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Helena shakes her head once, shutting me down. “I can’t keep pushing you into a corner. We both know it will end with you being forced to put me down, Daniel. It can’t be you. Did you think I didn’t know what they would make you do?”
Of course, she knew. She knew from the moment that I brought her to the lookout after our first date. It was always the intention. Standing here where it’s so close to becoming a reality is not something I will be able to live with. If she jumps… if she jumps and she dies… I will not be able to go on living the life I had been.
“I want you to know that in spite of it all, Daniel, I never pretended with you about what we had… it was real. At least, it was real for me.” The raw expression of vulnerability is back on her face again. It’s such a fragile gift that she’s giving me… and threatening to take it right back if she moves even one more step forward.
Words are on the tip of my tongue. Three important words that I have never said to any woman. Words that I have been fighting myself about for days now.
“I love you, more than I ever even thought was possible,” Helena whispers so softly that it sounds like my imagination making something come true… until she throws herself off the cliff.
It happens in the blink of an eye. Her admission hits me like a cold slap across the side of the face. A single blink to process the words, and in that split second Helena went from standing in front of me, to a blur of movement.My legs, mercifully, act before my mind has time to process the raging sounds of panic in my head.
I lunge for the space she had vacated moments before, clutching at empty air. Next, I grab the metal guard railing and vault myself over it. I'm far too slow. As I slide down the mountainside after the body that appears to float on wind for a moment before plummeting into the icy water below, rocks and sharp bits of earth bite into my skin. I'll never know how she managed to avoid all of the jagged rocks at the bottom.
My clothes are shredded, and my hands are cut all over from slowing my descent toward the bottom. My feet catch on a large rock, and I rip off my jacket and hurl it to the side to avoid slowing me down. I inhale deeply and throw myself against the currents. It's a struggle to move. It's difficult to make any progress, but I can't feel any of my limbs anyway.
The freezing water makes it nearly impossible to breathe, but I manage to make it to Helena. She’s not moving. I flip her over in the water and pull her toward the shoreline. For a moment or two I’m not certain I’m going to make it, struggling to swim with one arm.
Michael must have seen us go over the edge because he’s waiting at the shore with his car still running when I reach the rocky waterline. He runs out to meet me and grabs one of Helena’s arms to help carry her back to shore. Her skin is turning blue.
I place my head to her chest, but I can’t tell if she’s breathing. I know that we don’t have much time.
“Call the fucking doctor!” I shout at Michael frantically. I pinch her nose shut and start to blow air into her mouth. Once, twice, three times until water splutters out of Helena’s mouth… but her eyes don’t open. She gasps and struggles to find air like somehow there’s something still blocking her breathing. I pull her mouth open and reach inside to fish out a chunk of seaweed that got lodged partially down her throat and her chest stops seizing. “Help me get her up!”
Michael moves quickly, already on the phone, but he manages to grab Helena’s feet for me as we lift and rush her toward the car. I climb into the back seat with her and pull off my shirt and her sweater to hug her close to my chest. A moment after Michael slams the door shut, the car races to life down the bumpy path leading away from the waterfront.
“Faster!” I shout to the front seat. I don’t know how much good my body heat will do her. I can feel the tremble of the cold water down to my bones, but even if it buys her another five seconds then I will do everything in my power to make sure she lives them.
I can’t lose her.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Three days later
Daniel
The beeping of hospital monitors has become something of a lullaby to me over the last three days. I’m becoming one with the chair at Helena’s bedside. I know that I can’t stay here forever… but I can’t leave her side. Any slight change in her numbers or levels has my panic starting fresh inside of my chest. Nothing that I do seems to manage it. I keep waking with a violent start every time that one of the doctors comes into her suite.
This time it’s a knock on the door that does it.
I startle and jerk awake as the door opens.As I leave the chair, I quickly wipe the back of my hand across my mouth and push the hospital blanket that the nurses insisted on leaving with me. Helena looks unchanged. A thin piece of medical tape holds her eyes shut, and a tube protrudes from the corner of her mouth. Her finger is connected to a pulse oximeter, and other wires are attached to various parts of her body. Three days... and she shows no signs of improvement.
I’m expecting it to be one of the doctors coming in to check on her and record her vitals like they do every hour, but to my surprise this time it’s Michael—with two travel cups of hot coffee. He holds one out to me and places the other on the counter by the small metal sink. I know he’s pretending that he got one for himself, but I know that too is for me.
“How’s Henry?” I ask automatically and skip past all of the pleasantries and small talk.
“He’s alright. He asked for you at dinner this evening, but I told him that your work was keeping you occupied for a couple more days. I’ll head back to the estate after I leave here just to make sure that he’s alright.”
“You’re staying there, right?” I ask as I take a sip of coffee and burn the tip of my tongue. I pull the lid off and blow into the black liquid while he answers.
“Of course, sir.”
I nod. I trust Michael to run things in my absence. Well, most things. There’s one pressing, looming issue hanging over both of our heads that we have yet to address. He must sense that I’m not quite ready to talk about that particular subject because he opts to ease in slowly with an unrelated question.
“Any updates from the doctors?”
I shake my head. “No, they all still maintain that there should have been no lingering brain damage from the fall. They are hoping that once her oxygen levels are steady again following all of the inhalation of water, she will wake up. They said that there is no telling how much she might have swallowed or what might have been in the water… so those things combined with the general shock to her body…” I trail off. “She just needs time.”
At least, I have to hope that’s all that it is. I have to take their word for it.
