“Are you okay?” The voice came as suddenly from her side as it had earlier on the boat. She looked towards the strangely sound and met a pair of intense green eyes. It was him, the handsome stranger from the boat who talked of the beach as if he’d never seen one before in his life. How was he there with her? What is going on? her mind screamed. Anger erupted in her center and pushed up through her torso into her eyes. It filled every part of her, her mind struggling against the weight of incomprehension.
“I don’t understand!” she screamed as tears sprouted from the intense anger that filled her. She tried to fight the punishing weight of it but only felt worse. Nothing was making any sense and she hated it vehemently. She shouldn’t be there. Not on the sand of the beach miles away and hundreds of feet down from where she last stood. She jumped off the cliff. Even if her plan failed she should be in the middle of the Pacific or laid out on a rock with blood seeping from her broken body. There was no explanation whatsoever for laying on the beach as though that was where she was meant to be. Her anger blistered into contempt. How had her plan failed so spectacularly? And how was he there with her?
“Are you okay?” Evan asked again, his tone gentle yet deliberately cautious.
The anger in her ebbed gradually and her tears slowed. “I don’t understand. I just... I don’t understand.” She willed her chest to draw in more oxygen. Even if nothing else made sense she knew she must make sense of herself. With each intake of air she found more control of her body and her mind. Whole minutes passed as she fought against her senses for composure. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she asserted with a shaky voice. She looked up again and found the same unchanged green eyes.
He sat a few feet away, arms on his knees, his feet half buried in the sand. Incomprehension was on his face too, suffused with something else. Concern? Worry?
“I couldn’t let you do it.” He kept his head down as he spoke. What had he done? Couldn’t let her what? Jump off the cliff? Kill herself?
“You had no right!” she screamed, her voice straining under the weight of her own incredulity. “Who are you? What have you done? I don’t understand what is happening!” She was becoming hysterical, losing all the control she’d managed to gain. She watched as he crouched up before her and placed his hands on her arms. His touch was gentle.
“You should calm down. The boat is heading back to dock and people are going to be heading this way soon.” His eyes searched hers; looking for any clue that she understood the meaning behind his words. She noticed then that his face was taut with lines, making him look far more wary than he had that morning. “Please,” he reiterated kindly.
The nagging incomprehension in her temporarily quelled. There was no sense to his words or actions, no logic to explain what had happened between the leap and those moments on the beach. However, she was certain that it was his arms she felt around her in the air, as absurd as the notion seemed.
“I don’t understand,” was all she could manage. She could hear in her voice if not in her words that she was agreeing to his plea. Sure enough, from the corner of her eye she saw a group emerge and faintly recognized their travel companions. Out on the water the boat from the harbor was a growing speck in the distance.
He was on his feet with his waist bent down, his hands extended towards her as an offering. “Can I help you up?” he asked. Before she could answer his hands were under her arms, lifting her gently from the sand. Her feet were steady beneath her but he held her in place a moment longer. She recalled his words, ‘I couldn’t let you do it.’ What did he mean?
“How can I know if I’m dead or alive?” Zoe asked weakly. Evan’s eyes widened beneath the thick carpet of his eyelashes, and for a moment he looked puzzled by the question.
“I can tell you for a fact that you are not dead,” he answered. She noticed the intensity in his eyes again, burning through the green of his irises. In that moment she resigned herself to the belief that impossibility had defied logic and that this stranger somehow prevented her death, though by what means she was unsure. She knew for certain she had jumped, recalling with remarkable clarity the sensation of falling through the sky. She had intended to take her life and because of his interference she’d failed. There was no obvious reason for this stranger to save the life she’d willingly tried to throw away.
The sun had moved considerably through the sky, heading west to start its descent beneath the horizon, and the boat was growing in size with each passing moment. It wouldn’t be long before they were boarded and headed back to Ventura. They would dock, unload, and everyone would make their way to their car or perhaps stroll along the harbor looking for food and rest. She had not intended to come back and yet there she stood, feet on the ground, feeling completely unsure what would happen to her next. This man with green eyes that stood before her with his hands still holding her in her place had inadvertently tangled himself into her life by saving it from ending. Whatever she did next she felt certain would involve him as well.