Too much.
Too soon.
But there was no gentle way to tell him the truth, and no time to build a softer path toward it.
“You are frightened,” I said. “You are in shock, and you have no phone, no transportation, and no clear understanding of what would happen if you tried to involve anyone else.”
“What would happen?” he whispered.
I did not answer quickly enough.
Cove took a step back.
“Don’t!” I snapped.
His heel slid on loose gravel near the edge, and his balance vanished. His arms flew outward, reaching for me.
The world contracted into a single point.
I lunged.
There was no calculation then. No restraint, no careful strategy, no measured distance. Only the edge, the fall, and Cove’s body tipping backward into certain death.
My hand closed tightly around his wrist.
He cried out, and I used the sound to pull, catching him around the waist with my other arm as his weight lurched toward the drop. His body slammed into mine, all sharp elbows and shaking breath, and I twisted us away from the cliff, my knees striking stone painfully.
The pain was irrelevant.
Cove was against me.
Alive.
I wrapped both arms around him and hauled him back another few feet before he began fighting.
“No—no, let go.” His voice was broken, panicked, muffled against my chest as he shoved at me with both hands. “Let go of me!”
“I have you,” I said, though the words came out rough and unsteady.
“Let go!”
“Never.”
He struggled harder, and each attempt to wrench himself away only tightened my hold. His heart hammered against me while his breath came in shallow, fractured bursts. He was cold from the wind, trembling so violently that I could feel it through both our clothes.
I pressed one hand to the back of his head before I could stop myself, holding him there, anchoring him against me, taking a breath in to inhale his scent just to prove to myself without a shadow of a doubt that I had him.
“You almost fell,” I murmured, squeezing him impossibly closer.
His hands fisted in my shirt, not holding on, not exactly, but caught there as if even his panic needed something to grip.
“Please let me go,” he whispered, choking the words out through his cries. “Please. I won’t tell anyone. I don’t…” He took a ragged breath. “I don’t want to die.”
16
Tobias
“I don’t want to die.”
