East of Redemption (Love on the Edge #2) (23 page)

She hissed from the pain my hold likely caused her. “What the hell? I had it.” She rubbed her wrist once I released it.

“You have to be more careful!” I snapped. “Throwing punches? Are you kidding me, Rain? What did I say? Watch. Your. Footing!” My voice boomed off the rock walls, echoing until it was swallowed by the depth of the cave.

“You provoked me! Tossing the rope like that! And I barely slipped.” She squinted at me and took a deep breath after reading something on my face. I had no idea what she saw, but her expression softened. “Is this where—?”

“No.” I cut her off.

She arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t find the artifacts here?”

“Oh . . . yes,” I said, relieved. I thought she’d been asking if this was the spot Harrison had fallen. “This is the chamber where we uncovered the tablet.” I glanced around, the light from the cameras on our heads filling the space. It hadn’t changed. Not a rock or pile of powder out of place. My chest tightened as if the walls moved in on us, and I slowly shifted my position, sharpening my gaze past where we’d just entered from.

A wide, open drop was all that took up the space between this side of the cave and the next, but in my mind I still saw the rock bridge that had carried both Harrison and me to this chamber but refused to return us both. I wondered if chunks of the structure remained, jutted out enough to prove it had once been there. On this end, there was only a jagged break. A sharp, zigzagged hole where the bridge had once connected on this end.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the middle of the dark void that had swallowed Harrison, like if I looked hard enough, I’d see a light from a torch . . . Harrison at the bottom, waiting for us.

A hand clutched my shoulder, and I jumped, the motion causing me to smack my head in the same place I’d hit it in the bunker. “Fuck!” I grabbed the back of my head, as Rain flinched from my tone.

“Sorry, I just—”

“What?”

Rain pointed behind me, aiming her flashlight outside the chamber and to the right. “Thought you might be interested in that bigger piece of ledge there. I’m not an archeologist, but I bet it leads to something important. If these chambers were manmade, which this one certainly appears to have been carved by hand, then they probably sectioned them close together.”

“Harrison would’ve seen it,” I said, but took the light out of her hands and clung to the wall as I slid half my body out of the chamber to get a closer look. “I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah.”

“How did we not see this before?”

“Maybe because you two were too busy acting like giddy schoolboys over finding the tablet?”

We had been in full celebration mode, and we’d both fully expected to return to the spot the next day, with more equipment and better funding. Fuck.

“Let’s check it out,” Rain said, moving toward me.

“Slow down.” I raised my hand to stop her advance. “We have to think. Plan. We can’t go off half-cocked.”

She scrunched her eyebrows. “That ledge is twice as big as the one you just made me cross!”

“Give me a second to think!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” Her tone was sharp and cut into me.

“Excuse me?”

She grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back into the chamber. She gripped both sides of my face, her eyes piercing mine, hunting them for something. “Are you with me?”

I clenched my eyes shut, not allowing her to read me any more as she asked me what had quickly become our signature question on this expedition. The memories of our past had bombarded each of us as our lives had come together again, and it had been a fun game asking aloud where our minds were. But not now. Not with this memory.

“No. You’re with
him
.” She stroked my face. “Compass, let me in. Talk to me. Take me with you.”

I shook my head, refusing to open my eyes. Acid rolled in my gut, filling the back of my jaw with spit.

“Hey.” She held my face tighter, until I reluctantly opened my eyes. “I’m here with you. I’m. Here.”

The desperate plea in her voice, the look in her eyes, this place . . . it was too much to take. The pieces of the soul Rain had given back to me over the course of this expedition shattered, crumbling worse than the cave we were in. I looked back at the dark hole beyond the chamber, and I became the boy I’d been. Helpless. Useless.

I returned my focus to Rain, gripping the back of her neck with my hand. “You are now, but the moment I tell you the truth. You’ll leave.”

I sighed and pressed my lips to hers in what I knew would be the last kiss I’d ever get to share with her, because she’d never be able to look past the darkness I was about to unveil.

Rain

EASTON’S KISS TASTED
desperate, and it had bite to it. A finality that jerked my heart to attention, scrambling to rebuild the walls that had come down the past few days. He pulled away from me and pointed out of the chamber and to the center of the dark drop-off.

“It happened there.”

I swallowed hard. “This is where my father fell? From this chamber? Did he trip?” The questions spilled from my lips too quickly, and I feared they’d push Easton off the subject he’d been so adamant about avoiding. I couldn’t help it, though. The details had never been clear, and the explanation of Dad simply falling to his death never set right with me.

Easton shook his head, and my stomach sank. “There used to be a bridge-like structure that connected this wall with that one.” He pointed between the two. “It wasn’t more than three feet wide.”

I nodded, my mouth suddenly too dry to speak.

“Harrison and I, we’d chosen the opposite way from the way you and I came today.” The hand that still pointed to the canyon-sized drop between the cave walls shook, and he clenched it into a fist as he pulled his arm to his side. “I tried to talk him into backtracking. Entering from the second path the next day, but in reality, I didn’t try hard enough.”

I reached out and took his shaking hand in mine, squeezing it for him to continue, even though suddenly I regretted ever asking him for the truth. Deep down I didn’t really want to know, that’s why I never pushed him as hard as I could’ve. It would make what happened to Dad, and what had happened between us too real, too fresh, like I was eighteen all over again. A cold dread settled in my gut, brought about by the agonized lines shaping his face.

