Page 285 of Ominous: Part 1
The rushing water below the drop is loud, the feel and scent of fall—cool and lush—seems to press on me and Eden, even though I hear Dom’s footsteps a few feet behind me, coming closer. I block him out. I block out everything but her.
I know she won’t jump, but I wonder why she’s thinking of it. Maybe just to experience the adrenaline, the fear, the realization life is finite. We know it to be true, but until you’re staring it in the face, knowledge doesn’t hold a candle to realization.
I think of Mom.
Sometimes, I feel as if I’m waiting for a letter, not from her, but about her. Telling me she died. Suicide. She couldn’t bear the fact she left me.
It’s the only way, I think, I could forgive her.
Don’t make it that way for us, Eden.
She still doesn’t turn around. I think about her fantasies of dying.She’d rob it from me, if she jumped.
I feel Dom’s presence before I see him out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not getting any closer,” he says, his words fast, but his voice low.
Eden doesn’t acknowledge either one of us, but she’s reaching for something, something inside her boot I realize as she bends down, her skirt long enough to cover her, but I still zero in on the curve of her ass, the fullness of her thighs.
A phone.
She’s pulling out her phone.
I breathe a little easier, knowing she’s just going to take a picture. She can remember this landscape in that way, without experiencing something more permanent here.
Tension loosens in my chest.
She holds up the phone, still gripping a fistful of her skirt in one hand, and I see the tiny image of the fog, the drop, the hill. It doesn’t do it justice, but Eden takes a photo anyway. Then she turns her phone horizontal, wanting another shot, index finger over the capture button.
As I step off the paved lot, just one foot in the dirt, there’s a small part of me wanting impossible things. To plant my hand along her spine and push. To let her free fall, but find her safe at the bottom, unharmed. I think of my car. My hand over her mouth and nose. The way she blacked out.I protect you.
Where is the line?
Where do I stop?
I freeze, afraid of myself getting close to her. We both stare out into the darkness of the fog, the void. There’s a call here, tugging us closer, like a compulsion. Like the way I can never seem to keep my hands off of her.
Photos.
It’s only photos.
Beside me, Dom makes a sound between a sigh and a laugh.
Then he’s moving toward her, where I wouldn’t, and I have this urge to go after them at the same time I simply stand still.
Impulse control.
He walks quietly up behind her, and she still doesn’t turn toward us or say anything, taking more pictures, tilting her head this way and that, but never moving from the precarious position she has over the ledge. If she drops her skirt, takes half a step, she could trip. She coulddie.
Dom is closer, a foot from her now, six inches a second later.
He walks strangely, his khaki pants and white boat shoes easy to see his pace in the darkness. It’s like he’s creeping up on her.
I curl my fingers into fists.
Then he reaches her at the exact same time her name leaves my mouth again. An instinct, a reflex.
He lifts his hands, palms facing her, and plants them square over her shoulder blades.
My heart is pounding too fast in my chest, but… he doesn’t shove her.
