Chapter 24: Desperate Claim
Their hands stayed linked, the mud cooling and tightening on their skin like a second glove. The water below was a constant, rushing whisper, soaking into the silence between them.
Stephanie’s shivers began to lessen, not because she was warmer, but because a terrible stillness was taking hold. When she finally spoke, her voice wasn't her own. It was flat, stripped of its usual lilt, the French accent a ghost behind the words.
"Everyone would have better plates if I was not here," she said, staring at the black water. "It would be… cleaner. No more… mess."
Veronica’s grip tightened so hard her own knuckles ached. "Shut up," she said, the words a sharp, immediate crack in the night. "Right now. You shut up, you hear me? I never want to hear that come out your mouth. Never."
But it was like Stephanie didn't hear her. The flatness was absolute. She gently, insistently, loosened her fingers and pulled her hand from Veronica’s grasp. The cold air hit the space where their skin had touched.
Then she shifted. Just a slight rearrangement of her weight on the unstable ledge, drawing her knees up under her. It was a preparation to stand.
"Stephanie." Veronica’s voice dropped, all the command bleeding out of it, replaced by a raw fear that tasted like metal. "Don’t move."
Stephanie didn't look at her. She looked at the water, her head tilted as if considering a difficult question. The moonlight caught the wet tracks on her dirty cheek, the brutal redness of the slap now a dark, ugly stain in the silver light.
"All my life," Stephanie whispered, "I am a decorative thing. A pleasant arrangement on the table. Tonight, he just said the quiet part. Out loud." She placed a muddy hand on the rock face, beginning to push herself up. The ledge was narrow. One foot, then the other. The mud gave a little under her bare heel.
Veronica didn't breathe. Every instinct screamed to lunge, to grab her, to pin her to the rock. But a violent move on this sliver of earth could send them both tumbling. Panic was a live wire in her chest.
So she went very, very still. Her voice, when it came, was softer than the rustling leaves above them, stripped of everything but need.
"Please." The word was foreign on her tongue. "Please, Steph. Just sit back down. Talk to me. Yell at me. Throw mud in my face. Anything. Just… move away from the edge."
Stephanie paused, her body half-crouched. She finally looked at Veronica. The blankness was gone, replaced by a bottomless, weary sorrow. "Why? You are the only real thing that has happened to me. And I am just… this. A problem. A mess on your nice family."
"You're not a problem," Veronica said, each word measured, forced through the tightness in her throat. "You're a person. And my family is currently losing their damn minds looking for you. My father is ready to commit a felony. My mother is directing search patterns like a general. Jacqueline is probably crying. You think they do that for a problem?"
A faint tremor returned to Stephanie’s lip.
"Your brothers stayed," Veronica pressed, the truth her only weapon. "Charlotte stayed. They chose you. Right now, in my house, they are choosing you. Not him. Not that… that performance of a family you came with. They are choosing the you that laughs too loud at my dad's bad jokes. The you that gets flour everywhere when you try to help my mom. The you that looks at me like I hung the goddamn moon even when I'm being a grumpy asshole."
She inched her own hand forward, not to grab, but to rest it open on the muddy rock between them, an offering. "That you is not weak. That you ran. That you felt it. And that you is the one I need to come back with me right now."
Stephanie’s chest hitched. A real breath, shuddering and deep. The silent tears started again, cutting clean lines through the dirt on her face.
"The world is not better without you in it," Veronica said, her voice gaining strength, because it was the truest thing she had ever known. "My world is darker just thinking it. So get your ass away from that ledge and come home. Our home. Just for tonight."
For a long moment, there was only the water and the tears. Then, Stephanie’s hand, shaking, lowered from the rock wall. She didn't take Veronica’s offered hand. Instead, she slowly, carefully, turned her body and sank back down onto the ledge, curling into herself, her forehead resting on her muddy knees. The silent crying became a soft, broken sound, grief finally given voice.
Veronica let out a breath she felt she’d been holding for a century. The immediate danger had passed, but the cliff face of Stephanie’s pain remained, vast and treacherous.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. We sit. We sit as long as you need."
She shifted closer, just enough that their shoulders touched, a solid line of warmth against the cool rock. Stephanie leaned into the contact, her cries muffled against her knees.
Above them, through the trees, the flicker of a strong, moving light cut the darkness. A distant, worried call. "Ronnie? Stephanie!"
Jace’s voice, strained and desperate.
Veronica looked at the top of the ravine, then back at the trembling woman beside her. Home was close. But they weren't ready to climb back to it yet. Not until the shaking stopped.