Chapter 34: Fear of Heights

Jamie made his way up the sandy path to the bungalow's front door. He took the front step carefully so as not to trip in the moonless dark. The clouds had grown thicker since he left the bungalow an hour ago, and the wind was whipping up the surf. He'd gone walking barefoot along the beach, hoping the chilly air and churning water would help him clear his head, but he only felt more muddled than before.

I think I might be in love with you.

Jamie groaned aloud for what must have been the hundredth time since those words escaped his lips. Of all the asinine things he could've said...

Cora's reaction hadn't surprised him. Words of disbelief, tinged with a faint horror. She'd been more than clear with him not to speak to her of love. When he'd begged her to come on the show, she'd insisted "I have no interest in a romance." He could still picture the whole scene as it had unfolded on the airport shuttle bus. He'd given her his word that he would not abuse her boundaries. "I swear," he had promised. "I will make it up to you somehow."

But Jamie Bowen was no gentleman. His word was not worth much. And how did he repay the debt he owed her? "I think I might be in love with you." The very thing she wanted least of all.

No, he hadn't been surprised by Cora's answer, but it had stabbed him through the heart all the same.

Jamie couldn't remember exactly what he'd said afterward, or how he'd come to find himself wandering the darkened beach. His mind had gone blank for a moment—a blur of embarrassment and pain. Apparently she had gone to sleep without him in the interim. He saw no sign of light or movement inside the bungalow, and he tiptoed to the second bedroom to avoid disturbing her slumber.

Jamie flipped on the lights and sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt more clear-headed now after his walk. A plan had taken shape. They still had one week left together here. It might still be possible to salvage things if he could speak to her before the crew returned.

He wouldn't go to bed at all tonight, he decided. He'd stay up and watch the sky until the first rays of dawn made their presence known. He would wake her with half an hour to spare before the crew arrived, and he would have his story carefully prepared.

Jamie went over the outline of it again now in his head. "Right," he muttered, slipping into an Oxbridge accent as easily as he might slip on another man's suit of clothes. "Oxytocin, oft-referred to as the love hormone..." They'd been stewing in it here for weeks. That was all he felt. It didn't mean anything. It wasn't real. Once they left the confines of their bungalow, it would pass as quickly as it came.

Jamie looked down at his hands as he planned out the words he'd say to her. Cora would believe it. Of that much, he felt certain. She always believed him best when he was lying. She'd swallow it without question if he said what she wanted to hear.

Of course, it wouldn't be what he wanted. But when had anything in his life been what he wanted?

Jamie was used to it by now. He had always walked the world alone, sharing space with other people but never quite connecting. Sharing beds, giving pleasure... but never quite receiving love.

As a child he would read stories of boys and girls with mums and dads, and the jealousy would eat at him. The agonizing yearning would make him cry himself to sleep. But he grew up quick enough. He'd learned the only way to numb the pain was to give up on wanting anything at all.

Jamie's eyes felt gritty. The bed beckoned, but he resisted its lure. He knew if he went to sleep, he wouldn't wake in time. He'd miss his chance to speak to Cora off-camera in the morning. He couldn't fathom the torment of making it through the day with his half-baked confession laying between them, rotting in the sun.

"Stay awake," he muttered tersely, scrubbing his palms down the length of his face. He opened the window a crack, welcoming the bracing chill of cold night air.

It reminded him of something. A scene he'd read once, years ago. Wuthering Heights, when poor tormented Heathcliff was found with his bedroom window open in the dead of winter—open so that his lost love's voice might reach him from beyond.

A dark chuckle rumbled in Jamie's throat. How apt. Cora had likened him to Heathcliff earlier tonight. Another literary orphan. This one, a shunned outcast, with nothing but his hopeless love for Catherine—a girl who only used him as a way to pass the time.

Jamie wished he weren't cursed with his useless memory for fiction. Sometimes, when he looked within himself, he saw nothing but the fragments of characters he'd read about, as if he'd cobbled them together into a patchwork of a man. He couldn't say he'd enjoyed Wuthering Heights when he read it as a teenager—if anything, it frightened him with a fear he couldn't name—but the comparison to Heathcliff was undeniable.

And now his love had shut him out. She'd slipped between his fingers. And he ended up alone, walking the moors, pining for a whisper from a ghost.

Jamie could almost hear her voice now if he listened closely. A ghostly keening came through the window, carried to him on the wind.

A fine imagination he had.

The sound disturbed him, and Jamie stood to close the window. As he turned the crank, the wind pierced through the gap one final time, and Jamie stood up straighter. That voice... perhaps that wasn't his fevered imagination after all.

Was someone out there?

Jamie stood very still and listened.

There. He heard it again, more clearly. A woman's voice, calling out. It sounded like it might be coming from somewhere up on the cliffs. Good God, who in their right mind would be up there in the middle of the night?

Jamie's eyes flew open wide, suddenly not sleepy in the least. He left the window ajar and headed to the main bedroom, whispering as he went. "Cora? Cora, are you here?"

No answer.

He flipped the light switch.

