by Molly E. Lee
“What if I hadn’t come back?”
“I would’ve waited.”
I wanted to believe that.
“Thank you for taking me with you, Easton. I needed to see what he’d seen.”
It took everything in me to nod and hold myself to the bed instead of slamming the door shut and not letting her go. I had to let her go, though. That was the point. I couldn’t force her to forgive me.
One soft smile, and she was gone.
I gripped the book between my hands too tightly. My chest burned from the whiplash it’d had, a blooming hope for a future with Rain—filled with brunches, babies, and stolen trips across the world after they’d grown—had quickly been smashed into a deep, dark hole where the only life I had existed on a fucking television show that was bound to kill me. I’d offered her my heart, and the woman had left me with a damn book.
Rain
HOME WAS A cozy ranch-style house on a hundred acres of land in Oregon. I shared the house with my mother, not out of need but because we were rarely ever there at the same time. When I was gone on a shoot, she’d take care of the place, and I took care of it when she was off on one of her many travels—she’d always said continuing her and my father’s goal to see the entire world had kept her sane after his passing.
She was in Turkey now, and although I would’ve liked someone to talk the events of the past two weeks out with, I relished the space. I didn’t want to tell her about Easton anyway. It would only reopen closed wounds, and there wasn’t a need. Mom and I had both grieved and come to an acceptance of Dad’s passing. He’d been an adventurer since before I was born, and I was raised with a full understanding of the risks that came with his profession, but I’d been the one who had needed closure. Not Mom.
And despite the hurt, I’d found it. Finally, after years of wondering what if and why, I knew what had happened to Dad—and to Easton.
Salt poured into the opened gash on my heart every time I thought about him. What he had gone through. What he’d done with his life as a result. I had no doubt he would’ve gained the prestigious status he had now, regardless of what had happened. I just believed that had my father lived, Easton might not do his job in such a way that it took his body to the edge every single expedition.
I sank onto the plush sofa in our barely lived-in living room and flicked on the TV. Cable was a luxury expense for Mom and me, especially since we weren’t here often, but we kept the house hooked up to the grid in order to offer the seclusion we wanted when we were here—which was only to recharge before the next job or adventure. When we came to home base, we wanted food, sleep, and mindless distraction. Hence, TV.
I scrolled down on my packed-tight DVR list and selected one of my favorite episodes.
Easton had traveled to the Brazilian jungle in search of the legendary city of Paititi—the city of gold. He’d gotten closer than anyone ever had before, and his findings had turned up evidence of a large section of land in the middle of the jungle that was perfectly square-shaped and hidden behind tons of thick, green jungle. The enclosure had been impossible to penetrate with the tools he’d had, but images captured by a fly-over done after the mission was complete had backed up everything Easton had said. The anomaly remained untouched to this day because it was protected by the local tribe’s religion, and any damage to the area caused by a full-scale excavation would start a war.
Of course, I knew if Easton truly wanted the claim, he could easily win the locals over. His passion for discovery, paired with his irresistible, confident charm, was a hard thing to resist in any language.
The scene that made it my favorite episode filled the screen, and I couldn’t help but shift in my seat as heat flooded my thighs.
Easton’s back muscles rippled underneath his tan skin as he yanked his shirt off. The heat of the jungle had him sweating constantly, and the beads that trailed down the sharp V that led to . . . well, they were practically lickable.
“This secluded waterfall is a precious find,” he said, smiling at the camera and pointing off screen. “The Amazon River is filled with things that could kill me in minutes. I’m sure there are a few dangers even in this glorious small, pond-like, body of water, but not nearly as many. And it’s sweltering here, like I’m breathing water, so I’m ready to cool my body down and get a good amount of the fresh water into my system.” He unbuckled his pants and slipped them off, one of his crew whistling, which made Easton crack a silly, sultry pose right before he dove into the water.
He broke the surface, dripping wet and with a grin that made me want to kiss it off his face. “That, my friends, is what heaven feels like.” He moaned and threw his head back, going under again.
The show cut to a commercial and I sighed. He’d looked so happy, so playful, and so much like the boy I’d fallen in love with. Of course, after my own expedition with him, I knew better. Easton had two sides—a camera one and a private one. The private one was much more jaded, but even then I’d seen the two parts of him trying to reconcile the longer we’d been on the trek. Perhaps now that he’d shared the weight of the tragedy he’d carried alone for way too long he would be able to live differently. More free. Happier.
I absently rubbed the center of my chest where a tightness lingered. Why hadn’t he trusted me enough to tell me? How could he ever think I would’ve blamed him, left him?
My heart thudded against my chest rapidly, propelling my mind to an answer that hadn’t seemed as obvious moments ago. A flush of heat raked across my skin, and my breath caught in my throat.
I sat up straight and brought my palm to my face. “I’m an idiot.” It needed to be said out loud.
He’d gone against instinct and finally opened up to me, telling me the truth even though it forced him to relive the pain, sharing the darkest part of himself with me, and what had I done?
I’d fucking left.
