Heartbroken Heights by M Frankie

Author:M Frankie
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight: David

David sat on his bed in the guest room of Julian’s house, flipping back and forth between picture filters on his phone. People who met him briefly would all agree that David seemed an unlikely person to spend an undue amount of time on social media, but the people who knew David also knew the opposite was true.

Well, not exactly, David amended. He spent only the time on social media necessary to keep the sponsorships that let him travel and compete these days. There had been a time when he enjoyed documenting the places he traveled and the people he met and connecting with the climbing community, but in those days most of his pictures had featured two—him and his wife.

The bed creaked as David let himself go limp. The hand holding the phone thumped to the bed at the same time his head hit the pillow, and he had to contain the mournful gust of air that escaped his lungs or Julian might come knocking to ask what was wrong.

Why did he do this to himself? He tried not to think about Leanne, especially in the morning. Now he would feel oppressed by a vague sense of loss, frustration and melancholy all day, feelings no one would understand because the accident happened five years ago. David didn’t know how—or want—to explain to those around him that sometimes it felt like five minutes ago. Loss didn’t just fade into the past because there were these pesky little things called memories that could bring it back at a moment’s notice. David treasured those memories, but they saddened him too, and five years of coping hadn’t taught him how to find balance in his emotions.

He had found something that helped, though—Chloe’s presence. When he spent time with her, his mind had no time to roam around and dig up painful memories. Chloe occupied all his attention with her clever comments and astute observations of the world around her. She had a knack for finding fascinating hole-in-the-wall shops and other nooks and crannies that David would never have noticed without following her footsteps or her pointing fingers, and he constantly found himself eagerly waiting to see where she would lead him next. Like David, Chloe had a love for exploration and discovering the undiscovered. She also liked being outdoors better than visiting any shop, so David didn’t really know what she was doing in a city like Reno. It was a mystery—kind of like the mystery of why David was still in Reno too.

He had told Chloe that he could train for his competition wherever there was a climbing gym. That was true, but he was also pretty far from where the competition would be held in Atlanta, Georgia. When he drove there from Reno, he would have to cut his trip into two days and make sure he left plenty of time to loosen up before the comp. Jumping straight onto the climbing wall after hours of driving was a bad idea.

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