Аманда Хокинг - Wisdom

I let go of her, and she wrapped a hand around her throat, trying to stop the blood flow. I turned the knife sideways, and while she held her throat, I stabbed the knife into her chest. It slid in between her ribs and right into her heart.

She stared at me for a moment, and she didn’t fall, so I twisted the knife, making sure she was dead. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she fell back on the concrete.

“That was unexpected,” Thomas said.

I wiped her blood off my hand, trying to make it less slippery, and then I threw the knife at Dane. It only hit him in the shoulder, not enough to really hurt him, but it startled him into letting the chain go. I thought it might, so I started racing forward as soon as I threw the knife.

When I got close to the edge, I jumped. One foot landed on Dane, and I used him as leverage to jump up higher. It also had the side effect of knocking Dane forward, and he fell over the side of the cliff. I heard him yelling as he fell, but I never heard him hit the bottom.

I grabbed the end of the chain just before it slid through the last pulley, stopping it a split second before Jack plummeted down after Dane. The force of Jack falling pulled the chain hard, and it slammed me into the ceiling.

I almost lost my grip, so I looped the chain around my wrist twice. I used my body as an anchor, preventing the chain from slipping through the pulley, and Jack from falling down the endless hole.

Thomas didn’t get to stop us because Peter came in, and he started fighting with him. Thomas turned out to be a much better fighter than his friends, but Peter wasn’t too bad himself. He bounced off a wall to kick Thomas in the head, but Thomas recovered quickly.

Bracing my feet against the ceiling, I tried pulling the chain up. Jack wasn’t that heavy, but I had one wrist bound to the chain, so I had to do it one-handed. Plus, I had to do it hanging upside down, and the angle I pulled it from made it hard to slide through.

“Alice.” Jack stared up at me, his feet dangling over a black, bottomless pit.

“Hold on, Jack. I’m getting you.” I strained on the chain.

The chain cut into my wrist deep, making blood pour down over my arm and the chain. The chain was slick, and it began to slip through my hands. It would deglove my hand soon, and if it did that, the chain would slide free, off my hand, through the pulley, and Jack would fall down…

“Alice, don’t!” Jack yelled.

“No, I’ll get it!” But as soon as I said it, the chain slipped.

I’d pulled Jack up higher, so when the chain slipped through my hand, he fell harder and faster. That put more pressure on my wrist when the chain pulled taut.

The force of it slammed my hand into the pulley, and I heard Jack cry out. The chain had to be nearly tearing off his own hands and arms.

“Alice, listen to me. You have to stop. You can’t pull me up, and if you try, you’ll just lose your hand and end up falling down with me.”

“I can save you,” I told him. “You have to trust me.”

“No, you need to free your wrist and swing back on the cliff,” Jack said. “We both don’t need to die for this.”

“No! If you die, I die! You asked me to spend forever with you, and I’m going to! “

I strained harder, pulling the chain farther up. I only had to get it up far enough where Jack could swing over, and put his feet on the cliff, and that was only a few more feet.

Peter was too busy fighting off Thomas to help, so I was left struggling with Jack on my own.

I almost had him. His head was over the top of the cliff, but the chain slipped again.

This time it was too much. The chain crushed my wrist. I heard the bones snap when it hit the pulley, and the chain pulled at my skin.

I was losing blood, which only made me weaker, and the blood left the chain impossibly slippery. I couldn’t get a grip on it again. It didn’t matter how strong I was. The blood made it too slick, and the chain was going to slip off.

“Alice,” Jack said, but I kept pulling at the chain. I couldn’t get any traction, and my hand kept slipping. I wasn’t moving him at all, but I kept trying to pull and pull as tears stung my eyes.

“Jack, I love you, and I’m not giving up on you!” I hung upside right above him, my feet pressed to the ceiling and my wrist wedged in the chain against the pulley. He was looking right in my eyes, and he knew.

“I’m sorry for everything I said to you the other night. I didn’t mean any of it. I was just trying to protect you,” Jack said, his voice thick. “I wasn’t even mad, and I can forgive you of anything. I always would. I love you. More than anything else in this world or the next.”

The only thing I could see were his blue eyes. They were the only thing I wanted to see. They never wavered, not even when the chain slid off my wrist.

I hit the concrete hard. I had wanted to fall over the edge of the cliff, following Jack down, but I’d been angled just the right way so I landed on my back on the ground. I stared up at the bricks on the ceiling, and for a minute, I couldn’t feel anything.

I heard Peter grunting. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should help him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

With some effort, I turned my head to see Peter crouched over the edge of the cliff next to me, the chain in his hands. It took me a second to realize what I was seeing. Hand over hand, he pulled the chain up, and within a few seconds, he heaved Jack up over the edge.

“Jack!” I screamed and crawled over to him.

With his hands still bound and his chest and stomach covered in wounds, I dove at him. I pressed my lips to his, kissing him. I brushed back the hair from his forehead and sobbed.

“I love you, I love you, oh my god, I love you,” I repeated over and over between kisses.

I had thought that I had truly lost him, and there was a desperation to the kiss that he matched with equal fervor. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him to me, breathing him in, tasting his lips, relishing his heart pounding against mine.

“I’m okay, Alice,” he smiled, looking me in the eye.

“I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through,” I said. Tears of relief streamed down my face, and Jack just smiled at me. “I’ve never stopped loving you. Never. And I was wrong. You’re all I need to be happy. You’re all I’ll ever need.”

“I’m not all you need, and I don’t even want to be. I just want to love you, for the rest of my life, and as long as you let me do that, we’ll be okay.”

I leaned to kiss him again, but he stopped me.

“I hate to do this, but would it be okay if we popped my arms back in their socket before we made out?” Jack asked, and when I apologized, he laughed, sending the same dazzling tingles through me that he always did.

“Need help?” Peter asked, crouching down next to us.

I got over the shock of seeing Jack alive and looked over Peter for the first time.

He’d sustained a few blows himself, but Thomas was the one with a metal poker through his heart in the corner.

Jack grimaced as Peter shoved both his arms back in place. Peter got to work getting the chain from around Jack’s wrists. He might’ve dislocated Jack’s thumb in the process, but he got the chain off.

He sat up, rubbing his battered wrists, although they didn’t look as bad as my completely wrecked hand. Peter tossed the chain off the cliff, still crouched down in front of us, and Jack looked at him.

“Hey, Peter?” Jack said, popping his thumb back into place.

“Yeah?” Peter turned to him.

“Thank you.” Jack met his eyes, and they looked at each other for a moment. Peter swallowed and nodded.