“Are we at the bottom?” Somehow she’d thought it would be a longer fall. But, hey, she was alive, and that was good.
“No. We’re not at the bottom. We’re about halfway down.”
He couldn’t have said anything worse. Okay, maybe he could have. Something like “you’ve landed on a spike and you’re about to die” would be worse. But halfway? In the dark? The sound of the waves crashing beneath them suddenly became unbearably loud. It even managed to block out the thumping of her heart, for a moment.
By the light of the moon, she could make out Keir’s head above her. He was looking around, and he was grim.
“We’re on a narrow ledge,” Keir said. “It seems stable enough. There’s a huge patch of thistles growing out from under the edge. I think they help stabilize this part of the cliff.” He looked down at her, his face in shadow. “Can you sit up? Are you hurt? Anything broken?”
“I just fell down a cliff, bumping around while I did it—everything hurts. Plus, I can’t breathe. You weigh a ton.”
He immediately took more of his weight on his arms. “Anything broken?”
“I don’t think so.” Did self-esteem count?
“Okay, sit up, but try to move slow and easy. I’m not sure how stable this ledge is.”
Mairi pushed at his chest. “Get out of the way.”
“I see your usually sunny disposition wasn’t harmed, so I guess you didn’t bump your head.”
“Get out of the way, donkey breath, so I can get up.”
He shook his head at the donkey breath comment, but carefully inched off her and to the side. Mairi noticed he’d put himself on the outside of the ledge, protecting her from falling further, and for some reason, that irritated her more. It took a bit of shuffling around, but they both ended up with their backs to the cliff and their knees up in front of them as they looked out over the black water.
“This isn’t good,” Mairi said.
Keir snorted. “No kidding.”
Mairi cautiously checked herself for injuries and was relieved to find it was mostly scrapes and bruises. She was okay about that—what she wasn’t okay with was the am
ount of dirt and plant life in her hair. She frantically finger-combed it, to get out what she could, hoping that she didn’t miss something that would burrow deeper and set up a home for itself. This was the problem with having thick, curly hair. Things could go into it and never come out. She’d once lost a pencil in there and only found it after she’d been stabbed in her sleep.
“What are you doing?” Keir snapped. “Sit still. You’re shaking the earth loose.”
“Don’t worry. We can replace it with the dirt in my hair.”
She was itchy, imagining all the insects that were now at home on her head. It was just like when she was at school, and they’d send home a notice about lice. Those lice notices were Mairi’s greatest fear because if she’d gotten lice, she would never have been rid of them. She would have ended up the bald lice girl of Campbeltown.
“Why the hell are you muttering about lice?” Keir grabbed her hands and held them tight in his. “Do you have concussion? Are you imagining things?”
“No, I’m not imagining things, and my head is fine. Sore, but fine.” She was pretty sure there was an egg-sized bump back there, but it could have been the colony home of a million ants who’d moved into her hair. “I think there are bugs in my hair. I can’t have bugs in my hair. I’m telling you this now, while I’m still calm, because when it gets worse, there’s a good chance I’m going to throw myself over the cliff, so I can wash my hair in the sea.”
“Get a grip. It’s only bugs. They won’t kill you. You can wash your hair once we’re out of here.”
“Spoken like a man with short hair. You have no comprehension of what I’m dealing with. I have more hair than bloody Rapunzel. You can’t get anything out of this hair once it goes in. It’s the Bermuda freaking Triangle of hair.”
He let out a pained sigh. “I see what’s going on. You’re freaking out because you fell off the bluff. You’re scared, and you’ve transferred your fear to your hair.”
“Who died and made you Dr. Phil?”
He ignored her and carried on in that same annoyingly calm voice. “It’s fine. I can cope with you worrying about your hair. What I can’t cope with is you bouncing around on the tiny ledge that’s keeping us alive. You need to sit still, or I’m going to put you down and sit on you. Are we clear?”
Mairi tried to breathe evenly, aware that she was about ten seconds away from doing a Wile E. Coyote and running in midair before plunging into the sea, all while screaming hysterically and pulling at her hair.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m okay. You can let go now.”
“No chance in hell. I’ll keep hold of you until you lose that crazy glint in your eyes.”