The irony was not lost on me. How could I be in his life, when I was a constant reminder of what he’d been through? The circumstances of my father’s death were more than enough to hit Easton with PTSD. I was almost certain it did from the reoccurring nightmares he had, and the dramatic emotional shift he’d had when the snake had nearly caused me to fall, or when we were in the cave itself. He must have only seen Dad in those moments, and relived the trauma over and over. How could I want that for him? To be the trigger to his deeply rooted pain?
He wanted you to stay. He asked you to. You said you wouldn’t leave him.
I leaned back in my seat, completely at odds. The urge to hop the next flight and return to him was overwhelming, but the idea of torturing him for the rest of his life by merely being who I was stopped me.
There was a choice here. And I could either make it for both of us without his consent—like he’d done to me—or I could woman up and lay my heart on the table.
Easton
“YOU SURE ABOUT this, Easton?” Kevin, my rope specialist, asked me. “We’re already five hundred meters deep, and I can’t calculate for what I can’t see. It’s dangerous, going in blind.”
“Yes, Mom,” I said, rechecking for the fifth time the harness I wore. “My mind is made up. And if I sense a danger I can’t handle on my own, I’ll radio you.”
He didn’t look convinced, but having been on my crew since the beginning, he knew an argument would be a waste of time. “Well, if you break your back again, don’t cry to me. And I won’t be at your bedside with comics.”
“Yeah, you will.”
He flipped me off before checking the rope anchored around a strong piece of the chamber wall. A series of LED lights had been placed strategically along the cave walls, illuminating the darkness in a way that probably hadn’t happened for thousands of years. Colors of gold and bronze dominated the area, and our modern equipment stuck out unnaturally against the natural formation.
Only a week into the expedition and we’d already uncovered two more chambers filled with gold—coins, bars, flatware—and precious stones. King Solomon
hadn’t boasted about his wealth; if anything, he may have undershot it in his writings. The idea of him being a humble man was too complicated to comprehend, so I instead focused on his possessions, and what the artifacts told us about the time period.
As far as I could tell with such a short time to study the items, Israel had prospered under his reign in a way it never had before. And he’d integrated a significant system of record keeping, to the point of obsession with documenting items and events he’d found important—even certain meals he’d had prepared for him. The scrolls of text we’d found were by far the most valuable to me out of everything we’d unearthed. They were a direct link to the mindset of a king from thousands of years ago and offered much more value than a bar of gold ever could.
Rain would have loved it. A knife twisted in my chest as I longed for her presence. Not just because I wanted to breathe her in again, but because she’d absolutely get a thrill from reading the scrolls. The Hebrew was different in ancient form, but not enough where she couldn’t read a majority of it. I’d tried calling her at the only number I’d found listed under her name, but never made a connection. She had most likely already started another job. No telling which country or continent she was on now.
“Focus.” Kevin snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I blinked a few times.
“Right.”
“I like blondes as much as the next man,” he said, waggling his eyebrows, “but don’t die because you’re thinking about her, okay?”
“Fuck you, Knot.” I used his call-sign and laughed. My crew had seen a rough cut of the footage we’d shot in our time out here, and the producers had a heavy-handed focus on particular moments between Rain and me. Moments where she’d challenged me, or where she’d stepped up and saved me. The dynamic was awkward to watch, since I’d lived it, but the crew didn’t miss a beat and had given me shit ever since. Anyone who saw the show would know how much I loved her.
“From our rough calculations, the depth of this thing could go farther than eight hundred meters. That would double the depth we’re currently at. I need you sharp.”
“Got it.” I grabbed the rope, grateful we weren’t filming because it enabled me to use all the gear I wanted, including my tough, leather gloves and the much safer harness strapped to my body. I stepped backward, pulling the line taut by pushing my feet against the ledge of the chamber.
“Tell me one thing before you go—you know, just in case you die.” Kevin crossed his arms over his chest, the black hieroglyphic tats bulging out of his T-shirt.
“What?”
“Why the rush to get down there? There are at least six unsearched chambers up here we still have to get through, and that’s not even scratching the surface of this place.”
I glanced down, the once fully-dark pit slightly illuminated from the lights we had in place. I still couldn’t see to the bottom, but I could picture it clearly in my mind. “Most valuable piece of treasure is down there.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “All right, man. Don’t die. I really don’t want to get another job.”
I saluted him and propelled myself off of the rock. Gravity sucked me down, the rope in my right hand sliding quick. I tightened the rope in my left hand, pulling it to slow my momentum, and continued to bounce my way down the cave wall, pressing with my feet, and falling, before returning to the wall to do it all over again. It made fast work of reaching the bottom, and the exhilaration behind the rappel was enough to cover the mounting terror I had at facing what I knew I’d find down there.
Sweat covered my skin in minutes, the temperature increasing the deeper I went, like lowering into a preheated oven. The pressure from the depth squeezed my chest and skull, making each of my bones ache for relief. I swallowed hard to clear my ears, and soon set my feet on the solid ground of the cave floor. I radioed to Kevin that I’d safely made it down before retrieving my water bottle from my pack and draining its contents.
