Page 347 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
Loving.
“I have to find him.” When my daddy offers his hand to help me up, I decline. “No. You’ve helped enough.”
I storm past him.
“He’s hanging the banner,” my daddy calls out.
The banner.
His fear of heights.
I pivot. “You owe Hart the apology. He has a fear of heights because of you. Because he watched you push Mr. Wilde and nearly kill him.”
I don’t give him the chance to reply. I chase after Hart, my fury giving way to fear.
I slip in through a flap on the side of the tent. Here, the music is muffled, but the space is even worse. Cables snake underfoot with tape peeling at the edges. The thrum of the music echoes off metal trusses.
I step over a coiled extension cord and duck beneath a lighting rig.
My eyes scan past the crew hauling cases, heads down, distracted.
Then I freeze, blinking through the glare of stage lights and haze. Up above, near the rigging, Hart stands at the top of the ladder, his fingers working overhead to string the banner, balancing himself against the steel frame that leans into the scaffold.
He did it.
I watch as a smile lifts the corners of my mouth. I’m in total awe of the man I love, facing his biggest fear.
No hesitation.
Just grit and bare hands and a ladder that looks too old and too thin for all of this.
Something swells in my chest. Too big to name. Pride and panic, or both at once.
He reaches up higher. The beam is just out of reach. Then he steps higher.
One foot lifts onto the next rung.
CLICK.
The sound is sharp—wrong.
The metal beneath him gives a sudden jerk. Not a full collapse, but a lurch, like something slipped where it shouldn’t. It happens too fast. His brother’s deafening screams and shouts. The fear on Hart’s face when he realizes the ladder hasn’t locked in properly.
My body moves before I even acknowledge what I heard.
“Hart!”
It’s too late.
The ladder twists. He reaches for the scaffold and misses. His body tips sideways, boots kicking into the air.
Then he’s falling.
It doesn’t look real. It looks slow. Limbs flailing. His body falling at a rapid speed. His shoulder hits the hard-packed ground first. Then his back.
The sound rips straight through my spine.
I can’t even scream.
