Page 72 of Nothing But Air

The cam was ripping.

Eden watched the shallow horizontal break give way—limestone dust puffing out in a chalky cloud, the cam’s lobes scraping against water-weakened stone. The stone she’d insisted was better than the crack.

Her route.

Her call.

No, no, no—The words clogged her throat.

The cam popped free with a sharp metallic ping.

Teague fell again.

Fifteen feet. Twenty. His body rotated in space, the rope trailing above him in a useless arc. Eden’s vision tunneled.

The next piece of protection—another cam in one of those marginal horizontal breaks—caught him hard.

Too hard.

The rope went bar tight. Teague slammed into the wall with a sickening thud that Eden registered in her bones. In her teeth. In her chest.

The type of impact that drove the air from your lungs. His helmet cracked against limestone with a hollow sound that made her jaw ache.

Then he just hung there.

Spinning slowly on the rope. One arm wrapped around his ribs. Face twisted in pain. Blood dripped from his elbow, dark droplets spattering against the pale stone below.

“Teague!” Her voice finally broke free. Her hands were already moving—clipping into the anchor, checking her belay device even though her fingers shook so hard she could barely work the carabiner. The metal was slick under her sweating palms. Strands of blonde hair had escaped her braid, sticking to her neck. “Teague, talk to me!”

Marcus stood frozen a few feet away, one hand pressed against his mouth. His brown hair was disheveled, his normally polished demeanor shattered.

Xander had locked off his belay device, his powerful frame already positioning to move. His blue-gray eyes were sharp with concern.

Eden shook her head. “I’ll go, Xander.”

She was the better climber. She was lighter.

And this was her fault.

“I’m…” Teague’s voice drifted down, thin and threaded with pain. “I’m okay. Just. Give me a second.”

He wasn’t okay.

Eden could see it in the way he held himself—that careful stillness that spoke of broken things. His right arm stayed clamped against his ribs while his left hand maintained a white-knuckled grip on the rope. His auburn curls were dark with sweat beneath his helmet.

The wind had picked up, hot and dry, carrying the scent of dust and sage.

My fault. My fault. My. Fault.

She’d been so confident. So sure the slab route was better. She’d pointed out water seepage that Teague couldn’t see in the crack, and she’d convinced him to trust her judgment over his own instincts.

And he had.

He’d listened to her. Studied both routes. He hadn’t agreed—she’d read that much in his eyes—and yet he’d chosen to trust her.

And she’d been wrong.

Catastrophically wrong.