Chapter Seven

Marley

My head shot up as soon as the little bell above the door dinged.

It was Alessi, walking back in, with the most unsettled expression I’d ever seen on her.

“Hey, everything okay with your cousin?” I asked. I felt only slightly guilty that I’d watched them in the parking lot the whole time. Their body language had been hard to follow. They both seemed to be upset at something, but oddly it didn’t seem to be at each other.

“Oh yeah,” Alessi said with a wave of her hand. “Yep, he’s all good.”

“What happened? Why was he all covered in mud like that?”

Yes, I was being nosy, but I wanted a good reason for having to clean up his muddy tracks on the welcome mat.

“Went off-roading with some friends. But the truck got stuck so they had to get out and push it.” Alessi’s words were clipped. Whether her annoyance was directed at me for asking too many questions or her cousin for getting his truck stuck in the first place, I wasn’t entirely sure. Either way, I let her return to her belay station without further questioning.

The explanation should’ve satisfied me, but it didn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way the guy—Brae, I think she’d said—had looked at me. Not exactly the way a girl wanted to be looked at by a guy. Especially a super-hot one.

It had been a mixture of horror, shock, and disbelief. Wide eyes with pulled brows and lips—perfect lips, I might add—that were parted in obvious dismay.

But thanks to a child’s eleventh birthday party—balloons and cake et al—later, Brae was out of my mind. I was getting ready to take my lunch break when the door opened. I leaned back, about to call Lyla or Steven to take my place when I realized who it was.

The guy who’d left a muddy streak all over my floors and thoughts.

Well. He’d cleaned up nicely. He wore gym pants with the signature white streaks of Adidas climbing up the sides of his long legs. His simple gray tee had the university’s logo on it—was he a student? His face and arms were clear of any mud and his dark hair—which, again, I wasn’t quite sure the color of—was damp from showering.

“You’re back,” I said.

He gave me a nervous glance, and then proceeded to look around.

At least, he seemed nervous. Almost fearful. His eyes were a bit too wide and his brows were pulled together in that worried, concerned way that Patrick’s always did whenever I told him I was going somewhere alone.

Then his hands balled into fists and his look and voice turned rudely sharp. “Where’s Alessi?”

Orrr maybe I had imagined the fear.

I narrowed my eyes at him and leaned across the front counter. Just to show I wasn’t intimidated by his Jacob-Black looks and his Edward-Cullen personality. “She’s helping a climber at the moment. But you can hang around up here and wait for her.” I gave him my cheesiest, customer-service smile.

That answer did not please his royal highness. His gaze shifted from me to the rest of the gym, and then over his shoulder.

“So, does your truck have a lot of damage?” I asked, thinking maybe his attitude was due to his messed-up truck.

Brae looked down at me. “What?”

“Alessi said your truck got stuck in the mud while off-roading.”

Those dark eyes glimmered, looking strangely purple. “Yes, it got very damaged. The power is completely gone, matter of fact.”

“Ah, that sucks,” I said, trying and failing to sound sympathetic. “Maybe you can find someone to fix it.”

“I’m looking for someone right now, actually. Alessi is helping me. So, you can’t go…get her or something?”

“No. On Earth, we wait patiently.” I couldn’t stop the sass. But this guy was trying my patience. Apparently, though, that had been the super wrong thing to say.

That fear that I thought I had imagined was suddenly back.

His dark brows knit together as his gaze darted from side to side in obvious confusion. He stepped closer and I swore I could see every muscle bulge in those gorgeous arms of his. His shoulders were all tense and he leaned forward, staring me dead in the eye. “Are you working with Cassen?”

His voice was so low I had to lean forward myself just to catch every word. It didn’t help that his eyes drew me in. Not because of their strange, dark purple hue, but because they looked so lost and…vulnerable?

“Cassen?” I asked, totally bewildered. “Um, no…there’s no one on staff here by the name of Cassen.”

Brae frowned, and if possible, his expression became even more perplexed. His hand on the counter trembled slightly before he pulled it back and stuck it in his pocket. He looked down at the counter and then back up at me.

“Then…how—”

“Marley! A little help!”

Lyla’s voice sounded very strained, and it pulled me out of one of the oddest interactions of my life. I was rather happy to leave it behind.

Easing around the desk, I immediately located my coworker at the far end of the left side of Belay Alley. Her hands were literally full. She had hold of a rope while her climber was clinging to the rock wall in fear. That happened occasionally. A climber would get too far up, look down, and forget that they were attached to a rope and could safely reach the ground. Instead, they’d just stay up there, frozen with fear.

“Coming!” I called and skipped around the desk.

“Wait! Please—”

I got three steps in before his large hand grabbed my arm.

The jolt that went through my arm brought me to my knees. It was like a static shock after crawling all over a carpet, but a hundred times worse. It ripped through my spine and clung to my nerve endings, the sensation echoing in my body like a shout in an empty tunnel.

