Chapter 24
CHAPTER 25: The Summit
"You are completely out of your mind."
I was panting, leaning heavily against a boulder. We were four thousand feet above sea level, surrounded by the biting wind and jagged granite of the northern peaks.
Sarah stood ten yards ahead of me, looking back with a smirk.
She was wearing hiking boots, thermal leggings, and a heavy fleece. Her right leg, reinforced with a specialized shock-absorbing pylon she had ordered specifically for the terrain, was planted firmly on a steep incline.
"Come on," she called out over the wind. "It’s only another half-mile."
"Easy for you to say," I groaned, pushing myself off the rock. "You're half titanium. I'm just flesh and poor dietary choices."
She laughed, a loud, clear sound that echoed off the canyon walls.
It was her idea. A weekend away, entirely off the grid. She hadn't hiked since before the accident. The doctors had told her uneven terrain would be her biggest challenge.
Sarah had never been good at listening to what she couldn't do.
I watched her move. It wasn't the graceful, fluid walk she used in the courtroom. It was a calculated, mechanical struggle. Every step required thought. Every placement of her right foot had to be tested against the loose gravel before she committed her weight.
She stumbled twice. She fell once, scraping her palms on the rocks.
I had instinctively lunged forward to help her, but she had held up a hand, stopping me in my tracks.
Let me, her eyes had said.
She pushed herself back up, dusted off her knees, and kept climbing.
When we finally reached the summit, the world opened up below us in a breathtaking sprawl of autumn colors—gold, crimson, and deep pine green. The wind roared in our ears.
Sarah stood at the edge of the cliff.
She wasn't looking down at the ground. She was looking out at the horizon.
I came up beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to shield her from the wind. She leaned into my side, breathless, her face flushed with the cold and the exertion.
"We made it," I said.
May you like
She looked down at her carbon-fiber leg, dusted with mountain dirt and scratched by rocks. Then she looked back up at the sky.
"Yeah," she whispered. "We made it."
