Wilder (The Renegades) (25 page)

All I heard was the blood rushing through my head, the pebbles skidding beneath my sneakers as I slid toward the cliff’s edge. It was over before I even realized it had started, my momentum carrying me past the point of no return.

I grabbed for the bush at the edge, making contact as I fell over the side. My right hand closed around the branch, screaming in protest from the wood cutting away at my skin as it slid down my palm.

“Leah!” Paxton’s yell sounded like it was miles away.

My shoulder jerked as it caught my weight, the rest of me slamming into the cliff face. Pain exploded in my cheek, but I didn’t let go.

“Leah!” Paxton screamed again, but I couldn’t force sound through my throat, not even to scream. “Baby, you have to reach up with your other hand. Somebody get to her!”

“Landon’s already running!” Penna answered.

Using all of my strength, I swung my left arm up enough to grab the branch. It was barely as thick as a curtain rod. There was no way this thing was strong enough to hold my weight. My toes scrambled to find purchase against the rock face, but there was nothing big enough for my foot.

“Firecracker, talk to me!” It was only the sheer terror in Paxton’s voice that broke through the lump in my throat.

“Pax!” Was that even my voice? Something wet ran down my arm, and my hands felt slick against the branch. Blood. I had to find a foothold.

I slipped, catching myself at the tip of the branch, but my foot found a tiny outcropping that my toes might fit on. My right toes made contact, and I breathed a slight sigh of relief. “I…I think I found something.”

“Hold on!” Pax yelled. “Landon’s coming.”

“Don’t leave me!” I cried out.

“I’m staying right here, baby.”

He sounded so far away—because he was.

It had taken us ten minutes to hike up here. There was no way Landon was going to make it faster than five. I just had to hold on for five minutes.

I moved my left foot over, hoping to find another toehold to take some of my weight off the branch, and off my ruined hands. The weight on the tiny ledge was too much—it gave way.

A primal scream ripped from my throat as my feet kicked, but my hands held steady, my grip slick but still firm on the wood. My breath came in giant gulps, and I kept my eyes focused on the wood.

Don’t look down.
That had been what kept me alive after the accident.

How the hell did I end up here again?

The wood at the base of the branch creaked.

My head snapped up, and my eyes darted to the bush.
No. No. No.
“Pax, it’s gonna give!”

“Just hold on!” he yelled again. “Damn it! Why the hell don’t we have an emergency crew here? Something?”

The branch tore at the base, and I slid another foot down the cliff wall with a shriek, but it didn’t snap completely.

At the same moment, my toes grazed another outcropping just beneath me. Maybe it could bear my weight, maybe—

It ripped clean through, the sound tearing apart the tiniest hope I’d had of surviving this.
God, Mom. Dad. And Paxton’s going to see it.

This time the branch didn’t stop me, coming clean out of the ground. I let go and dug my fingertips and toes into the rock as I fell.

Paxton screamed my name.

My hands caught the outcropping my toes had been aiming for, my muscles locking as the impact jarred every molecule in my body. Another scream bubbled out of my throat as agony lit up my arms like flames, protesting every damn thing about this situation.

The pounding in my heart grew increasingly loud until I realized that it wasn’t my heart at all—it was footsteps.

“Leah!” Landon’s face came into view at least ten feet above me, sweat-soaked and beet red. “It’s okay,” he said between heavy breaths.

“This is not okay!” I yelled back. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

“No, but you’re a fighter, and we’re going to get you out of this, you understand?”

I nodded the tiniest fraction, scared to move any muscle. Landon surveyed my surroundings, leaning way too far out over the edge.

“There’s a foothold above your right foot if you raise it a few inches,” he said.

Slowly, I did as he suggested, and found it. My muscles screamed, but I pulled up enough to stand on the small ledge, bringing my left foot, too. It took my weight and held it, but given the way pieces crumbled, I couldn’t depend on it. “I don’t know how long this will hold.”

I didn’t know how long
I
would hold.

“Can we get a fucking rope up here?” Landon asked.

“It’s coming!” Penna yelled.

“Hold on, Leah!” Brooke added, the sound echoing around me.

