Dark & Light

~Chapter Sixteen~

Chris's POV

(You can listen to the above track "Farewell Life" by Arn Andersson and Nights Amore if you'd like while you read the following chapter. I love having music to go along with the emotions I feel while writing and reading something, and this song is practically perfect for this chapter in my opinion, so enjoy.)

~~~

I yelped aloud; the sound, or rather voice, below was threatening and had caused me to awake from the dreamy stupor I had been in for a few entrancing moments.

Far below, I seen the face of one familiar. A cruel, distorted expression on his features.

In a moment's time, I knew exactly who was below us and experienced immediate panic. So much so, that the next thing I knew I was hanging off the tree branch I had been sitting on, with only the calves of my legs holding onto the now swaying branch above.

The only  thing  holding me back from plummeting twenty feet below headfirst was that branch swaying in the breeze.

"Chris!" Paige's voice rang in my ears right before I felt my ankles being gripped tightly.

"What in freaking heck?" he snarled from below. "Chris, you're still as full of crap now as you ever were."

I closed my eyes momentarily. Half out of embarrassment, and half in relief at not having fell.

"What are you doing?" the voice below continued to snap.

"You think this is the time to have a conversation?" I said, my tone void of any sarcasm. It was only empty. At him, being here. At everything going horribly, horribly wrong.

"Chris, help me push you back up! Okay?" Paige's voice called out, with only a hint of how panicked she surely was.

"Okay," I said in a husky tone. This was entirely humiliating and pathetic. Me hanging off a tree branch. Him below. Paige, a tiny thing, trying to hold me from falling to my death.

As Paige grunted and sighed, trying to lift my long frame up, I twisted slightly around. "Give me your hands, Chris. I can't pull you up by your ankles." I twisted my body around ninety degrees, and Paige grabbed first my right hand, then my left. Gripping my wrists tightly, and as I pushed myself forward as best I could, she moved backward, holding onto my wrists until my feet caught in the fork of two intersecting branches and Paige slammed against the trunk of the tree behind her. I lurched forward unbalanced, right into Paige and my hands went forward against the tree to balance myself.

Paige steadied me by holding me by the shoulders while I let out, "I'm such a spazz."

"Could have happened to anybody," she responded as I regained my balance.

My face was only a couple inches from hers. Using my hands for balance pressed against the trunk of the tree above Paige's head, I tried to loosen my feet that had slipped into the fork of the tree too tightly.

To gain leverage, I moved my left arm, and it lightly brushed Paige's cheek.

Paige suddenly took my hand. Squeezing tightly, she whispered through heavy breaths.

"Chris...I..." she trailed off.

"What is it?" I asked back.

"I...I wish...I knew...that things would finally be okay. Between us and in our lives." Guilt wafted over me. Maybe I should have never told her about my past.

"Paige. Its gonna be alright. Sooner or later, things will get better, I promise-"

"No. Chris. Things will never be truly alright," Paige said in a determined, cool tone.