel it.
Reeve takes my hand as we venture into the dark. The mouth of the cave slowly narrows as we move deeper into the rock, and the air turns thick and dank; the darkness lit only by the beam of our headlamps, bobbing together in the dark.
Reeve squeeze my hand tighter. “About those bears…” he jokes, but I can hear a note of tension in his voice.
“There’s spray in your pack.”
“Good to know!”
We keep moving, scanning around with our headlamps, until I see the cave end in a sheer wall of rock up ahead. “It’s a dead end,” Reeve says, coming to a stop. “There’s nowhere to go.”
I sweep my beam over the rock, looking for—“There!” I exclaim, spotting a narrow crevice at the base of the rock. “I think I can wriggle through.”
“What? No, Ivy,” Reeve starts to protest, but I’m already crouching down, shining the lamp deep into the dark.
“It’s not far,” I report back. “It opens up into another cave.”
“A cave of bears,” he says, looking dubious.
I grin, already peeling off my pack, and shoving it ahead of me into the blackness. “Don’t worry, bears wouldn’t fit.”
“That’s a relief.”
“It’s much more likely to be snakes.”
“What?” Reeve’s panicked voice echoes behind me as I crawl on my hands and knees, squeezing through the crevice. “C’mon, Ivy, you can’t say things like that,” his voice follows, staying close, as he crawls after me. “And before you think this makes me any less of a man, let me tell you, even Indiana Jones was smart enough to be scared of snakes.”
I smile, pulling myself the final few feet, and emerging from the tunnel into another, smaller cave. This one has a low ceiling and dirt on the ground, so deep in the rock face that the roar of the waterfall is muffled to a whisper.
I get to my feet, sweeping the cave with my headlamp as Reeve scrambles out after me. He straightens, quickly brushing himself down. “No snakes,” I reassure him, but he’s smiling.
“Look what I found.”
He holds out his hand to me. And there, glinting in the palm of his hand, sits an old coin. It’s dirtied with age, but a part is worn clean, and glints in the dim light.
Gold.
