Page 44 of Stay With Me

“Okay” she uttered breathlessly as she lifted her head up, running her fingers through her hair, pushing it back away from her face. “He’s not actually dead. That’s good.”

She leaned over his face and patted his cheek. “Nick … Nick, if you can hear me, I want you to open your eyes,” she directed. She waited for a second and after getting no response, she shook her head and coughed a couple of times to defuse the constricting of her throat. Then she tried again.

“Nick, can you hear me? It’s Samantha.”

Still nothing.

She placed her ear on his chest again, just to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated the heartbeat and breathing.

Nope, still there. He was alive—technically speaking.

She sat back up, stared at his face for a minute, and then scanned their surroundings.

Only the boulder maze and the walls, which continued for much farther than she could see. Even if he woke up, there’s no way he could get out of here without the aid of some kind of vehicle.

We aresoscrewed.

But she wasn’t going to say that out loud, in case he could hear her on some subconscious level.

Instead, she placed her hands on his face, rubbing her thumbs over his cheeks, and maintained her calm state.

“Nick, I need you to try to hear me right now,” she pleaded. “We’re going to get out of this. I’m going to figure this out and you’re going to be okay. All right? I need you to hang in there. Don’t try to head toward the light or anything crazy like that. Just stay with me, Nick. Please, please stay with me.”

Chapter Ten

Nick

On the eighty-first day of the heat wave, the epic stretch of suffocating one hundred plus degree temperatures in Austin finally broke. Stifling heat gave way to warm rain and the cool, sunny, spring-like weather that marked the beginning of fall in central Texas.

The restaurant had a sudden influx of reservations and customers, brought about by a stellar review in the New York Times and a successful run during Restaurant Week, which required additional staff to be hired and Nick to work longer hours than usual. He’d never been quite this busy in the five years he’d owned the restaurant and, normally, that wouldn’t have bothered him.

However, that was before and everything was different now.

On the third Saturday in November, he essentially leaped out of bed. It was only seven a.m. and he had no reason to get up this early other than the fact that he was too excited to sleep.

Due to their conflicting schedules, he and Sammie hadn’t had a date in two weeks. Today he was taking her to meet his parents, who were understandably quite pleased. He was pretty pleased as well, and not to mention thoroughly amused by the quick change in his attitude toward relationships and life in general.

But having a near-death experience will do that to a person.

When Sammie had caught his hand and managed to pull him back onto the rim of the canyon, he was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’d saved his life, and it was time to do things differently.

The first thing he did was fess up.

About everything.

Immediately.

After scrambling back onto solid ground and collapsing on top of her, he’d blurted out the words, “I need a do-over.”

She breathed heavily for a second or two until she took on a confused look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean.” He paused to catch his breath. “I haven’t been a good person and I want to start over.”

“Okay?” she prompted.

“I had a bad habit of hooking up with customers at the restaurant,” he began, speaking quickly, spitting out the words as if they had a foul taste. “When you came into the office with me, it wasn’t the first time I’d done that.”

She made a face at him. “Really?”