She took the next jump, and for the fun of it tucked a second before setting down on the thick powder.
She didn’t want to stop when she met Gage. Her breaths caught in puffs of air as she leaned over, grabbed her knees.
“Having fun or something?” Gage said, and she looked up to see his mouth twitch on one side.
“Last time I skied this hard, I was . . .” Oh. With you.
She stood up, tried to find something to fill in her gap. “It’s just been a while since I lost myself like this. I don’t know why, but snowboarding makes me center into the moment, forget about everything else but the powder. It’s distracting. And relaxing, even though I haven’t forgotten why we’re here. But maybe I remember the urge that pulled my brother in.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Out here, you can feel so small and yet sort of invincible. And that’s how people get in over their heads.” His smile fell, and she could hear in his words the echoes from the past.
She imagined that it might be hard for him to ski without the shadow of his mistakes following him down the mountain.
He pointed toward the cliff’s edge. “I think if you take off the left edge, it’s a little less steep, the drop shorter.”
“Which one did you take last time?”
He pointed to the right.
“Then that’s what we should take. Ollie will want to do everything you did.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Gage said quietly.
She felt for him, the fact that his fame caused others to follow in his footsteps, get hurt. “Gage, this isn’t your fault. Not in the least. My brother makes his own decisions, and you’re not to blame if people get in over their heads and get hurt.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“I’m just saying, you’re not to blame—’’
“Are you kidding me? You took me to court precisely because you blamed me for Dylan’s death.”
His words bruised.
“I’ve had a little distance since then.”
He drew in a breath, and his jaw tightened. He looked away. “That must be nice. I can’t seem to put it behind me.”
Her mouth opened then, but he pushed off, heading for the left side.
He looked back at her. “It’s easier over here!”
“Gage, stop protecting me! I don’t want to go the easy way. I can do this—watch!”
She pushed off toward the edge, the jagged wall on the right side that dropped forty feet into steep, thick, dense powder.
She didn’t stop. She took a breath and sailed right off the edge into the clear, bright air.
Then she looked down, the world so far she thought it had fallen away.
She began to scream.
9
ELLA’S SCREAM AS SHE WENT OVER THE EDGE found Gage’s bones and turned them to liquid. He stood at the edge of the cliff as she disappeared, and couldn’t move.
For a second he was caught inside the memory of watching Dylan simply miss the turn and fly off the cliff, soaring over the jagged edge of the mountain. Then falling more than two hundred feet below into a catastrophe of broken bones and crushed vertebrae.
“Ella!” Gage bounced himself forward and went straight over the edge, dropping fast and landing in a poof of snow. If he’d had more momentum going over the cliff, he might have remained aloft, but his body weight implanted him in the powder and he found himself stuck, having to wiggle himself free. He rolled out of the hole his body made in the deep powder, unbuckled his boots from his board, and scrambled to Ella’s crash site, a tumult of snow and fine dust still caught in the wind. “Ella!”
She lay in the hole, her board just peeking out of the crevasse, with just the orange arms of her jacket and her gray helmet showing. She waved at him, trying to wiggle out of the hole.
He dropped to his knees beside her. “Are you okay?”
“Not much of a graceful landing, but—yeah.” She even smiled at him, as if her scream hadn’t ripped him open, baring something he’d been trying to ignore for the past two days.
He missed her. Missed the straight-shooter, no-nonsense way she didn’t dance around her words, said the truth as she saw it.
Or, he hoped it was the truth.
“You’re a good guy, Gage. I’ve always known that.” Her words had stuck around, latching on, growing inside him, casting forth too many memories. Like the way she could keep up with him on a mountain. And that time, after their first night of skiing, she’d talked him into singing karaoke with her. I got you, babe. He could still hear her pitiful impression of Cher. Feel his chest expanding with unnamed emotion, a little off balance with the sense that he didn’t have to impress her.