Page 60 of Stay this Christmas
An ear-rattling shriek broke my concentration. Turning, I saw a little boy about ten feet away, laughing as he was let down on his rope. My gaze followed the rope all the way down to the floor, a seemingly endless distance that made my stomach lurch and bottom out, somehow cramping and rolling at the same time.
Puking while thirty feet in the air would be the worst way to celebrate this Life List win.
Sucking in a breath, I drew closer to the wall, my hands clinging tight to the plastic grips. My heart thundered in my chest, my fight or flight instinct left with no good options up here. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, my mouth as dry as if I’d coated it in chalk.
Why had I wanted to do this again?
“Harps?” Sam called up. “You okay?”
I shook my head, my nose scraping against the wall. “No!”
Should have been a blood-curdling scream, but I’d only worked up a half-hearted shout. He probably couldn’t even hear me down there.
Oh, Lord. I didn’t have to look down again to sense that yawning space between me and the ground, and my head spun with the vivid image of my body falling to the bottom of that chasm.
“Talk to me, Harper. What’s going on?”
I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at anything but the wall. In my peripheral vision, the kid on my other side continued down and out of view, making my stomach turn over again.
“Is it the height?”
The tender concern in his voice would have kick-started flutters if my heart weren’t already thrashing around in my chest like a caged animal trying to break free.
I nodded, squeezing my fingers tighter over the hand grips. My palms had started sweating now, but I couldn’t do anything about it. If I reached down for the chalk, I could fall. The noise of the gym seemed to thin, and a clammy sensation crawled over me as though I might actually faint right off the wall.
“Harps, I’ve got you no matter what.”
Sam’s steady voice, so calm and confident in the middle of my panic, pierced that fear, deflating some of it. Not all of it, not by a long shot, but enough for the clammy feeling to pass.
“Breathe slow and deep. You’re okay.”
I tried to do as he said, but pretty sure my breath was coming too fast to qualify as deep. Hyperventilating up here wouldn’t do me any good, either, but I couldn’t seem to control my lungs. Methods of slowing my breath completely escaped me as I gulped in air.
“I’ll bring you down,” he called. “Just let go when I take up the slack.”
“No!” That did come out a scream. Climbing down felt impossible, but dropping down in the harness would be walking into exactly what I feared. “I can’t.”
“Harper, I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“I can’t,” I said again. Let go of the wall? No way. The rope tied to my harness wasn’t all that thick. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I should have asked for the biggest, thickest rope available.
“You can wait where you are until the feeling passes,” he said, his voice echoing weirdly up here. Maybe the echoing was just in my head. “Or I can bring you down right away. It’s up to you.”
I didn’t like either option—I just wanted to be down on the mat with my head between my knees until this panicky queasiness disappeared. My body shook, my hands and feet wobbling on their grips as terror jolted through me all over again. Clinging to the wall would only last so long. I’d eventually go down one way or another.
“You’re safe, Harper. I’ve got you.”
But did he? I’d seen a bunch of kids lowered to the ground by a parent, but I probably weighed twice what they did. What if Sam couldn’t handle me? What if something went wrong with the ropes?
“Harper, honey, you’re okay. I’m here. But I need you to trust me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, those words echoing in my mind.Trust me. Trust me.
Did I trust him? I hadn’t, not for a long time. But I wasn’t sure that guy I’d imagined as the villain of my past existed anymore. If he ever really had.
“Don’t let me go!”
“I won’t let you go,” he called back. “I won’t ever let you go again.”