My knees hit the hard linoleum, and I gasped as a different wave of pain hit me. Great. There will be huge bruises there for sure.

“Holy hell,” I hissed through my teeth as I staggered to my feet, using the edge of the desk as support.

I didn’t even realize that Brae had let go of my arm. It felt like my whole body had gotten stuck in an electrical socket like a fork. When I finally looked back at him, he was staring at his hand with as much shock as I’d felt. He slowly rotated it, his gaze scanning his forearm, to his wrist, to the tips of his fingers.

I tried to breathe through the residual unpleasant buzzes tickling my nerves. “Did you—”

“Marley!” Lyla’s voice was desperate now.

I was going to ask Brae did you feel that and then why the hell did you grab my arm but I didn’t have time. Lyla needed me.

Lyla had started at Kansas Mountains about six months ago. Though still a bit of a newbie in terms of the climbing world, she was extremely capable at her job and the best at taking care of customers out of all of us. So when she asked for help, she really needed it.

I shoved away from the counter and ran to the very back of Belay Alley where Lyla was trying emphatically to get the woman climber to let go of the wall.

Lyla glanced over at me as I approached, her expression brightening with obvious relief. She wore a neon pink staff shirt today, which was lovely against her light brown skin and her zebra-striped yoga pants—I kept meaning to ask her where she got those, but I always ended up chickening out.

Like Alessi, Lyla was intimidating, but of a different kind. Lyla went to my high school, and she was a popular kid for the good kind of reason. She was genuinely nice. Sweet and kind to everyone. It was hard not to like her, but easy to feel like you weren’t anywhere near her level.

“Thanks for coming,” she told me, then turned back to the woman on the wall. “It’s okay, I’ve got your rope. You absolutely won’t fall. I’ve got you,” Lyla said soothingly.

The woman just whimpered and clung to the wall tighter.

I grabbed a harness from a nearby wall and started to buckle myself in, but immediately had to pause. I was dizzy all of a sudden and if I looked down, I felt the urge to vomit.

After a deep breath, I said, “I’ve got her,” and pushed past the strange wave of nausea.

“No, it’s not her,” Lyla said, then she gestured behind her to the speed wall—where the automatic belay station was. “The kid can’t get down.”

Sure enough, there was a little boy right at the top of the wall. He’d gotten pretty damn high up for such a small kid and he was literally just chilling in midair with his harness, unable to go up and unable to go down. The good news was that he seemed to be enjoying it immensely and wasn’t at all scared.

“Hey! Blake! Look, I’m Miles Morales!” He called to his friend and pushed out, pretending to swan dive from the top of a skyscraper like Spiderman. Except he didn’t go anywhere, he just hovered there. His friend below cheered.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I muttered.

Lyla laughed nervously. “I wish. His mom’s in the bathroom with his sister or else she’d be having a fit.”

“We just had someone out here to fix that station,” I groaned as I fastened the last buckle on my harness. “Meredith is going to have a conniption.”

“Tell me about it. And Steven has gone AWOL, or I’d get him to help you.”

Steven was a new hire and a shithead. He always showed up late, never properly cleaned the stations, and came back from his breaks smelling like weed.

“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” I said and left Lyla to deal with the acrophobic woman and went to rescue the kid. Though Spiderman hardly seemed like he needed, or wanted, rescuing.

As I was reaching for the first hold on the speed wall, a voice came from right behind me.

“You shouldn’t go up there.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. Twisting around, I glared up at Brae, who had followed me all the way from the front. The first thing I noticed was that he was very close, less than a foot away, and he seemed…different than just two minutes ago. His eyes were a brighter purple, I was sure of it. And the air around him seemed…charged?

I couldn’t explain the feeling exactly, but it felt like there was this sort of energy field around him. Like an anime character charging up for a big fight, pure power radiating off him in waves.

I shook my head. I needed to stop watching shows that Travis recommended.

“What are you doing back here? Go and wait for your cousin,” I said, shooing him away.

“Who’s going to watch your rope?” he asked.

Fine. If he was going to ignore my questions, I could ignore his. “Just go back to the front desk and wait for Alessi.” The truth was, someone should be watching my rope, but there was no other staffer to help me out.

He looked up at the wall and frowned. “If you’re really going up there, that’s not a good idea.”

“Look, I’ve got a kid who needs to get down and we’re obviously short-staffed. I’ve been climbing these walls all my life, and I can go down them with my eyes closed,” I said. “But your concern is noted. Thank you, random stranger.”

Though he looked like he wanted to stop me, or at least argue further, he took a small step back. Satisfied, I grabbed the first hold and one by one, started to scale the wall. The texture underneath my fingertips was rough and familiar, and at first, the climb was easy peasy. It was about fifteen feet up when I felt that something was off.