No one in the bed.

"Bloody hell," he murmured.

He bounded from the bungalow, back out into the night.

***

The moon hung lower in the sky now, and the inky blackness had abated slightly. Not nearly enough light for Cora to feel stable. She couldn't shake the spinning sensation, even when she tried to focus her vision on a fixed point. The whole world spun in circles beneath her feet and around her head as if she were trapped inside a gyroscope. Cora sank down into a crouch and hugged her knees.

"Jamie!" she tipped her head upward and shouted into the air. "Jamie! Are you out here!"

It was no use. He was probably dead already. And it was her fault. All her fault. Again...

So her thoughts whirled in circles as the world around her spun.

She may have survived Steven in the car crash, but she hadn't walked away unscathed. She would always hold herself responsible. She felt guilt-ridden for the fact that she was still alive at all. She thought that she'd made peace with it, but now the truth reared its ugly head.

She was the one who should have died that night. It would have been the fairer outcome. Steven should have been the one who lived and found love again. Not her. She didn't deserve it.

She would never be able to live with it a second time. Not if history repeated itself. That was her worst nightmare. Worse than death. Accidentally killing someone else.

Cora let out an anguished sound, somewhere between sob and howl.

A faint sound returned to her ears. Was that an echo? The wind? She stayed very still and listened.

There it was again. No mistaking it this time. A voice answering her call.

Cora stood, nearly toppling over in the process, calling his name and waiting for his answer.

"Thank you, God," she whispered to the universe, as she heard his voice come closer. Her ultimate fear had not come to pass. The universe was not so cruel. But it had given her a warning. A clear message with hazard lights flashing, like the beacons of the rescue vehicles on a rainswept stretch of road.

She should have been the body on the stretcher, with the lights reflecting pink off the sheet draped over it. She shouldn't be here now.

She was alive, but she was cursed. She'd known it from that night, watching Steven's broken body carried away. She had known that she would never love again.

Love had caused that car wreck. The dark side of love. The aftermath. The residue left over after the feelings burnt away. The opposite of love, a feeling for which her language had no proper word, but which the universe created wherever love existed as a form of symmetry.

Like matter and antimatter. Gravity and anti-gravity. Love and anti-love.

The anti-love was the problem. That was the feeling she feared, the emotion she had worked so hard to avoid ever experiencing again.

She'd put herself at risk through her carelessness these past few weeks, but it was only a warning. It wasn't too late. She could still escape—they both could—if she did what she needed to do.

Jamie sounded close now. He would be with her any moment now. Cora's heart pounded at the thought.

***

Jamie cupped his hands around his mouth to shout back into the void. "Cora!"

Her voice carried back to him on the wind.

She couldn't be far off. The rocks beneath his feet were slick with early morning dew, and he had to scamper on all fours at times to keep from sliding. A dark precipice yawned off to his right, and he wondered if the drop off would be enough to kill a man or only maim him for a while. Jamie didn't particularly suffer from a fear of heights, but only a fool would traverse these rocks in the dead of night without the benefit of a torch.

How in hell had she gotten herself out here?

"Cora!" Jamie called again, listening for her answer to guide his progress.

He was close enough to make out words now, and she must hear him coming closer too. But if anything, the note of terror in her voice only rose. "Jamie! Be careful!"

Careful indeed. A bit too late for that warning, unfortunately.

Jamie paused, assessing his surroundings. Total darkness had been replaced by a woolly fog that concealed the ground beneath his feet.

"Hold still!" he called. "Don't move. I'll come to you!"

He picked his way carefully down a small ravine and around one final bend, and there she was. She flung herself toward him and hugged him fiercely as Jamie pulled her into his arms.

"Are you OK?" She let go and ran her hands up his arms as if searching for wounds. "You're all right? You're fine?"

"Of course I'm all right." Her fingers were cold as ice, and he gathered her hands, rubbing them between his own to warm them. "You're the one who decided to go rock climbing in the middle of the night. How are you?"

He gathered her close to him again. This time he brushed his hands vigorously up and down her arms to ease her shivering. She hadn't exactly dressed for weather. Even in his state of distress earlier, he'd had the forethought to throw on proper clothes. But she'd come out here in nothing but the oversized t-shirt she wore to bed.

He didn't miss the way her voice had gone raw from screaming, or how her breath came in shallow panted gasps. "Jamie," she kept repeating his name. "Jamie. Jamie."

She'd given herself a proper fright.

"It's all right now," he soothed her. He cupped the back of her head in his palm and rested her forehead against his shoulder. "I'm here. Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, but her shivering had only intensified. "Cold," she whispered.

She'd end up with hypothermia if they weren't careful. He needed herto get her back inside. Jamie peered back in the direction of the bungalow, but the fog swirled around the rocks in a dense blanket, blocking any hope of seeing more than a few feet from where they stood.

"No," he decided. "We'd best stay put for now." They'd have to wait it out. The dawn couldn't be far off.

Dear Readers:
If you're enjoying the story, please let me know with your COMMENTS and VOTES. Thank you! ❤️