Page 43 of Ruthless Edge

I spend the next two obstacles apologizing and he spends them threatening revenge, and somewhere in the middle of the color powder station he grabs my hand to pull me through the cloud of blue and pink and yellow, and I let him, and we come out the other side looking like we've been attacked by a kindergarten class.

The foam cannon tunnel is exactly what it sounds like. The foam is up to my waist almost immediately and Knox still has my hand and somewhere in the thick of it my left shoe gets sucked off my foot by the foam and I can't find it.

"Leave it," Knox says.

"That's my shoe."

"Emma. Leave it."

I leave it. I hop-run out the other side in one shoe, which Knox finds funnier than I'd like.

Then I see the mud pit.

The mud pit crossing is a long channel of waist-deep mud with hanging bars above it, the kind you swing hand to hand across while the mud waits below for anyone who lets go. I can see people dropping in from here. I watch three people make it across and one person fall in near the middle and wade out of the far side looking resigned.

I'm already tired. My arms are tired. I've been climbing and crawling and hanging. I've been going for almost an hour and the bars I need to cross are up there.

I jump up and grab the first bar.

I make it four bars. Five. Then Six. My hands are muddy and the bars are wet and my arms are shaking, and on the seventh bar my right hand slips and I barely catch it again and I hang there trying to will more energy into my arms than I have.

I'm not going to make it.

Eight more bars. I can see the platform but my arms are done, completely done. If I let go, I drop into chest-deep mud and I'm going to have to wade out the side. I know that's probably what will happen and it's fine, it's not a real failure, but I'm so tired, my hair is everywhere, and I've been holding myself together all day. Something about hanging here with shaking arms just makes my eyes sting in a way I didn't expect.

I'm not going to cry. I'm not crying over an obstacle course.

"Emma."

Knox's voice, right beside me. I didn't hear him jump up. He's on the bar beside mine, his hands next to mine, and he looks at my face and doesn't make it a thing.

"You've got this," he says.

"My arms are done."

"I know. Move your right hand."

"Knox—"

"Just the right hand. Move it one bar."

I move my right hand one bar. My left arm screams.

"Good. Now the left."

"I can't."

"You can." He's still completely calm. "Look at me. Not the mud, not the platform, just me."

I look at him.

"Move the left hand."

I move the left hand.

"That's one more," he says. "Two more and I'll carry you the rest of the way."

"You can't carry me across hanging bars."