Page 73 of Stitch
The view was amazingfrom up here. The crappy camper hadn’t made it as far as the road at the top of the cliff. The damn thing was too heavy and sluggish on the roads. I’d dumped it and started walking, because I knew I needed to be up here, looking down on everything, while I contemplated my future.
Before Camille, my fear had been that I maybe had months, maybe even less. My fear had been not having time to do the things I’d wanted to do. Having my life cut short.
Now it was more about the fact that, what if I had months and months left, and I had to spend them alone, without her, without her smiles, and her giggles, and her touches, and her kisses? What if the last part of my life dragged on endlessly without the one thing I needed more than more time?
How did she become more important to me than breathing? Than existing? What had happened overnight to make her decide that being with me wasn’t whatshe wanted? That it was hurting her? Was I hurting her? Was that what it was?
Not the rough sex, I’m not that much of an idiot. She loved that part. She loved being manhandled, and slammed against furniture, as I rammed her with my cock. No, of course not that.
Was it my prognosis hurting her? Was it being dragged into a relationship that had an in-built expiry date? Was it the not knowing, the uncertainty of my future? As much as I kept hiding from knowing the truth, what if I was living on a knife edge for no reason? Was it my refusal to accept what might happen? Or was it the fact that I seemed to have grudgingly accepted that the end was nigh, regardless of the facts?
I knew it had taken too long for the test results to come through. I knew I should be chasing them up. I knew I should be ringing the hospital and hounding them for more information, but fear kept stopping me. Once I made that call, once I got that information, it was done, and there would be no going back to the suddenly blissful phase of not knowing.
Suddenly this would feel like the part I should have dragged out, wouldn’t it? Because once I knew the answer, once I knew how long I had left, I’d feel it ticking away, hour by hour, minute by minute, waiting for pain and the internal decay of my body as cancer ravaged it.
I edged closer to the crumbling layer of rock at the top of the cliff. There were warning signs everywhere, stating that I shouldn’t have moved past the barriers. There were more signs here, warning of the eroding cliff edge, of the danger of it breaking apart beneath my weight. This was the other way. Instead of making a call, instead of finding out the truth, and having to live with it. This was the way of taking control. Of making a decision that might just bring that truth in an instant. If I dislodged enough of the rock that I fell to my death, at least it’d be over. If I didn’t, then maybe now wasn’t my time, or maybe it was an hour from now. Or a day.
I reached the very edge of the cliff, feeling a few pieces of crumbling rock shift beneath my toes, sending a small amount of gravel down to the beach below. There were no people there, because it was all cordoned off for their safety. Clearly they were all way smarter than me, because they were heeding the signs. I carefully dropped down onto my ass, legs dangling over the rough, rocky cliff.
The view from here really was spectacular. The sky so blue, the sea reflecting thecolour in beautiful symmetry. The beach looked larger than it probably would when the tide came in. There were cliffs heading all the way along the beach, in a horseshoe kind of shape. It was the kind of place people visited with their cameras, to capture the stunning contrast of rocks and sand and water. It was a fitting place to make this decision.
Cammy
The mobile home wasparked up near the bottom of the steep road, and Ice cursed as he stepped out of it, with two phones in his hands. This was all we had. The location of the deserted vehicle, and no idea where Stitch had gone from here.
“Jesus… we don’t have time to search up and down from here. We need more bodies.”
Lissa patted Reacher’s arm as she looked around, walking over to read a sign by the side of the road. I joined her, reading it with a sense of trepidation. It warned of an unstable cliff ahead.Unstable. Dangerous. On the edge of falling.
“He went up.”
Everyone looked at me as I spoke.
“You sure?”
I wasn’t sure, no, but he’d been on the edge of losing everything, or at least that’s what he thought. As far as he was concerned, he was already half dead, and I knew he feared the end so much, that lack of control over the way he left the world. Suddenly the edge of a cliff seemed like the only place he’d be.
“Yes! He’s up the cliff. We need to hurry.”
“Fuck!” We all started running up the steep road, our hearts in our throats, as we wondered if we’d find him, and if we’d get there in time to stop him from doing something he could never come back from.
It took too long, and we were all exhausted when we reached the grassy top of the cliff. We all stopped for a moment, our eyes searching for a blonde man in aleather cut. He wasn’t here! He… Oh god. I was running again, my chest burning from the exertion, desperation fuelling every heavy step in his direction.
“Stitch!”
He turned to look at me, and that’s when we heard rock crumbling, and he disappeared amid a cloud of beige dust.
“NO!”
Thirty-Four
The fuck? One minuteI was comfortably sitting on the most uncomfortable rocky cliff, and the next I could have sworn I heard Camille’s voice. Turning to look for the source of her voice was a huge mistake, because the crumbling rocky edge did exactly what they warned us about, and it fucking crumbled. As I felt myself falling, I kept my eyes on her, watching as she kept coming, even though it clearly wasn’t safe.
I reached up an arm, as I seemed to be falling in slow motion, and felt her fingers wrap around mine. No. That meant I was dragging her with me. I couldn’t be the reason she died too.
More figures ran after her, and suddenly there were several bodies working together to drag her back, and with her, me. As much as I was going to try and release her grip to save her, now I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let them save her without me, because well… nearly dying was a great incentive for avoiding exactly that. It was terrifying. And worse than that, I almost took her with me.
Once we were both lying flat on the soft grass a few feet away from the crumbling edge, my eyes locked on hers, and I found myself apologising, over and over again. We moved until we were wrapped around each other, and I was holding her once more, the woman I thought I’d lost.
