Page 36 of Revival

“I’ll be waiting.”

Her warm, soft hands carefully cup my cheeks. The feel of her velvet skin lightly holding my scarred face sends an electric jolt through my system.

She’s the first person to willingly touch my damaged skin who wasn’t on my medical team.

And she doesn’t even flinch.

“Bye, Spence.”

The freckles across her nose appear darker than my memories. She presses a swift kiss to my cheek, then moves back into the safe zone.

My heart leaps against my ribs.

I inhale.

Exhale.

Then step off the platform.

Gravity rips me through the air. A shout, straight from my stomach, flies out to be lost in the wind above the trees. I soar above canopies of green. As I race along the line, I take in as much of the rolling island hills as I can. The bird’s-eye vantage is something I refuse to waste now that I’m flying.

I lean back in the harness, letting go of the line, and a carefree laugh bursts free. The sound is rusty as if it’s been kept locked behind an iron cage.

“Holy fuck,” I say to myself, leaning back to enjoy the journey above the treetops.

Much too soon, the lower platform comes into view, signaling the end of the ride.

I can’t believe I just fucking did that. I disembark with a heaving chest and racing heart.

Waiting at the bottom for Cortney feels like a fucking eternity. People zip to a stop on the adjacent platforms, one after the next. I hear the buzz of the trolley on the cable. The screams and bursts of laughter are just audible.

Then she appears.

It’s like my heart stops in my chest, my breath holds in my lungs, nothing in or out as I wait. The small figure grows bigger, and her joyful screams ring out.

But it’s the blinding smile on her face the last couple of feet that cracks open my chest and rips the organs straight out.

I forgot.

I forgot what it was like to have Cortney look at me likethat.Her face radiates pure happiness, and her smile is so damn infectious I find a matching one stretching my mouth.

I never thought I’d get to see her look at me like that ever again and suddenly, I’m not forty-one-year-old Spencer who lost his best friend and burned a quarter of his body in a work accident.

I’m eighteen, and Cortney Powell just bullied me into going to senior prom, and she’s laughing while I twirl her to some stupid love song in our school’s old converted gym.

And that is a very, very bad thing.

“We did it!” She kicks her feet and throws her arms out wide as the guide helps drag her onto the safety of the platform.

“How was it?” I can’t disguise the grittiness in my voice.

“It was amazing! And you didn’t die!”

“Neither did you.”

“Thank god. You’d be so lonely here without me.” She joins me and nudges my shoulder with hers.

We descend the steps together. A quiet covers us. The chirping birds and rustling leaves accompany our footsteps.

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