The light on my helmet filled the area before me but wasn’t bright enough to penetrate the darkness that seemed thicker down here, like walking through molasses. I grabbed a handful of glow sticks from my pack and cracked them one by one. I tossed them everywhere I could throw. The neon-green glow filled the area and made the atmosphere eerie, which added to the terror that pumped through my blood in icy chunks. The demons I elected to face down here were my own, but if a ghost haunted this place, he wouldn’t hurt me.
To my right I could see two tunnels that led deeper into the cave, and to my left was nothing but solid rock wall. The same in front and behind me, the place not much bigger than a standard basketball court. I’d refused to look at the ground since my boots found it, and finally, I sucked in a deep breath and let my eyes trail downward.
It didn’t take long to find what I sought.
My gut twisted, threatening to spill everything I’d eaten that morning, and I regretted the water I’d chugged moments before. I tried to keep the tears from coating my eyes, but I couldn’t.
“Oh, Harrison.” I pinched the bridge of my nose in an attempt to hold back the flood of emotions threatening to turn me into a sobbing heap on the stone floor.
The sight of my mentor’s skeleton, the clothes he’d worn that day deteriorated and tangled among his bones, made me feel like I was fourteen again—a scared little boy who’d found hope in the form of this man. He’d changed my life. Repeatedly. And now . . .
I stepped toward him, my feet heavy and louder than I would’ve liked. I crouched down. I’d seen human remains many times on my expeditions, but those were hundreds of years old, at least. And I hadn’t known them. This was gruesomely different.
I had loved this man. Wanted to be this man. Had let go of this man.
His skull had a deep crack from his nose to its center, the placement against the cave’s floor suggesting he’d landed on his stomach.
Fuck. I flinched, the scene that had haunted me daily since it happened replayed in my head with a crystal-clear ending for the first time. Of course I had imagined how the impact had happened, had felt, but now the sensation stung every nerve I had, as if I could reach out and touch Harrison’s death with my own fingers.
“I’m so fucking sorry.” I hovered my hand over his skull, electing to not touch him. I’d spoken to him many times in my head, but being right next to him made me feel like he could actually hear me this time. “I didn’t keep good on my promise. I didn’t take care of her like I should have. I was a coward.”
This pile of broken bones used to be Rain’s father. He’d held her as a baby, taught her to ride a bike, showed her how to be compassionate in the face of adversity. He’d instilled the same values in me . . . and now he was cold, alone, and scraped bare.
I sniffed, sucking back the tears that rolled down my cheeks. “I won’t ask for your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it, but I want you to know how deeply I want to make good on the promise now.”
The light on my helmet shone directly on the pack he’d worn, which was half covered in a pile of rocks that had fallen with Harrison as the bridge had crumbled. I would be down here, too, if I hadn’t let go.
My hands shook as I hefted the rocks off the pack, then heaved the thing into my lap. I brushed off the crumbles of rock and dirt and opened it. I didn’t care about the spare socks I’d had in there, or the extra lights, ropes, and hooks. I pulled out the small wooden box that I’d kept the ring in. A huge crack in the shape of a lightning bolt had split the box half open, but the tiny gold ring with one single emerald in the middle was still intact. Rain didn’t care for diamonds, and I’d selected the green stone—her favorite—in the hopes she wouldn’t mind the non-traditional choice. I’d wanted a ring she’d love to wear every day, because I’d intended her to never take it off.
I stared at what could have been my future had I’d kept good on my word.
“I’m sure you know this already, but we found it together, Harrison. Yo
u would’ve been so proud of her. The way she faced the challenges of this expedition head on and made it to the end where we discovered the second chamber. The possibilities are endless here . . . I fucking wish you could see it.”
I slipped the broken box into my pack and pulled out the tarp I’d brought down for this purpose. I didn’t want to wrap him in the plastic, but I couldn’t leave him down here like this. He deserved a proper burial, and Rain deserved the full closure of knowing his casket would no longer be empty. The work hurt every inch of my soul, but I managed to collect the remains that didn’t shatter between my fingers and secured the bundle to the outside of my pack.
Retrieving the glow sticks that had landed in front of the two tunnels, I paused, my curiosity pulsing with need. I clicked the button on my radio. “About to enter a tunnel directly to the right of the landing site.”
“Copy that. Watch your line. Don’t let it get tangled.” Kevin’s voice was static-coated, but I could still hear the anxiousness in it. He was the mother-hen of our crew. My regular camera guy, Lance, would’ve told me to not come up until I had something priceless or was bleeding.
I held in front of me a handful of the glow sticks I’d gathered to add to the light from my helmet as I pushed farther into the tunnel. The pressure in my head increased as the walls grew tighter around me, forcing me to hunch over so my head didn’t hit the top. I kept moving, running my free hand along the wall to stay oriented, until it hit a gap.
Static blared through my radio. “ . . .—ing out . . . line.” Kevin’s voice was broken by the lack of reception.
The gap was large enough to fit through, so I leaned over it and shined my light into the open space. My eyes widened and my stomach dropped at the exact same time.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Harrison. Would you look at that?”
“You’re sure?” Tal asked me outside the cave’s entrance where my crew had set up a work space.