Read Online Falling for Hope by Natalie Vivien - Free Book Online Page A

voice.   It was a voice.
    “Hope!” Amy screamed, her voice
cracking as her heartbeat surged.   She
dashed a little farther up the trail, slipping on the mud as Irene grabbed hold
of her arm to stop her from sliding a little too close to the edge.   “Hope!” Amy yelled again, pressing her hands
to her heart as she listened.
    Again, a voice— Hope’s voice.   Amy swallowed a sob and glanced up at Irene,
whose head was cocked.
    “Hope, keep calling to us!” Chris
shouted.   “Are you on the trail?   Sing or something, girlfriend!”   Despite the joke, Chris’s words were choked
out, too, and all three women stood perfectly still, listening.
    “…ome, home on the ra…” came Hope’s
voice again, bellowing out the song with all her might, though—to Amy’s
heartache—the words sounded weak, pained.
    Chris, Irene and Amy turned, as
one, toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep ravine.  
    “It was coming from down
there.”   Chris moved over to the edge.
    “Be careful,” Irene barked.   “It’s unstable because of the mud.”
    Chris squatted down and peered
over.   “Shit,” she muttered, running her
hand through her hair.
    Amy scrabbled to the edge as Irene
held onto her jacket’s hood.   Peering
down over the edge of the cliff, the rain pouring all around them, Amy’s heart
rose into her throat again.
    “Hello, ladies,” said Hope,
grinning up at them through the rain with her easy smile, though it looked a
bit more forced than usual.   She was
sitting on a rocky outcropping, a ledge some thirty feet down from the actual
cliff face.
    Around the small ledge loomed a
dark, vast nothingness, and hundreds of feet below was the bottom of the
ravine.
    “Hope!” Amy called, voice shaking.
“Are you all right?”
    “Except for the bitty
accommodations, I’m right as rain,” Hope joked, still grinning as she shielded
her eyes from the falling water.   Overhead, a bolt of lightning sparked, and the immediate thunder made
the earth rumble beneath their feet.   “And the view’s quite spectacular!” Hope quipped.
    Chris shrugged out of her backpack
and began digging around inside of it.   “I figure you’re probably done sightseeing now, though,” she
shouted down to Hope, who laughed back.
    “I’m done drowning,” she
spluttered, sitting back and looking up at the three of them.   “I’m awfully glad to see you guys,” she
said, her voice softer, and Amy leaned forward, sobbing.
    “How did you even get down there?”
she asked, immediately regretting the question as Hope shook her head.  
    “It was muddy, and I slid and
fell—and the ledge saved me.”
    “Oh, God.”   Irene rubbed at her eyes, taking the
baseball cap off of her head and running her hand nervously through her hair
again.  
    “Found it!” called Chris, yanking
out a carefully tied coil of rope.
    “Do I want to know why you
have rope in your backpack?” said Hope, laughing a little.
    “You never know when you’re going
to have to rope a steer, obviously ,” said Chris, who lived in the city
and had probably never come face to face with a cow in her life.   The four women smiled, even as another bolt
of lightning struck nearby.
    “Here…” called Chris, untying the
rope from its coil and beginning to lower it.   “You’re not hurt, are you, Hope?”
    “Just my pride,” Hope snorted as
she grasped the end of the rope.   “But
you guys have to be incredibly careful.   The edge of the cliff face is super slippery.   That’s what made me fall.”
     
    “It’s also what probably saved
you,” said Irene, looking at the steep slope of the cliff.  
    “Yeah, I dug my hands in trying to
catch myself.   Didn’t work, though,”
Hope said remorsefully, knotting the rope around her stomach.  
    “All three of us will pull you
up.”   Irene indicated to Chris and Amy
that they should move back from the ledge.   “Holler when you’re ready for us to pull!” called Irene.