I focused on the rocks directly in front of my face, but they morphed in my mind, changing colors, texture, until I wasn’t on a cliff in Morocco, I was back above the car crash with Brian’s body burning beneath me.

Just let go,
my memory called to me.
No one is coming for you. You can’t hold on. Just let go and it will all be over, the pain, the fear, all of it. He’s already dead.

But it wasn’t Brian beneath me, it was Paxton—whom I loved—who was very much alive. Still, my choice remained the same. I wasn’t strong enough to hold on indefinitely, and I wasn’t brave enough to let go, so I hung in limbo like I did then.

“Leah, with the angle you’re at, I can’t get to you. You have the only foothold, and if I come down, I’ll crush your fingers, which would be pretty detrimental to the goal, don’t you think?” Landon asked.

“It could put a damper on things,” I said, my voice shaking with my gulping breaths. I couldn’t get my breathing to slow, or my heart rate to calm. “Landon,” I said quietly enough so only he could hear me. “My hands. They’re bleeding, and I’m going to slip. I’m going to fall.” Every second my muscles grew weaker, my grip less firm.

“Yes.”

He said it so calmly that I didn’t panic when I looked up at him, even when more of the rock crumbled beneath my feet. “I’m not going to last until the rope gets here.”

“No.” His eyes were soft, steady.

“Leah, you’re doing great. Just hold on, baby!” Paxton yelled up.

“Am I going to die?” I asked Landon, like he held the answers to the universe.

“No.” He shook his head. “But this is going to take everything you’ve got. Are you ready?”

“Paxton shouldn’t see,” I said. “He shouldn’t have to watch.”

“He’s not leaving you. That’s why I’m here and he’s still down there, waiting for you. We’re going to have to be quick, before you lose too much strength to do this.” He turned his head and spoke over his shoulder before looking back to me. “The crew made it back up. There’s no rope, Leah. This is all about to be on you.”

I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I could barely hold myself here, let alone do any acrobatic feats. And Paxton…he was going to see me fall. He’d be the first one to my mangled body.

“Paxton,” I said quietly. “I love him. I never told him, but I love him.”

“He knows. He might not admit it, but he knows. We all do. It shines out of you two the minute you’re in the same room—anyone can see it.”

“I don’t want him to watch.”

“Leah, listen to me,” Landon snapped. “You’re not going to die. I forbid it. I’m not going to lose my best friend’s girl on some jump in Morocco. This is not how your story ends, and it’s not how his ends, either. Do you understand? He’ll be destroyed if anything happens to you, so if you can’t fight for you, then you fight for him. Got it?”

I swallowed as my arms started to shake from exhaustion.

“Pax!” Landon yelled down.

“Yeah?” he answered. “Is my girl okay?”

“I need her to jump, Pax.” Landon kept his eyes locked with mine as he said it.

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” I yelled.

“Okay!” Pax called out at the same time.

“It’s gotta be quick, brother, she’s weakening fast!”

“Firecracker, you okay with this?” Pax asked me.

“No!” I shouted as more rock gave way beneath my feet. My arms would never hold me if I lost my foothold.

“Concentrate on my voice, Leah. You can do this. You’re going to have to jump backward to clear the rocks beneath you. Do you understand?” Landon asked, never looking away.

“Rocks equal kersplat?” I questioned softly.

“And water equals safe. Water equals Paxton. Got it?” Landon asked, a trace of fear seeping into his eyes when my fingers slipped another centimeter.

“What do I do?” I called out.

“You push off with your feet as hard as you can and let go, baby. You have to come down as straight as possible, okay? Hitting the water is going to hurt, but it’s going to be okay,” Pax called up.

Let go. Just let go and it will all be over.
But this time, letting go meant giving it everything I had. This time letting go could kill me…or it could save me.

“No one can do this for you—God, I wish I could—but I’m here, Leah. I’m not going anywhere, do you understand? You can do this,” Landon promised, his voice steady and even.

For the first time I looked down.

Fuck. Shit. God, I’m going to die.
The distance may as well have been a mile. Panic crept up my spine and my vision narrowed, blackening at the edges.

