Page 3 of Second Song

The lamb looks up at me, all huge dark eyes and Baby Yoda ears, and I don’t want to slip any further but I also can’t let that happen to it. “Okay, okay, I’ll do it.” Fuck me, that comes out as another hoarse whisper. I clear my throat so this comes out shakily but louder. “Get ready to catch it.”

“Catch it? No! Don’t throw it up here.” The wind blows a quieter, “Fuck sake,” in my direction followed by a clearer yet unbelievable instruction. “Throw it down.”

I still can’t clearly see who shouts at me. I can only dodge a shower of debris, which sets off another. The next fall of stones comes from below, more of the ledge dropping away, and for a second time in my life, I whimper aloud in public.

The last time a microphone broadcast my fear, which led to more of the kind of online fame I never asked for, but what’s that saying? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes?

I whimper again, and this time someone who I still can’t see must hear it.

“Fucking throw it,” he yells. “What are you waiting for? A hero?” He doesn’t laugh exactly. If anything, the rest is gritty. “I’m the wrong man for that.” He must do something with the rope, which swings closer. “The only person who can save your life right now is you. You. That means you have to grab the rope with both hands and hold tight so I can winch you up to me.”

The only thing I hold tight is the lamb. Maybe too tight—its next bleats reach a shrill and sharp soprano. “Sorry, sorry.” I kiss its fluffy forehead, and that’s not as sweet as it sounds. If anything, it’s oily, and so is this next wave of panic when the lamb’s head makes contact, and my glasses don’t only slip. They’re gone, knocked straight off my face, and the world blurs.

“Grab the rope,” he yells again from high above me.

Grab it? I can’t even see it. “I can’t.” I really can’t. “My glasses. They fell…” I peer down, and that’s a mistake. Even if I can’t see where they landed, I know the drop is lethal. Closing my eyes against that outcome is instinctive. It’s also pointless. “I can’t see anything.”

More cursing rings out, and something happens, don’t ask me what. I don’t see a thing until I’m shoved against the cliff face by someone big and burly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to being chest-to-chest with someone pushy, only the first time it came with a warning in a soundproofed recording studio and with being told I owed them—that if I wanted to keep the TV cameras trained on me, I better start acting a lot more grateful.

Was that why I froze that last time on stage?

Did I stay silent instead of singing to make that debt stop escalating?

I’ll never see that production company dickhead again so it doesn’t matter. Besides, today the big difference is that I react so much faster—I struggle, or at least I try to until a different powerful person whispers, “Hey,” and my eyes pop open.

I meet a steel gaze but hear a soft voice, and my lungs unlock, all because a stranger in a wetsuit doesn’t yell an order at me.

He only makes a quiet promise.

“Stop. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

2

ROWAN

He does have me.

Us, I mean. He has both me and the lamb almost all the way up to the top of the cliff and don’t ask me how he makes that happen. All I know is that he loops the rope so the lamb’s snug between us, and then we’re lurching upward.

Here’s more steel—this surfer is strong enough to haul all three of us up, making slow, muscle-bunching progress, and I have no idea why him taking my weight on this inching journey opens floodgates, but here I am blurting to an irate stranger about how my day is going.

And he is pissed off, despite that soft promise. It’s right there in a clenched jaw I’m close enough to see in scruffy detail. I’m also close enough to see a tic when I tell him that I’ve missed an interview scheduled for two thirty. That I’ve lost a second chance I really wanted, and not only one for a job.

“I was going to track down someone I used to know who lives around here. If we die, I won’t get that second chance with them either.”

He frowns at that, then frowns even harder when the lamb craps on his wetsuit. It isn’t funny, but I can’t keep in a helpless noise that isn’t even close to laughter. All I know for sure is that the sound finally dies but my chest won’t stop its stupid hitching.

For some reason, he stops while I try to get a grip. On myself, not on the rope. He’s already told me not to keep grasping at it—to hold on to him instead—and he doesn’t need to tell me twice. My nails are short, but again I’m close enough to see the crescents I’ve left on the shoulder of his wetsuit.

I try to focus on each shallow dent and not on the spinning blur of rocks below us, but my chest hitches even harder.

“Relax,” he says, which is almost as laughable as what he follows up with. “You want a second chance with a girl, I’ll get you to her.”

“No.” My inner fuckwit still has the wheel. “I’m not interested in girls.”

We dangle some more—still spinning, if less violently—until he finally says, “Stop looking down.” He makes me do that by nudging my face against his neck. It’s gritty with sand, raspy like his voice. “You haven’t missed all your chances. Not yet. You’ve still got time to make your interview.”

“Really?” I lurch away, instantly regretting that move when we swing wildly again.

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