Page 39 of Shared By the Mountain Men

“Prison.”

My foot slipped off the rung. I desperately tried to grab onto the iron bar in front of me, but my fingers couldn’t find purchase.

My stomach lurched. I was falling. I was aware of that fact for a millisecond, the blue sky rolling in my vision and the forest below swinging into view. I screamed, fingers searching for something,anythingto grab onto, but finding only open air.

The safety line snapped taut, causing the straps of the harness to bite into my thighs painfully. The momentum caused me to swing sideways across the cliff, back and forth while I moaned in fear, several feet below the rungs. My fingers scraped against the rock, searching for something to hold onto. The rungs were out of reach.

A hand snapped out, snatching my wrist and stopping my chaotic swinging. Ash was no longer climbing across the rungs; he had lowered himself down to my level, one hand gripping the rung that was supposed to be used for feet. I had no idea how he’d dropped down that quickly, but I was grateful for his hand on my wrist.

“I got you,” he said without any hint of panic.

Ash pulled me toward him, then in the blink of an eye let go of my wrist and grabbed the back of my harness. He pulled me up enough to allow me to grab onto the foot rung above. I clung to it with both hands while my pulse throbbed in my ears.

He used his own safety line to pull himself back up to the rungs. He adjusted his safety line, tightening it so that there was almost no slack. Then he let go of the bar, allowing the safety line to hold all of his weight, and reached a hand down to me.

I took it, and he pulled me up like I weighed nothing. Once my feet were back on the proper rungs, I began trembling uncontrollably.

“Deep breaths,” he said, keeping a grip on the back of my safety harness. “No rush. Let your heart rate settle.”

I felt perfectly safe in his grasp, and eventually my heart did stop trying to beat out of my chest.

20

Melissa

As soon as I stopped trembling, Ash led me backwards to the cliff ledge where we had taken our first break. He made me sit down and drink the rest of my Gatorade, and then we climbed the first section straight back down to the ground.

Ash never said a word, but as we removed our gear and tossed it into his pickup truck, it seemed like he was judging me. Which I couldn’t blame him for, because I felt like a massive failure. I’d spent my precious money on an activity that I couldn’t even finish.

The drive home was silent.

“Sorry,” I said when he dropped me off at the climbing office.

He frowned at me. “Why?”

“For fucking up halfway through the via ferrata.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders without looking at me. “Not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me. I don’t like to fail.”

“Sometimes people fail,” he said simply.

“Notme.”

“You didn’t piss yourself.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He wasn’t the kind of guy who told jokes… or even smiled, for that matter.

“How many people piss themselves?” I asked doubtfully.

He swung his head, gaze crashing into mine. “Everyone who falls. Literally everyone.”

His intense stare was too much for me to handle, so I got out of the truck and hurried away.

I was exhausted as I biked back to the cabin. I knew that was probably thanks to the adrenaline rush of nearly falling off a mountain. Sure, I was neverreallyin any danger; the safety line easily held my weight. But it still felt like I had nearly died.

It was a very different thrill than what I was looking for.

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