“LEAH!” Paxton screamed. “Listen to my voice. Push with your feet and jump now!”

I sucked in a full breath, and my vision returned to normal as I whipped my head back to the rock face. I was not going to give in, to pass out and die by default. I would choose my fate. Either I made it, or I didn’t, but it would be of my own making.

And I wasn’t about to become Paxton’s tragedy.

“Okay,” I called out, my voice stronger than my failing arms.

“You’ve got this, and he’s got you,” Landon promised.

I nodded, pulled my body as close to the cliff as humanly possible, said a prayer, and then pushed off with every ounce of strength I had left.

My stomach dropped out as I plummeted, my arms flailing in circles as if I could slow the descent. The ground rose at a dizzying speed, the canyon wall flying by me in a blur.

Pain shot through my legs, vibrating up my spine to my head when I hit, then sank into the water.
You cleared the rocks.

Water rushed up my nose as it rose over my head, and I started kicking with every spare ounce of energy I had, stopping my descent. As I started to rise, strong arms looped around my waist, propelling me upward.

We broke the surface, and I gasped, pulling sweet oxygen into my lungs and coughing out the water that had invaded my nostrils.

“I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you,” Paxton whispered over and over as he pulled me to the shore, my back to his chest. The sheer relief of being held in his arms, of having survived the fall hit me, and my muscles simply quit, going slack.

Hands lifted me away from Paxton, laying me on something soft for a moment before he hovered above me again, his eyes bluer than the sky behind him. I’d almost lost him, almost lost myself.

I heard a splash in the background and the soft sound of Brooke crying to my right.

“Leah, Leah, Leah,” Paxton chanted my name as his hands ran over my face, my lips, my arms, all of my extremities. “God, Leah. I thought… But you’re okay. You’re okay.” He looked in my eyes, searching for something I couldn’t name but desperately wanted to give him to soothe the panic in his eyes.

“I love you, Paxton,” I blurted, needing to say it, needing him to know what he meant to me and honestly not caring what he thought about it.

“Leah.” My name sounded like the most reverent prayer on his lips, and he gathered me in his arms, holding me tight when my body couldn’t return his trembling embrace. “I can’t lose you. You’re everything.”

“She okay?” Landon asked, climbing out of the water at my feet.

“Yeah, thanks to you, she is,” he answered, still cradling me against his heartbeat.

“She did all the work, man. Leah, you really are a firecracker,” Landon said, taking a dry towel from Penna and wrapping it around my back. “Not many people could have caught themselves the way you did, or hung on like that. Talk about a trip.”

Trip? I looked up at the top of the cliff, which seemed even higher from this angle. They wouldn’t have seen what happened from this angle—not until I was already falling.

“Paxton,” I said softly.

He lowered his head to mine, brushing a tender kiss across my lips. “Leah?”

“I didn’t trip. I was pushed,” I whispered as quietly as I could.

A look befitting his last name passed over his eyes, and I knew this time he couldn’t deny it. There was a traitor among us.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Leah

At Sea

Paxton held me, my back to his chest, wrapped around me like a cocoon in his bed that night. He hadn’t taken no for an answer, simply carried me to his room, dressed me in his boxers and a T-shirt, and crawled in behind me.

It was after midnight, and despite his body heat and my utter exhaustion, I still couldn’t sleep.

“Are you hungry? Do you want me to order more food? Get a sleeping pill from the nurse? Bring the doctor back?” he offered, his arm tightening over my chest, careful not to brush my bandaged hands.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“You need to.” His chin rubbed against the top of my head. “Your body is wrecked and needs the rest.”

“I don’t want to have the nightmare,” I whispered.

He pressed a kiss to my hair. “I want you to tell me about it. You don’t have to, but I want to know. Watching you up there today, and knowing I couldn’t get to you… God, Leah. I was so fucking scared. And I saw it, that moment you almost gave in.”