“We made it across just fine. Found the tablet and the scroll.” He cleared his throat. “He switched packs with me before crossing back. Made me promise to wait until he’d made it across safely, and then I could follow.” Tears glistened in his eyes, and the sight stunned me. I’d never seen Easton cry before. He’d always been too tough for that.

“The rock started to crumble beneath him. And I made it to him just in time . . . to do nothing. I caught his hand, and I tried. I fucking
tried
to pull him back up, but I wasn’t strong enough. Harrison tried to help. He reached for the rock in an attempt to pull while I did, but there wasn’t enough time. The thing was disintegrating, chunks of rock falling all around us. I wasn’t going to leave him. I would’ve kept trying until I’d died with him.”

The tears slowly rolled down his cheeks, and trails of my own mirrored his. “He didn’t give me a choice. He told me he loved you, and to make him proud, right before he ordered me to let go. He didn’t want us both to die. Said you needed me.” He clenched his eyes shut. “And I did.” His voice cracked. “He died because I wasn’t strong enough to save him. Because I hadn’t tried hard enough to convince him to come back the next day. Because I didn’t demand that I cross first.” He opened his eyes and they were finally completely open. I could read the torture in them as easily as a book. “
I’m
the reason he’s dead. He didn’t fall. I
let him go
.”

I brought my hands to my chest, as if I could stop my heart from shattering. Shattering for the boy who blamed himself, for the daughter I’d been, for the lies and distance Easton had put between us because of it. The visual he painted played a horrible, twisted movie in my mind, continuing beyond the tragic end to my father and all the way through Easton’s life. It had fueled every decision he’d made since—the show, forcing himself into life-and-death situations without a second thought, taking his body to the edge with each excavation. It was his way of trying to pay for what had happened. It wasn’t his weight to carry, but he’d done it anyway, and he’d left me . . .

I swiped at the tears streaming down my cheeks and sucked in a deep breath. I cupped his face. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Easton. You didn’t deserve to carry that around, alone, for as long as you have. I would never have blamed you. Dad raised me with a full understanding of the extreme risks of his profession. It wasn’t your fault.”

The pain in my heart wasn’t from finally knowing the details over Dad’s death, though it did sting, and it didn’t change how much I missed him.

The raw, burning, shredding pain that currently ripped through my chest?
That
belonged to Easton. I withdrew my hands from him and took the only space allowed in the tiny chamber, putting it between us. New tears formed in my eyes, and I willed them away.

“You leaving me?” I said. “Without an explanation, ending our life together in a blink? That
was
in your hands. And lying to me about something so vital . . . to both of us?” I rubbed my palms against my face. “God, Easton. I would’ve been there for you. I would never have lied to you.”

He sucked in a sharp breath and wiped away the evidence of his pain. “I know that now. Then? I thought you’d look at me and only see the cause of your father’s death. Because
I
did. I tried to come to you, to uphold what your father had wanted and take care of you. I was there, at his funeral, but I took one look at you, and I could only see
him
. What I’d done. What I didn’t do. I was a coward. And I was sure you’d see me the same way—as the man who killed your father. And even if you said you didn’t, how would I know you weren’t thinking it, when I sure as hell was?”

“Because you
know me
. You know my soul, Easton. Because it’s been yours since the moment my father brought you home.” I sighed. “I can’t imagine what you went through, what you’re still going through. I’m beyond sorry that happened to you and my dad, but how am I supposed to get past the lies?”

“You’re not. I never expected you to. And after spending these past few days with you . . . you gave me more hope than I deserved, Rain. I can’t ask for more. I don’t deserve it.”

Too many emotions ripped through my core, my mind overwhelmed with the dark truth, twisting the love I held for him and burning it. My heart raced, like it made a last-ditch effort to run away from the moment, dash to the past where the future I’d envisioned with Easton had been real, tangible.

“When you look at me now,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Do you
still
only see his death?” That had to be the worst part of this entire situation—I’d grieved the loss of my father for years. It never got easier, but I had accepted it, and I could almost see reasoning behind Easton’s selfish choice to carry the load all on his own—but
that
? Knowing I was an active culprit in the daily torture that was his life? How could I possibly beg him to stay in my life, like I’d wanted to, knowing I caused him that much pain?

“No. I thought it would be. I told myself that’s the reason I stayed away all these years, but the truth is, I couldn’t face how
you’d
look at me. Like I said, I’m a coward. I told you that.”

I shook my head. “What do you see?”

“Hope.”

“For?”

“Love. The life I’d wanted. The life I’d dreamed about. Being with you is like finding the universe’s treasure . . . I don’t need anything else.”

“Another lie.”

“No—”

“You need this one.
This
find.” I glanced around the chamber, picturing my dad pouring over every inch of dust in the hopes to find more treasure. “We both do. For him.”

“You’re right.”

I let my mind fill with the image of my father, what his face would look like if we unearthed even a small percentage of King Solomon’s treasure and authenticated it. He’d be so proud. I wanted to do this for him. To give him the score he’d never hit. I wanted to find the treasure that had evaded him his whole life, until in its search it had claimed him.