Page 56 of Take Me to the Wedding

Of all the foolish stunts. Was she out of her mind? Was I out of mine, having all these jumbled thoughts when death seemed imminent?

We landed with a thud in a pile of limbs about thirty feet down the cliff on a plateau that was about ten feet wide. I found myself clutching hard onto her waist and leg, trying to save us from pitching right over the edge like Niagara Falls daredevils. Below us, the cliff plunged precariously down to the water below.

“What were you thinking?” I exclaimed as she lifted up her head, her hand on my thigh. I would’ve thought that was erotic if I hadn’t hit my head and I wasn’t terrified out of my mind that she was hurt.

“I almost had you,” she said in a defiant tone. She was covered with dust. Her leg was scraped and bleeding. As she blew her hair out of her eyes, she said, “I thought I could grab you before you lost your balance.”

“You almost got yourself killed is what you did.”

She grinned. “I’m not dead. And neither are you.” She untangled herself and started looking me over. Checking my arms, looking in my eyes. I knew exactly what she was doing. She was assessing me for injury.

“I didn’t hit my head.”

“Yes, you did.” She ran her hands over my scalp. It felt soothing, except I felt stabbing pains. It took me a minute to realize that they were coming from my leg.

“You have a bump on your head. But more urgently, your foot’s messed up.”

My anger and shock at her careless bravado had caused me not to notice that I was in pain. Quite a lot of it actually.

A cautious peek showed me that my foot was rotated inward at an odd angle. A giant bruise was forming over the front of my lower calf. I let out a curse. My leg felt like someone had driven a stake straight through it.

“It’s not broken,” I said, more to reassure myself.

Sam got up and dusted herself off. “Remind me to cross you off my preferred ortho providers list.”

“It’s not broken,” I repeated foolishly as I stared up the steep incline above us. “We have to climb back up.”

“I don’t think you’re going to be climbing anywhere.”

I felt her poking around my lower leg. The bruise was blooming a deep purple, and the swelling was now the size of an orange. “Ow!” I said as she pressed on it.

“I’m not an orthopod like you, but I think it’s your fibula.”

An awful, sinking feeling went through me. If my legwasbroken, then we were both effed. I’d have to have help getting up that rocky, steep incline. That meant EMS, harnesses. And a rescue team somehow being able to get near enough without plunging to their own deaths—as well as hauling us up safely. A million scary scenarios went through my mind, including plunging down the rest of the cliffside.

“Are you two okay?”

Gabe’s voice. I looked up. At the top of the cliff, a good thirty feet above us, tiny heads came into view. I’m not exaggerating—in my panic, they looked absolutely microscopic.

“Oh my God, Cay,” Lilly called out, panic in her voice, “are you okay?”

I tried to speak, but a sudden burst of pain made me grimace.

“We’re fine,” Sam called, sounding quite calm. “Everything’s okay.”

“Someone call 911,” Lilly cried. “Hurry!”

Sam stared at me, all seriousness, her pretty brown eyes wide. “No bars out here.”

I managed a half smile, half grimace. “Guess we’re going to have to stick around and appreciate nature for a while.”

Standing there on the narrow plateau, she looked like a person in a car commercial, standing by a fancy SUV on a mountaintop with impossible drop-offs everywhere.

“Sit back down,” I managed to grunt. “You’ll plunge to your death.”

“I’m grabbing you some water.” Pulling a bottle out of a sling she wore around her chest, she knelt beside me, twisted open the bottle, and lifted it to my lips.

“I can hold it,” I said. But my voice sounded muffled. The pain was making everything hazy.

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