I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves and savoring the scent of him. “We were coming home after a party. Brian had probably had a couple beers, but it wasn’t like he was drunk.” His face flashed in front of my eyes, how beautiful his smile had been, how easy it had been around him. “He wanted to take the canyon road home, even though it was longer. He loved his damn car, and he’d just gotten new tires on it, but the roads were slick from the rain earlier.” I reached up, my forearms tightening over where Paxton held me, safe and secure. “I told him to slow down, but he smiled and said he could handle it. To trust him, and I did. We’d been together all of senior year. But he didn’t slow for the curve in time, and there was skidding, and we busted right through the guardrail.”

I closed my eyes, but the images were only more vivid in my imagination, so I opened them again, turning over so I could see Paxton’s face instead of Brian’s. I concentrated on the curve of his chin, the line of his mouth, afraid that if I saw his eyes, I couldn’t continue. “The first impact was rough. I only remember the drop in my stomach as we fell, and then the jarring stop. Then nothing until I woke up hours later.”

Paxton brushed the hair back behind my ears but stayed silent, simply listening. “When I came to, Brian’s body was pinned to his seat by this branch as thick as my arm. There was blood…so much blood. And he was already gone. I don’t know how long I cried, suspended there by my seat belt, but it felt like an eternity. Once I got myself under control, I saw that my door was jammed shut, but I could get out of Brian’s…but I couldn’t climb over him. I couldn’t use him like a step stool to live while he’d died.

“My phone had been flung out of my hand, and when I heard it ringing from the hatch in the back, I thought it would be easier, better for him, if I unbuckled, and got to it. I could get help. But the shift in weight—”

My eyes squeezed shut, feeling it all over again. Paxton kissed my eyelids, grounding me, keeping me with him instead of in the past.

“The shift in weight caused the car to fall again, this time farther, until we hit a massive boulder, and I was a ping-pong ball in the car, hitting…everything. My legs…they went through the windshield.”

Paxton hissed and pressed a kiss to my forehead like that would take away the pain, and oddly enough, it slightly did.

“Once…once I got myself back into the car, I knew I had to get to the ledge next to us. The car was balanced so precariously. I wanted to take Brian, I did. But that branch had broken off inside the car—he was still pinned to the seat.”

I opened my eyes but kept them on Paxton’s chin, my gaze unfocused. “I don’t know how long I sat there debating. Probably hours. Every time I shifted my weight, the car moved, so by the time I found the courage to climb out—to go over Brian— I got out just before the car fell. There was no time to even try to get him. I couldn’t even give his body to his mother.”

“That is not your fault,” he said softly, anchoring me in the now, pulling me back from where the memories didn’t want to let go.

I ignored his absolution. There were some wounds that time scabbed but never truly healed. “The ledge was big enough for me to pull myself onto, but barely big enough for my butt, and my legs were useless, so I held on to the rocks and the vegetation, and I prayed that I wouldn’t black out from the pain. The car fell one last time and burst into flames about five hours later, and I was about ready to let go when the rescue crews arrived.”

“Oh, baby,” he whispered against my skin, his arms tightening around me.

“There were so many times I thought about letting go, giving in. I’d spent all my life preparing for these huge life struggles—for college, and morals, and what I would do with my life. In six hours, that ledge taught me more about life than I had learned in the previous eighteen years. The hardest battles—the most meaningful ones—they’re fought against ourselves. Against our own fears, our own weaknesses, our own shattered expectations of what we thought this life would be. I’d almost forgotten that until today, when I had to make that same choice.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept stroking my hair, letting me take my time.

“My legs…the infection set in and caused all sorts of issues with the draining and setting the bones, and well… They are what they are—a constant reminder that I didn’t have the courage to get out of the car when I should have, a reminder that I lived but Brian didn’t.”

“A testament to how strong you are,” he added.

I shrugged. “That’s how I met Rachel. We were both in the orthopedist’s office, me for my legs, her for a broken arm. When we realized that we were both headed to Dartmouth in the fall, we clicked. She’s my polar opposite, the wild to my safe, the impulsive to my logic. She pulled me through. That first year…the grief was so deep, the nightmares way too realistic, the panic attacks cruelly frequent… I know she kept me alive. I honestly can’t believe I actually came here without her.”

Paxton tilted my head, wearing an expression I couldn’t read. “I’m glad you did. I couldn’t imagine spending these last months without you. Every single second has been amazing.”

