“What do I do?” I called out.

“You push off with your feet as hard as you can and let go, baby. You have to come down as straight as possible, okay? Hitting the water is going to hurt, but it’s going to be okay,” Pax called up.

Let go. Just let go and it will all be over. But this time, letting go meant giving it everything I had. This time letting go could kill me…or it could save me.

“No one can do this for you—God, I wish I could—but I’m here, Leah. I’m not going anywhere, do you understand? You can do this,” Landon promised, his voice steady and even.

For the first time I looked down.

Fuck. Shit. God, I’m going to die. The distance may as well have been a mile. Panic crept up my spine and my vision narrowed, blackening at the edges.

“LEAH!” Paxton screamed. “Listen to my voice. Push with your feet and jump now!”

I sucked in a full breath, and my vision returned to normal as I whipped my head back to the rock face. I was not going to give in, to pass out and die by default. I would choose my fate. Either I made it, or I didn’t, but it would be of my own making.

And I wasn’t about to become Paxton’s tragedy.

“Okay,” I called out, my voice stronger than my failing arms.

“You’ve got this, and he’s got you,” Landon promised.

I nodded, pulled my body as close to the cliff as humanly possible, said a prayer, and then pushed off with every ounce of strength I had left.

My stomach dropped out as I plummeted, my arms flailing in circles as if I could slow the descent. The ground rose at a dizzying speed, the canyon wall flying by me in a blur.

Pain shot through my legs, vibrating up my spine to my head when I hit, then sank into the water. You cleared the rocks.

Water rushed up my nose as it rose over my head, and I started kicking with every spare ounce of energy I had, stopping my descent. As I started to rise, strong arms looped around my waist, propelling me upward.

We broke the surface, and I gasped, pulling sweet oxygen into my lungs and coughing out the water that had invaded my nostrils.

“I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you,” Paxton whispered over and over as he pulled me to the shore, my back to his chest. The sheer relief of being held in his arms, of having survived the fall hit me, and my muscles simply quit, going slack.

Hands lifted me away from Paxton, laying me on something soft for a moment before he hovered above me again, his eyes bluer than the sky behind him. I’d almost lost him, almost lost myself.

I heard a splash in the background and the soft sound of Brooke crying to my right.

“Leah, Leah, Leah,” Paxton chanted my name as his hands ran over my face, my lips, my arms, all of my extremities. “God, Leah. I thought… But you’re okay. You’re okay.” He looked in my eyes, searching for something I couldn’t name but desperately wanted to give him to soothe the panic in his eyes.

“I love you, Paxton,” I blurted, needing to say it, needing him to know what he meant to me and honestly not caring what he thought about it.

“Leah.” My name sounded like the most reverent prayer on his lips, and he gathered me in his arms, holding me tight when my body couldn’t return his trembling embrace. “I can’t lose you. You’re everything.”

“She okay?” Landon asked, climbing out of the water at my feet.

“Yeah, thanks to you, she is,” he answered, still cradling me against his heartbeat.

“She did all the work, man. Leah, you really are a firecracker,” Landon said, taking a dry towel from Penna and wrapping it around my back. “Not many people could have caught themselves the way you did, or hung on like that. Talk about a trip.”

Trip? I looked up at the top of the cliff, which seemed even higher from this angle. They wouldn’t have seen what happened from this angle—not until I was already falling.

“Paxton,” I said softly.

He lowered his head to mine, brushing a tender kiss across my lips. “Leah?”

“I didn’t trip. I was pushed,” I whispered as quietly as I could.

A look befitting his last name passed over his eyes, and I knew this time he couldn’t deny it. There was a traitor among us.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Leah

At Sea

Paxton held me, my back to his chest, wrapped around me like a cocoon in his bed that night. He hadn’t taken no for an answer, simply carried me to his room, dressed me in his boxers and a T-shirt, and crawled in behind me.

It was after midnight, and despite his body heat and my utter exhaustion, I still couldn’t sleep.

“Are you hungry? Do you want me to order more food? Get a sleeping pill from the nurse? Bring the doctor back?” he offered, his arm tightening over my chest, careful not to brush my bandaged hands.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“You need to.” His chin rubbed against the top of my head. “Your body is wrecked and needs the rest.”

“I don’t want to have the nightmare,” I whispered.

He pressed a kiss to my hair. “I want you to tell me about it. You don’t have to, but I want to know. Watching you up there today, and knowing I couldn’t get to you… God, Leah. I was so fucking scared. And I saw it, that moment you almost gave in.”

I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves and savoring the scent of him. “We were coming home after a party. Brian had probably had a couple beers, but it wasn’t like he was drunk.” His face flashed in front of my eyes, how beautiful his smile had been, how easy it had been around him. “He wanted to take the canyon road home, even though it was longer. He loved his damn car, and he’d just gotten new tires on it, but the roads were slick from the rain earlier.” I reached up, my forearms tightening over where Paxton held me, safe and secure. “I told him to slow down, but he smiled and said he could handle it. To trust him, and I did. We’d been together all of senior year. But he didn’t slow for the curve in time, and there was skidding, and we busted right through the guardrail.”