Wife's Bitter Revenge Against Neglectful CEO Husband-Chapter 113: The Climb

Alec left most of what he brought with us, taking just what he needed to set up safety lines at the top, a chalk bag, which he explained helped with grip, and the blue chalk he’d mentioned earlier.

He cleared the rock debris where it appeared the cliff had once exploded to the surface, leaving behind the ravages of its brutal birth. Alec stood at the base of the rock wall, judging the best place to start.

Alec leaped up and grabbed hold of a crevice in the stone about three feet over his head. With ease, he pulled himself up until he could contort his body enough to hook a foot over the same ledge.

Step one was completed, and so ended my comfort level with watching someone I cared about risking his life. From this point on, if he fell on the sharp rocks below, he could be seriously injured.

What possessed him to risk his life like this? Most people spend a lifetime avoiding risk. Here, Alec faced it head-on and willingly.

Then again, considering the gravity of some of the crimes Stiff and I investigated and had been investigating and stopping it since I was a teenager, Alec could say the same thing about me. And just like Alec wanted to up the adrenaline factor with cliff diving, I’d gone from being a faceless hacker to confronting people like Mrs. H and her minions.

Granted, dealing with Lettie and Daniel was a forced gateway adrenaline kick into facing my demons head-on. But still, it was my choice to up the risk factor.

Alec’s body was flush against the rock wall as he stretched to find a new toehold. From my viewpoint, if he had a grip on the wall, it was by his fingertips. Those were the same fingertips he’d run along my spine a few hours ago, causing me to moan in pleasure. Such talented hands in so many ways.

Step by step, Alec inched his way up the cliff. He was so close to the top now. Alec had found a ledge wide enough to turn around and check on me. He waved, and I waved back.

If we lived through this, I was putting a ring on that man as soon as we left the woods. No. Sooner. I’d make a temporary ring out of something and propose at the top of the cliff.

I had a purpose now. This was no longer like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Alec jumped for his next grip. When both hands were firmly in place, he lifted himself up and off the ledge. His legs swayed side to side as Alec shifted his weight until he was holding himself up by one arm while grabbing onto the next stone outcrop.

He pulled himself up until he was balancing his body over his hands, one hip leaning against the outcrop while he replaced his right hand with a foot. From there, it was one, two, three, and Alec rolled out of sight on top of the cliff.

I breathed a sigh of relief, my heart beating so fast that it was almost as if I had been the one to make the climb. And then I remembered that as soon as Alex was back on flat ground, he expected me to make the same climb.

I spotted some thin vines growing between jagged boulders nearby. I took a chance that a snake wasn’t hiding there and broke off a couple of lengths of vine. The vine was thin and pliable enough to bend and weave.

I quickly braided three lengths together and worked on joining the braid into a band. I smiled with the joy of success when I was able to weave the loose ends into the weave to create a circle. I could only hope it was large enough to fit on Alec’s finger.

A whistle trilled through the morning air. It was Alex standing at the top of the cliff. He was wearing a harness now and had a set of ropes in his hand. Once he had my attention, he turned his back on me and dropped off the edge of the cliff while holding the rope tense and using his feet and legs to keep distance for the jagged cliff front as he rappelled down the crag. Once he’d cleared the ledge where he’d taken a break earlier, he picked up speed, bouncing against the rock then dropping down several feet to propel off the crag and rappel out and down again.

From a distance, it looked like some sort of nature magic that had my lover going from standing at the top of the precipice to unhooking from the ropes at the base of the cliff in what felt like seconds.

I left my safety zone to meet him halfway. Alec wrapped me in a hug, his breath coming fast, sweat beading on his beautiful face.

"You ready?" Alec asked me.

"Yes."

Alec gave me a skeptical look, "Yes? What’s changed?"

"It’s no longer a perfectly good airplane. Let’s go."

"How about letting me hydrate and gather what we need to take with us first?"

"What can I do?"

Alec helped me put on a harness, a safety helmet, and pads. He also had a pair of climbing shoes in my size.

"You didn’t wear all of this," I said.

"Sh, do as I say and not as I do."

"But why?"

Alec patted the top of my helmet. "Because you are my most precious possession, and you don’t know how to protect yourself from injury yet. And, because I broke the rules of safe climbing."

"Joy, I’m gonna die with my hat one. Isn’t that a cowboy thing?"

"Yippee ki-yay, baby. Cowboys do some things right."

"How do they get the horse up the cliff?"

"That is lesson number two."

"Two! You expect me to do this more than once?"

"I predict you’ll want to once you’ve experienced it once."

"What’s in it for me if I do?"

"Great sex?"

"Like withholding sex wouldn’t hurt you too."

"You’re right. I’ll think of something."

Alec led me to the foot of the cliff. He was careful to help me over or around the most dastardly-looking slate boulders.

"I’ve marked the best holds I found with a splash of blue chalk," Alec said.

He hooked me up to the ropes and talked me through how to manage the ropes while I climbed. "The goal is to make it up the rock using both your brains and your brawn. Fall back on using the rope when you either can’t find a hold or you need a rest break.

"Technically, if you use the ropes right, you could hang in mid-air long enough to take a nap, but the longer you hang there, the easier it is to lose your nerve. Focusing on climbing. Any progress is good progress, and don’t worry about how long it takes. It is more important to feel safe than to beat some arbitrary clock.

"It’s just you and me here. We have all the time it takes, and Teela, I’ll be right there with you. I’ll have a second rope hooked up to you. If you forget what you’re doing or can’t maintain your hold, it isn’t the end of the world. I’ll keep you from falling too far."

"What is too far?"

Alec chuckled. "Let’s go with six feet. You can survive six feet, right?"

"You brought the defibrillator, right?"

"It’s in my backpack."

"Can you use it while we are hanging from a rope?"

Alec’s smile grew bigger. "It won’t come to that, Teela. You are stronger than you know."

I looked up to the hold Alec had used to start his climb. "I can’t even reach step one."

Alec bent down and put his head between my legs, then lifted me on his shoulders. "No one said you had to do it alone, Tee. I’m right here. Now, grab hold and lift yourself up."

I groaned as I pulled up while Alec lifted from below until I managed to almost lay longwise along the crevice. It was there I first considered possibly staying until dusk when I had an excuse to climb back down, but Alec wasn’t going that easy on me.

"Come on. I’ve got your rope. You can fall. Hug the wall. Look for another handhold while you get our feet under you."

"That’s easy for you to say."

"If it were easy, I wouldn’t enjoy doing it. Kind of like you. Nothing easy about you. I love doing you."

"Remind me to be offended later."

"You’d rather I think of you as easy?" Alec asked.

I found my footing and my first hand grip without Alec’s help. Thank goodness for gloves. My fingers were already sore from the first stop. The next grip was even easier, then I spotted a blue splotch a little to my left. Meanwhile, I could hear Alec moving into position below me. I refused to look down. I’d never make it if I looked down.

It was easier to climb when I thought of the rock face as a flat plane rather than a vertical obstacle. I could fool my muscles into thinking the exertion was a lot more minor than it really was, especially when I had to shift my weight to the side and use my arms and hands to support my weight.

"No, I’m not easy," I said as I looked for my next move. My arms were already shaking.

"Nothing fun about easy. You challenge me at every turn, Tee. I like that."

"Well, you’re easy."

"I’m easy?" Alec asked has he pulled up beside me, maybe a couple of feet away.