“Even today?” I joked.

He kissed me gently, but with a touch of desperation that hadn’t been there before. “Especially today.”

I somehow felt naked, exposed. “Paxton, will you tell me about Nick? He’s the one who’s paralyzed, isn’t he?”

His eyes widened momentarily, but he nodded. “The triple front was always the trick he wanted to master, to nail first. And like an idiot, I jokingly challenged him, told him I’d nail it first. He wasn’t ready, and neither was I, honestly. After the accident, he wouldn’t see anyone, even Brooke.”

“Brooke?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’d been together for years. He shut everyone out, and we kept it quiet out of respect for him. He finally reached out when he heard about the documentary, which was the whole point, and he’s been a godsend.”

“Really? How?”

“All the equipment design has been him, that kicker I’m using for the front? It’s his. But he figured out why we’re doing this whole thing, and he wanted to be a part of it.”

“Why are you doing it? You’re risking a hell of a lot.”

“Nick wasn’t as well-off as the rest of us. We met up at a skate park when we were kids and became the Original Renegades, and this lifestyle, it doesn’t come easy…or cheap. With his accident, even though we kept it quiet, he missed shows, lost sponsors, then started losing everything. Landon and I, we can easily keep him afloat financially, but we can’t touch his depression, or how he feels about his future. But this can give him a future in the arena he loves, that will allow him to not only support himself but build his life again. I know you don’t know him, but Nick is as much my brother as Landon, as much my friend as Penna. This started as the four of us, and we can’t sit back and watch while he implodes any more than he already has. And we’ve seen a huge difference since he came back on board. He’ll call now, he gets excited about the gear—the stunts. He has equal production credit in the movie, equal billing. That was the secret deal we struck with my father, why he’s the one who’s producing the movie…and consequently holding my leash.”

“Who knows?”

“Just my dad, Penna, Landon, and I. He still won’t talk to anyone else, especially Brooke.”

I nodded, snuggling closer into his chest. His warmth was delicious, and he smelled incredible, like ocean, and Paxton…and home. “That’s why you can’t shut it down.” He’d been muttering about killing the project all evening.

He shook his head. “No. I love Nick, but you—”

“I’ll live.” I took a steadying breath. “I understand guilt, even if it isn’t warranted. If I had a chance to help Brian… I don’t, and you do for Nick. If you want to keep going, I’ll support you. But I am honestly terrified of something happening to you, so we have to find out who is after us, who benefits the most from shutting you down.”

“Leah, while we’re alone, I need to ask. When you fell, who did you see at the bottom? We have to rule people out.”

I closed my eyes and let the memory in that I’d been pushing out all afternoon. “You,” I answered. “Landon was already on the shore, but I saw him there next to Penna. Bobby, I think? Some of the camera crew? I know I left Brooke on the blanket, and Little John was standing there, too.”

“Okay. What about Zoe?”

I stiffened. Had that voice been female? It was gruff, but it could have been forced. “I don’t remember. I mean, she could have been down there. I don’t want you to accuse her of doing something because I didn’t call roll while falling to my near death.”

“Near death, indeed. Okay. Not a word of this outside us, Landon, and Penna, okay? They’re the only ones I trust anymore. And you’re moving in here. No argument.”

I knew I should fight that, stand on my own, but being held by him felt so good, so safe. “Okay.” The pain meds were finally kicking in; everything was blurring at the edges.

He pushed my hair back off my forehead. “Sleep, Firecracker.”

My eyelids grew heavy. “The night of the accident, I held on because I knew if I let go, I’d end up with Brian.”

“Right.” He didn’t stop running his fingers through my hair, the massage soothing, lulling me to sleep.

“Today, I let go because I knew I’d end up with you.”

His breath was ragged as he pulled me closer. As I drifted off to the rhythm of his heart, I realized it was the first night we’d slept in the same bed without having sex, and yet it was the most intimate we’d ever been.

“It wasn’t just a moment today,” I whispered. “I do really, truly love you.”

I fell asleep before he could respond, but not without realizing that he hadn’t said it back.