“Think of it as vertical hiking.” I shrugged.
“Unreal.” She jabbed her finger in my direction.
“I was only kidding about the life insurance comment. I won’t let you fall.” Ever. She’d already been let down too many times.
She scoffed. “Okay. Right. And how exactly are you going to prevent it?” She lifted her eyebrows.
“I’ll be your belay partner and control the rope in case you fall. See, we put the harness on—”
“Why the hell do you even have an extra harness? Do you just fly around the United States, hoping to pick up women climbers?” She folded her arms across her chest.
“No.” Though I couldn’t help but wonder if that thought was spurring her on or not. Sure, it made me an ass, but the thought of Georgia getting all worked up out of jealousy was pretty fucking hot. “It’s my extra harness in case mine breaks. I like to climb, therefore, I bring my equipment when I’m going somewhere with mountains…you know, like Colorado.”
“How did you even know about this place, anyway?” she asked, still downright hostile.
“I found it the last time I was here.”
She tilted her head.
“During the days I was waiting for you to decide if I was good enough to—”
“You promised!” And the finger was back again.
I pressed my lips in a tight line and breathed in through my nose for a count of three. “Georgia, I’m not going to force you up that rock face—”
“As if you could.”
“—but I am promising that if you choose to climb, I will not let you fall off the mountain.” I lowered my face to hers, making sure she knew I was serious.
My best friend thinks I should jump you. My brain was pretty much a broken record after hearing that.
“Because you control gravity?” She blinked.
I had never met a more frustrating woman in my life.
“Because I’m going to—”
She lifted that brow again.
I sighed. “If you wanted to climb, I would go first and hook the rope up. I scouted it the first time I was here.”
Her brows lowered. “And what would keep you from falling off?”
I swung the backpack from my shoulders and shook it lightly. “I’d clip in. We’re not talking about Yosemite here. It’s pretty well-traveled. Then as you climbed, I’d have you on belay, so if you did slip off, you’d just hang there dangling until you found your footing.”
Her jaw dropped. “You what?”
I lifted the backpack slightly. “You would be attached to one end of the rope, and I would have the other.”
She drew back.
“You’d be safe,” I promised.
She shook her head, her mouth tightening.
A thought dawned on me. “Georgia, if you don’t want to climb because you’re scared of heights, or you don’t want to scrape up your hands, or you just flat don’t want to, that’s fine.”
“I know that.” Her eyes said she hadn’t known that. What? Like I was going to shove her up the mountain while she begged me not to?
“Right.” My chest ached. “But if you don’t want to climb because you think I’ll drop you, then that’s a whole other matter. I promise you that I will not drop you.” I kept my voice even and low, hoping she’d hear the truth in my words. “I’m really good at this.”
She swallowed, then glanced at the bag. “I barely know you.”
“See? More articles your best friend missed out on. You can run a google search on my climbing history if we’ve got service up here. It’s pretty well documented that I’m an avid climber, and I don’t just mean the easy stuff.”
Her forehead puckered. “I never said you weren’t.”
My stomach lurched. “So it’s not my skill level you’re worried about,” I said slowly.
She averted her gaze and shifted her weight. “You could be a serial killer,” she suggested, sarcasm dripping from her tone as she lifted her hands.
Deflecting. She uses humor to deflect.
“I’m not.”
“You kill off a lot of people in your books. Just saying.” She looked up the rock face, tilting her head back.
“Not through homicide, and now who’s talking about books?”
A smile tugged at her lips.
“Besides, there are three other climbers right there.” I pointed to a group midway up the face. “Pretty sure they’d rat me out if I murdered you in broad daylight.”
She stared at the other climbers silently.
“You’re not going to climb, are you?” I asked quietly.
She shook her head, her lips pursing as she watched the other climbers.
Her refusal stung. It shouldn’t have, and I knew it, but it still did. “Want to hike up the rest of the trail?”
Her head snapped my way in surprise. “You can climb. I’m happy to watch.”
“I didn’t come up here for me.” I’d brought her in hopes that the fresh air would help clear out whatever had taken her down earlier.
She winced. “I’d still hate to make you miss out. Go ahead. I’m fine.” She nodded, plastering on a smile so fake, it was almost comical.
“I’d rather hike with you. Come on.” I nodded back toward the trail and slipped my pack over my shoulders.
“You’re sure?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Absolutely.”
“It’s not you.” She sucked in a breath, then glanced back up at the rock wall. “The last man who promised to keep me safe screwed his lead and dropped me on my ass,” she said softly. “But I’m sure you already know that. Everyone knows that.”
If I’d been the serial killer she’d joked about, Damian Ellsworth would have been my first victim.
“And after today…” She shook her head, the edges of her mouth trembling. “Today just isn’t a good day for the whole trust fall thing. So let’s get going.” She forced another smile, then took off up the trail.
She doesn’t trust you. I swore under my breath as I realized that was the same reason she wouldn’t let me finish the book how I wanted.
It all came down to trust.
I steadied myself before striding after her, cursing at the irony. I’d spent the majority of my life making sure I lived by my word, and now it was being questioned by a woman so jaded even I couldn’t dig out of the hole someone else had dug.