If You Fall (Brimstone 1)

I’d made a pact with myself that from now on, I was going to do everything I was afraid of – everything. In no particular order, that meant:

Climb a mountain.

Fly an airplane.

Go on a roller coaster.

Eat sashimi.

Bungee jump.

Visit the top of the Empire State Building.

Skydive.

Take self-defense classes.

Have a one-night stand with a gorgeous man just to see what it was like…

Okay, that last one was made up on the spot after seeing Beckett again, dressed in his low-slung faded jeans and white mock-turtleneck t-shirt. If fate was going to come barreling out of nowhere and kill me like it killed Dan, I wanted to have lived a little – make that a lot – first.

Beckett checked my harness one last time and then held up his fist, so we could fist-bump. I almost missed his I was shaking so badly.

He grinned at me. “You’ll do fine. It’s a kid’s apparatus.”

“Thanks,” I said with a laugh, starting to relax a bit. Maybe he had a valid reason for being back in Topsail Beach. Leah didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Maybe I didn’t have to be so freaked out.

I looked up the wall and tried to replicate what I learned when our instructor demonstrated earlier. Why make it any harder than it already was?

“Here goes nothing.”

It was hard and it was easy.

Hard because I used muscles I didn’t even know existed. Easy because it was only fifteen feet high and it was the beginner wall, designed

for children or people who had never climbed before. I climbed one knobby outcropping at a time, sliding my fingers over rocks and between crevices, testing my footing, pulling myself up slowly, carefully. When I got to the top, I exhaled in relief, not realizing I’d been holding my breath, and glanced down. It wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, I freaking loved it.

Elated that I got to the top of the wall rather quickly, I smiled down on Leah and Beckett and waved, as if I’d just won the Academy Award for best Actress.

“Take it slow,” Beckett called up to me when I started down. It didn’t appear so hard from where I stood but I did what he’d told me and pushed off while he let the rope release slowly, a few feet at a time. The rappel down was actually fun once I got the rhythm of it.

I could actually do this.

When I reached the bottom, Leah and I high-fived then Beckett fist bumped me again, and this time I didn’t miss.

“See,” I said, laughing. “Nothing to it.”

I wanted to feel fearless like that all the time. About everything. I wanted to think there was nothing to whatever it was that I faced in life. I knew it would feel spectacular.

You’d think the daughter of a career FBI Special Agent would be fearless, but you’d be wrong. If anything, I was even more obsessed with safety than average, aware of bad guys and criminals and threats to life and limb. You’d also think that someone with a fear of violent death would avoid going into the criminal justice profession but you’d be wrong about that, too. Surrounding myself with all things law enforcement was the only way I felt truly safe.

I had to break out of that mold if I ever hoped to move on with my life.

“Your turn,” I said to Leah as Beckett helped me unhook the harness. As I took it off, I looked at Leah. “Nothing to it.”

Then Leah took a turn, and Beckett and I watched while she climbed the wall. She was a bit more hesitant than I had been, but she seemed just as happy when she reached the top.

“Are you going to climb?” I asked while Leah descended.