Page 41 of Stay With Me

“Nope.” He smiled softly as he watched her gingerly walk parallel to the ledge at a safe distance.

“This is amazing!” she gushed. “It looks like it could swallow up a city block, buildings included.”

He chuckled as he followed her slowly from a small distance, not even looking at the canyon—just at her face—as he drank in her reaction.

She loves it as much as I do.

He continued to watch and trail her when he was abruptly assaulted by those damn feelings again.

And, as usual, the sense of being in the middle of something vast made him feel small, and it brought him clarity about the new feelings.

He wanted something he couldn’t have. And he couldn’t have it because he’d screwed it up before it had a chance to begin. And he’d screwed it up because he’d been terrified of it for as long as he could remember.

His smile faded, but he continued to slowly walk and watch her as she chittered up a storm about the amazing view.

Suddenly, he noticed the sound and feeling of his shoes slipping on gravel.

Then there was a falling sensation and a jolt, as he grasped fiercely at a ledge of limestone.

Then came the scraping of his chest and stomach and legs dragging against the jagged, sloping wall.

And then, weightlessness.

He’d heard somewhere that right before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes.

For Nick, it wasn’t quite his whole life. Just a handful of moments that, prior to right then, would have seemed somewhat unrelated.

Nick, five years old, in his closet, knees pulled up to his chest as he cried. Screaming and shouting drifting down the hall. The shatter of a dish; the slam and crack of a cabinet door.

His mother’s voice screeching at his father.“You were the worst mistake I ever made and you’d better believe I’m going to fix that right now!”

Nick, fourteen years old, following his father through the house, trying to speak calmly in spite of a rising lump in his throat. His voice cracking under the influence of devastation and adolescence.

“You don’t have to leave, Dad. You guys can work through this. Just like before. Please—”

“I’m sorry, sport. You’ll understand when you’re grown up.”

The front door slamming shut. His mother’s sobs drifting from her bedroom.

Nick, twenty-two years old, waving at his embracing parents as he walked the stage and accepted his bachelor’s degree. His parents waving back, then looking at each other with total adoration and devotion.

Nick, thirty years old, standing in Samantha’s entryway after their first date.

“What’s your last name?”

“Holt. Samantha Holt. What’s yours?”

“Chapman. Nick Chapman.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Chapman.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, too, Miss Holt.”

Nick, approximately two hours earlier. Samantha smiling at him, eyes sparkling and hair blowing. The two of them alone in the desert.

But right then, the handful of moments weren’t unrelated. They all fit together in one giant, cosmically coordinated puzzle that told him exactly what he wanted and needed to do.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.