Once His Wife, Now His Wrecker: Eva's Cold Revenge.

CHAPTER TWO

EVA'S POV

My fingers were the only thing between me and death.

Both hands gripped the rocky edge of the cliff, knuckles white, arms burning. My legs dangled in the open air below me. I could hear loose pebbles falling — small sounds, then silence and nothing. The drop was long. I knew that without looking.

"Help!" I screamed. "Somebody help me!"

Footsteps. Oliver appeared above me, peering over the edge. Relief crashed through me so hard I almost let go.

"Oliver, please — give me your hand. I can't hold on much longer!"

He crouched down slowly. Looked at me.

Didn't reach out.

"Honey," he said, his voice almost gentle, "how could you be so careless?"

"What?" My arms were shaking. "Oliver, please — I'm slipping"

"You know what your problem is?" He tilted his head like we were having a normal conversation. And I wasn't hanging off a cliff. "You're an embarrassment."

"How can you say that—"

"You eat like your healthcare is free." His face was completely calm. "Every meal, every snack. Do you even hear yourself at the table?"

"Oliver—"

"And that smell." He wrinkled his nose. "Grease and ketchup. Every single day. I had to sit across from that for three years."

The pain in my arms was becoming unbearable. My right hand was starting to lose grip — the rock was too smooth, too sharp in the wrong places. I pressed harder, desperate.

"Please," I whispered. "I'm your wife. Please."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he reached down — and I thought, I actually thought, he was going to save me.

He pried my right hand off the edge.

I screamed. My whole body swung sideways, held now by only my left hand. The wind hit me full in the face.

"Every second I spent with you," Oliver said quietly, watching me swing, "made me sick."

"No—"

He reached for my left hand. He didn't grab it to pull me up. He wrapped his fingers around my wrist, and he just — held it. Looked into my eyes with something that looked almost like happiness.

"Goodbye, Eva."

Then he let go.

The cliff disappeared above me. The sky went sideways. I was falling — really falling — and the sound coming out of my throat didn't feel human anymore. Wind rushed past my ears. The world was a blur of rock and sky and green and then—

Everything went dark, hot and wrong all at once.

---

I don't know how much time passed.

When I opened my eyes, I was at the bottom of the slope, tangled in brush and dirt. Something in my side screamed when I tried to move. My head was wet. The afternoon light felt too bright, almost cruel.

"Help," I said. My voice came out like a croak. "Someone — help me."

Footsteps on the path above. Two figures making their way down slowly. I blinked until they came into focus.

Oliver. And Jessica.

"Help." I reached one hand toward them. "Please."

Jessica crouched a few feet away, tilting her head to one side like she was looking at a strange animal. "Are you okay?"

"Jessica." I swallowed. Breathing hurt. "Oliver — he pushed me. He — he wants to kill me. You have to call—"

"Well then," she said simply, "die."

I stared at her.

She smiled. Not the warm smile I had known since we were children in that orphanage. Something else entirely. Something I had never seen on her face before — or maybe something I had always refused to see.

"You fell all the way down there," she said, almost admiringly, glancing back up at the cliff. "And you still lived?" She shook her head slowly. "Hm."

"Jessica, please—"

"I guess all that extra padding around your waist finally did something useful."

"Jess—" The name came out before I could stop it — her orphanage nickname, the one I had called her since we were six years old. "You—"

Understanding hit me like a second fall.

Not just Oliver.

Her too.

They had done this together. The cliff. The anniversary trip. The way she kept telling me to step back, just a little more, just a bit more—

"Hey—" Oliver's voice drifted down from further up the path. Light and asy. Like a man without a single worry in the world. "You find that whale yet?"

Jessica stood up, brushing dirt off her knees. She turned toward the sound of his voice, and her whole face changed — opened up, softened and glowed.

Oliver appeared around the bend. He walked straight to her, and she went to him, and he kissed her soft and slow.

Right in front of me where I lay broken in the dirt.