“Just go!”
With her legs cramped, Alex had to use Kaiden’s hand-over-hand method to cross the remaining distance of the ravine. When Tom and Jordan helped pull her up onto solid ground after Pipsqueak and Kaiden, she promptly rolled away from the edge far enough to curl into a ball, waiting for her trembling limbs to relax.
“Alex? Alex! Are you okay?” came Jordan’s frantic voice.
“Define ‘okay’,” she said shakily.
He didn’t answer, but she felt someone reach out to take her backpack and she mumbled her thanks.
She heard Tom call out for Declan to come across, and only when she heard the big guy’s voice amongst the rest of them did she open her eyes and sit up from her collapsed position. Her body screamed at the move, and she almost bit through her lip to hold back a moan of pain as she began to massage her aching limbs.
Her classmates noticed her movement and began to cluster around her.
“Whoa, that was just… whoa…” Blink said, apparently beyond a proper sentence.
Alex shook her head at him and continued to stretch out her cramped everything.
“Here, this should help,” Jordan said, kneeling beside her with a light green vial of pain relief medicine.
She took it from him gratefully and swallowed it in one go. Her pain disappeared almost immediately and her muscles instantly relaxed. Jordan then pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. He held her tight against his trembling body, causing Alex to realise just how much she must have worried him.
When he dropped his arms, he moved his hands to her shoulders and looked her sternly in the eyes. “You better not pull a stunt like that ever again.”
“I couldn’t just leave her, Jordan,” she said quietly. “I promised.”
He sighed and released her to run his hands through his hair. “I know. But you have no idea what it was like watching you out there. That was just… I don’t even know what to say! I’m supposed to be looking out for you. Dix will kill me when she finds out about this. And Bear will find a way to revive me only so he can kill me again. Either way, I’m a dead man. And rightly so.”
Alex couldn’t bring herself to feel annoyed by his overprotective nature, so she smiled reassuringly and said, “They won’t be able to kill you if they don’t find out. It can be our little secret.”
Jordan huffed out a disbelieving breath, but when she nudged him with her elbow he smiled back at her.
“Eugh. You two are so gag-worthy,” Skyla said. “How long have you been together, anyway?”
“Pipe down, Blondie,” Pipsqueak said, her expression dazed from the relaxant. “Love is a beautiful thing. I think they’re adorable.”
Alex looked at Jordan in mortification.
“That’s not a very nice face, sweetheart,” Jordan said jokingly as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He smirked at her when she shot him a disgruntled look and tried to struggle out of his grasp.
“We are not having this conversation,” Alex informed everyone. “But, for the record, Jordan is one of my best friends. Emphasis on ‘friend’. I can’t believe that after what we’ve just gone through, you’re all wondering about something as unimportant as my love life!”
“So you do have a love life?” Skyla asked eagerly.
“Unbelievable,” Alex muttered, and she turned away from them and stalked over to where someone had placed her backpack. She pulled out her water bottle and took a swig, waiting for the conversation to move on before she joined them again.
“They’re just trying to ease the tension.”
Alex glowered sullenly at Kaiden when he knelt beside her and reached for his own water.
“I don’t see how asking about my relationship status helps,” she said. “And it’s none of their business, anyway.”
“It was only Skyla and Pip who asked,” Kaiden pointed out. “The former we know is an airhead, and the latter is currently as high as the clouds. Maybe give them a little leeway, considering.”
“I had no idea the spray would do that to her,” Alex admitted, her annoyance dissolving as the horror of the memory caught up to her. “She wouldn’t do anything. It was like she couldn’t hear me. I thought if I got her to calm down, she’d be able to move again. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You were incredible,” Kaiden said, holding her gaze. “What you did was amazing.”
“She fell because of what I did,” Alex said, remembering the terrifying moment when Pip dropped from the rope. “She could have died.”
Kaiden reached out to rest his hand on top of hers. “You caught her.”
“I was stupid.”
“You were brave.”
Looking into his serious eyes, she almost believed him. “We would’ve fallen if you hadn’t come to help,” she whispered.
“I don’t believe that. You would’ve found a way to get both of you safely across.”
Alex had no response for that, and she lowered her gaze to look at his hand still covering her own. He squeezed lightly and only let go at the sound of someone clearing their throat.
“We—Uh—We should probably get going,” said Tom, shuffling his feet and looking uncomfortable.
Alex watched as he hurried off to round up the others, and she turned to look at Kaiden questioningly. “What’s up with him?”
Kaiden bit back a smile and rose to his feet, helping her up with him. Despite his amused expression, he didn’t answer her question. Instead, he told her something else.
“We found Hunter’s next arrow while we were waiting for everyone to cross.”
“Fantastic,” Alex muttered. “Do we get to throw ourselves off another cliff?”
Kaiden glanced at her. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Too early?”
“Definitely. And don’t get me started on your ‘hanging in there’ comment.”
She laughed lightly and ignored the playful glare he sent her. “I was quite proud of my wit at the time.”
He shook his head at her and she was denied a response when the rest of their classmates came over to collect their backpacks. Pipsqueak was humming quietly to herself and Alex felt a pang of concern.
“How long until she’s normal again?”
“Depends,” Tom answered. “Usually people sleep it off.”
“So, we have to wait until she wakes up tomorrow?” Alex clarified.
At Tom’s nod, Jordan dryly said what they were all thinking. “This should be fun.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on any of them. Well, except for Pipsqueak.
“Fun?” she asked, jumping into the conversation. “I love fun. What’re we gonna do that’s fun? Another race?”
“No, definitely not,” Kaiden said quickly.
“That’s not very fun at all,” Pipsqueak said with a pout.
“We need to move,” Declan intervened. “I reckon we only have another hour or so before it’s too dark to see.”
“Where’s the arrow?” Alex asked, looking around for Hunter’s sign.
“Over here,” Jordan said, leading the way along the edge of the ravine.
When they were all standing around the arrow—but keeping their distance from the edge of the mountain—Tom reached out to grab the paper. His brow furrowed in confusion as he read.