I was winded.

I could scale these walls for over two hours before I felt anything close to fatigue. I hadn’t lied when I said I’d been climbing my whole life. I’d started at six years old, and it was one of the few things that I was really good at. But today, after a minute and a half on the wall, I was tired?

Did it have anything to do with my “concussion?”

No. You know it wasn’t a freaking concussion.

Below, a shriek echoed through the gym. I didn’t have to look down to know that it was the mother back from the bathroom trip.

“Lucas!” The mother cried. “Get down here this instant!”

“Can’t, Mom!” The kid’s voice was full of glee.

“What do you mean you can’t?”

The kid tugged on his rope. “Stuck, see?”

“What?”

Closing my eyes briefly, summoning both strength and patience, I turned my head to the other side to yell down, “Don’t worry, ma’am, I’m getting him!”

“You better!” she shrieked, “or I’m leaving a one-star rating on Google!”

And we wouldn’t want that. I climbed faster and got to the top of the wall.

As I suspected, the auto belay had engaged the secondary brake system, effectively stopping the spool from releasing the rest of the slack and allowing the climber to fall at a safe speed. It was a good safety precaution, but a pain in the ass if it engaged when it wasn’t needed, which was happening more and more often.

With one hand holding the grip, I reached over and manually disengaged the emergency secondary brake. Like a charm, the lanyard pulled through the device, extending the aluminum rotor arms into a magnetic field. The force of the arms opposed the field, which created the drag that allowed the kid to fall safely to the ground.

Luckily at that point, Lyla had gotten the acrophobic woman down and was already helping Lucas, aka Miles Morales, out of his harness.

When he was free, his mother immediately turned on Lyla, starting the lecture about safety and threatening to file a complaint. Lyla was forced to lead her to the front to calm her while the other children followed them, shouting about how cool it had been.

“Marley?” A strong masculine voice called. “You okay? Which one is your rope?”

Brae’s words came from a great distance. I clung to the wall like my life depended on it. Which, at forty feet up, it very much did. The room spun and my head clouded like it had been stuffed with marshmallows. Not having experienced the sensation very often, it took me a little too long to recognize the feeling for what it was: vertigo.

Taking large gulps of air, I fumbled for the grip right below my elbow, and as my trembling fingers scrambled across the surface…I realized there was no way I was going to make it down.

I was too weak and too shaky. It felt like pure energy had been sucked out of me somehow. My legs vibrated as the strength in my muscles waned, and then my footing slipped…and that was all it took.

I fell.

Wind rushed past me, blowing through my curls and whipping them across my cheeks. Then the strangest thing happened—even stranger than a rock electrocuting me. The wind enveloped me, pushing against my arms, legs, and back. Intense air pressure slowed me down like the aluminum rotor arms within a magnetic field. Basically, the air itself dragged.

Ten feet above the ground I was practically floating. And into whose arms did I float like a feather?

It was as if Brae had been expecting it.

As if he’d known time would slow as I fell through the air. His right arm looped under my knees as his left supported my back and shoulders. He glared down at me—almost like he was saying I told you so with his eyes. I would’ve met his look with one that said Did-that-really-just-freaking-happen, but I was still trying to stave off vertigo. It was currently a struggle not to throw up all over his muscular chest.

“Marley!” A girl’s voice practically screamed. “Oh my God, oh my God!”

Lyla came into view right at my feet, standing beside Brae. “I saw you fall. Are you okay? Oh my God,” she repeated.

“She got dizzy up there…didn’t you?” Brae said, continuing to stare at me pointedly. The anger and concern in his voice reminded me of Patrick’s worry from when I’d passed out in the lightning crater.

This was all too weird. I really wasn’t that accident prone. Especially not on the rock wall. I practically lived on these walls.

Lyla shot him a questioning look, but then focused on me for confirmation.

I could only nod, highly aware of Brae’s fingertips pressing into my knees and upper arm. Somehow his touch was both hot and cold at once, and it seemed to send little buzzes of static electricity through me. Not an all-around pleasant feeling, more bizarre than anything else.

But his scent. His scent was something else.

It was overwhelming and so familiar. All I could think of was rainstorms and dry earth and heat… It made my head dizzier than it already was. It was such a heady, nostalgic scent that I felt the need to breathe through my mouth, just so I could think properly.

“I’ll go get Meredith.”

Before I could tell her not to, Lyla was off, running toward the break room, her fishtail braids bouncing off her back.

A long silent moment passed before I looked back up at Brae, who still hadn’t put me down. And showed no signs of going to. He’d gone back to being as on edge as when he first stormed into Kansas Mountains.

He mumbled something that sounded like a foreign language I’d never heard, his voice so low and deep that I felt the vibration in his chest against my arm. Then he said, in plain old English, “We’re so screwed.”