Dean points beyond us. “There’s a gorge over that ridge. It’s a fantastic jump into cold water. Great way to end a day. You guys want to come along?”
Noah assesses me over his shoulder, and I detect that I’m-always-game-for-the-insane tilt of his mouth. He’ll bow out if I ask, but I’m game. “Sure.”
Dean leads the way through the woods, and Noah motions for me to walk in front of him as he hangs back to walk with two of the guys. That’s the kind of person Noah honestly is—the type that will literally watch my back.
Dean’s girl is easy to talk with, which is sort of nice. After a conversation weighing the pros and cons of camping in sandals, I say, “I didn’t know there was a gorge here. It wasn’t on the visitor maps.”
“It’s not on a map.” Dean turns in front of us to walk backward. “It used to be when I was a kid. People would come through here and swim in the gorge, but then one guy out of a hundred thousand jumps the wrong way and bam—he’s paralyzed. They shut the whole area down. It’s a damn shame. Entire generations will grow up thinking they can’t do anything fun because others are afraid of getting sued.”
Sure enough, the trees give way to a small rocky clearing, and my breath catches when I step out onto the towering drop. To my right, a stream pretends it’s rapids with white foam as it barrels out of the woods and falls over the cliff.
Below, gray rocks jut from the ground. The crystal-blue water reflects the green trees that protrude from the rocks and surround the area like a canopy. It’s gorgeous, but standing three feet from the edge, I’m paralyzed by the force of gravity trying to drag me over the cliff.
I agree with the posted sign threatening prosecution if anyone trespasses or jumps. This gorge is beautiful, but dangerous.
With a hand on my uneasy stomach, I ease back as everyone else races forward, and I bump into something warm and solid. Noah wraps an arm around me and rests his hand on my hip bone. “You okay?”
The girl shimmies out of her cutoffs, and the guys toss their towels to the rocks below.
“Yep.” I blink three times.
Without warning, Dean launches himself over the cliff, and my lungs squeeze. I grab on to Noah’s hand so I can brave a peek and pray like crazy that Dean’s not plastered on the rocks below. A wave shoots up when Dean hits the water, and his friends whoop and yell.
Taking longer than I prefer, Dean resurfaces and gestures for everyone else to jump, and like dominoes, they do. One right after the other. All of them without a sense of self-preservation. Without thought. Without fear.
“Want to do it?” Noah asks.
“What? Either crack my head open on a rock or drown? No, thanks.”
Noah leans over the ledge, and I wrench out of his hold because there is no freaking way I’m getting any closer. Noah chuckles. “Way too uptight, Echo.”
“You can call it uptight all you want, but I call it not being suicidal. I have a four-inch-thick file in my therapist’s office, and I can guarantee not once does the word suicidal appear. Depressed? Withdrawn? Freak of nature? Sure. But not suicidal.”
“I’m sure the guy before Mrs. Collins used the word sociopath in my file, so jumping’s my style.”
“But Mrs. Collins is the reigning therapist now, and we go with what she writes and neither one of us are suicidal!”
Noah laughs, and I can’t help but smile with him. Only the two of us can joke about such subjects. “You’re the one that said you wanted to take more risks. Look, we’ll do it together.”
A little twinge of guilt along with happy warmth funnels through my cells. I can see it play out. Noah taking my smaller hand in his. Him leading the way. The rush of falling together and the splash of cold water at the bottom.
I have no doubt that I won’t regret it. It’ll possibly be the most exhilarating experience I’ve ever had, and Noah does look extraordinarily sexy wet. I bite my bottom lip and peer over the edge like it’s going to reach up and snatch me.
“What do you see when you look down?” asks Noah.
“You sound way too much like Mrs. Collins, and that’s not a compliment.”
“Answer the question.”
I should be poetic and mention the green trees and the white foam floating atop the blue water and the purple wildflowers blowing in the breeze, but honestly all I see are... “Rocks. Lots of sharp, kill-me-by-impaling rocks.”
Noah stands right on the edge so that his toes are off the side, and dirt crumbles near his feet and plummets to the death trap below. A pang of fear grips my chest, and I reach out to him. “You should step back.”
Because he’ll fall and then the one person I desperately need will die...like Aires. “I’m serious. Just step back. Okay?”
“Know what I see?” Noah says as if I hadn’t spoken.
You continuing this sick, twisted replay of my life? I love and trust someone, then they die a horrible, violent death? “I’ll sleep in the field. That’s risk-taking. As in there are probably venomous spiders and snakes and rabid raccoons. That’s a lot more death-defying than this.”
“Water. I see water, Echo. A large pool of water.”
Our gazes meet, and his dark brown eyes are so soft that my belly tightens and flips. But there’s also an ache there. Something I don’t quite comprehend. “What else do you see?”
Noah breaks our connection and stares out into the glorious ravine. “A missed opportunity.”
I lower my head as the nausea strikes hard and fast. “I can’t do it.” But I want to. I wish to be a risk-taker, but this overpowering fear has me rooted to the ground.
Because God can occasionally be merciful, Noah steps away from the cliff. “All right. We’ll leave suicide off the to-do list for the night. Instead of jumping off cliffs, how about we sleep in the open?”
I want to be a risk-taker. I want to change. A silent mantra said over and over again. Sucking in a deep breath, I accept the death sentence if only because I stupidly offered it earlier. “Okay. We’ll sleep in the field.”
Noah chuckles. “Are you sure?”
“Nope, but I’m willing to do it anyway.” Forced smile. Very, very forced.
Noah yells down a goodbye, and they shout goodbyes back. We stroll back in comfortable silence, and I discover another con of wearing sandals when the leather strap rubs the skin beneath it raw. Returning to the field where Noah caught me a while ago, I pause and pull the sandal off my foot.
Noah narrows his eyes at it then surveys me. “Why don’t you stay here and I’ll bring what we need back.”
“I’ll be okay. It’s not even a blister yet.”
“Let me do this,” says Noah. “Sit down and relax.”
Noah wades through the field toward the path. He has swagger when he walks and powerful shoulders. With him, I’m hardly ever afraid. Noah possesses the ability to scare my monsters away, at least the ones that haunt me while I’m awake. For a brief few days, he’s also scared away the demons that torture me in my sleep.
It’s not until Noah reaches the path that I notice how fast we’ve lost light. There are more shadows in the forest than there is light from above. While night isn’t my favorite, I’ve never really been spooked by the dark, but there’s a nagging sensation pricking at me. An unease in the way this feels like a memory in slow motion.
Aires left this way—in the shadows. When his leave from the Marines ended, my brother said his goodbyes to everyone the night before and asked us to sleep in since he had an early-morning flight.