by Nikki Logan
He pressed his lips to the back of her ear. ‘They’re diamonds to me.’
The diamonds tumbled free like a spilled bag of gems, then. And Hayden held her as they fell. Hours passed that way, a lifetime. Or maybe only minutes. But, when she next opened her eyes, early fingers of light stole through the fabric of their tent and he was still there, curled into an S behind her. Still awake, breathing steadily into her hair. Stroking her.
‘Open your cocoon,’ she murmured. ‘I need a skin memory.’
He did, silently. She pulled off her shirt. He stripped off his. And she squirrelled back into his embrace, his hot, hard chest against her back, his arms draped securely across her. They lay there like that until the camp started to rouse around them. She tucked his arms more firmly around her, so he could never leave. He pressed his lips to her shoulder and they’d warmed back up to his usual blazing-hot furnace.
‘I love you,’ she whispered to the morning.
Admitting it felt like the healthiest thing she’d ever done in her life.
He kissed her neck. Stalled. Then said gently, ‘You deserve to have that love returned.’
Ache coiled up into a serpent in her belly. He found her lips and pressed his there, hard and desperate. She clung to them, far beyond caring what he might think or what that might say about her. Or how much it would hurt later.
This was their last kiss.
Deep inside, her heart tore away from the sheath holding it suspended in her chest cavity and it split open as it tumbled down to lie, askew, against her diaphragm. She pushed out of his arms and wobbled to her feet, clutching her shirt to her bare chest, unwilling to be as physically vulnerable as she was emotionally.
She stumbled across the tent. ‘I have to finish packing.’
Hayden let her go. Watched her silently as she dressed and then stuffed some final items into her bag. Her pain reached out to him and twisted around his gut in eloquent agony. But, no matter how much she hurt now, this was still better than what he might do to her if he stayed. What he’d done to his father. How he’d twisted him up in psychiatric knots. Until the day he’d walked out of the front door of the family home he would never see again, leaving his father cowed and intellectually broken.
Every woman he’d been stronger than, he’d controlled. He tied them up emotionally too, to keep them away. Just because he could. Because that was what he knew.
He’d gone on to ruin his monster of a father a hundred different ways through the clients he took on. To continue besting a man who could cause him and his mother no more pain. He greedily hoarded the fantasy that his finance clients would be foreclosing on Trevor Tennant, the insurance companies he consulted for would tie the monster up in loopholes, and the pharmaceutical company would have his father desperate and reliant on their products.
That fantasy made everything he’d done doable.
But it hadn’t stopped him becoming the creature he’d fought. Controlling. A monster. Just like his father. Just in a better suit.
Behind him, Shirley spoke. Her voice was still hoarse from her tears. It rasped on his conscience like sandpaper. ‘You’re not packing?’
‘I’ll pack while you’re at breakfast,’ he lied. Hating himself just one more bit. Just when he thought there was nothing new left to despise.
She nodded sadly. Combed her hair. Left.
He let his head drop back against the mattress, let himself drown in her fast-fading smell on the pillow. The sweet, innocent smell of honesty.
No one had ever given him their love. Despite—desperately—not wanting to love him, she still did. One long-buried part of him held that to his gnarled chest like something precious.
He was loved.
Surely that was only a heartbeat removed from being able to love himself? Somehow? Some time? But letting her go now was emotional euthanasia. So much kinder in the long run, rather than prolonging her suffering.
Maybe it was something good he could finally do for someone.
Even if it felt bad.
Really, really bad.
‘Hayden? The truck’s warming up.’
Two vehicles were going back to the city that morning and two were staying to carry on the dig—the ones for whom being out here digging was their day job. Shirley’s bags and equipment were loaded up in the first vehicle.
But their tent was still up. Surely Hayden wasn’t going to just leave it for someone else to take down? She poked her head through the entrance.
He was back in his corner chair. Hands pressed to his thighs, waiting. The inside of the tent was otherwise exactly as she’d left it when she’d gone for breakfast.
Her heart lurched, then kicked into a hard rhythm as the penny dropped. ‘You’re not coming.’
Did the tent suddenly echo or was it just her ears?
‘I think it would be better if I stayed a few more days.’
She’d been working herself up to the long silent drive back to the city, planning out her coping mechanisms, trying hard not to imagine how that final moment between them would go.
And here it was … happening live, in 3D. And she was totally unprepared.
Pain tore at her. ‘So that’s it? Goodbye?’
He stood. Stepped closer. ‘I’ll miss you, Shirley.’
She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be as strong and resilient as Boudicca. But she also wanted to curl up in a ball and die.
‘No, you won’t.’ She knew that down to her marrow. ‘You’ll close the door on our time together before the dust plume has even settled on the horizon. That’s what you do with things you don’t want to deal with. You bury them.’
He said nothing. As though he would stand and take any emotional flaying she cared to dish out. As though that was what he was used to doing. That should have made it less satisfying, but it didn’t. After everything they’d been through, all the excitement and clashes and intimacy, this was how they were going to part? So very civilised and … beige? In a tent?
No way.
‘Say it, Hayden,’ she gritted.
He stared at her.
‘Say that I mean absolutely nothing to you. Say you don’t love me and you never ever could. I want to hear it.’
His throat lurched. His eyes glittered. He didn’t make a sound.
‘Speak, Hayden!’ she shouted and shoved at his hard chest, but a choked sob totally undermined her. ‘I need to hear the words.’
His head tilted, his eyes creased. He gathered her hands into his and held them, hard, pressing his lips to them and speaking into her fingers.
‘I will never be able to love you, Shirley.’
The air sucked out of the tent. She stared up at him, frozen. He held her eyes. He took her pain. He remained unmoved.
Outside, the truck horn honked.
Hayden gently released her hands and stepped back. She stumbled against his chair and glanced down to right herself. When she lifted her eyes he’d turned, robbing her of a final connection with those deep, expressive eyes. Gave her his back.
‘Goodbye, Hayden,’ she whispered.
She got out of the tent with much more aplomb than she felt. She didn’t stumble once on the way to the truck, or as she hauled herself up into its backseat, or as she defied her shaking hands and shoved her seat belt into its fastener.
And she didn’t look back.
Because she didn’t want to know if he’d turned around. If he’d followed the truck with his eyes.
She wanted to remember the exact girth and shape of his turned back.
It would help her to hate him. And as long as she hated him, she couldn’t love him.
The truck rumbled away and she sought refuge in the steady stream of conversation from the other passengers. But deep inside she was reliving her own conversation—the conversation from last night and early this morning. Their last.
Mother Theresa had it all wrong.
There was always more hurt to be had in love.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
19th September.
Dear Mum,
I’ve done as much of your bucket list as I could. I’ve skidded down a hillside clinging to a sure-footed stock-horse, I’ve trembled with exhilaration atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I’ve thrown myself offa perfectly sound one in New Zealand. I’ve felt his music as Beethoven must have, and the extraordinary mercury-leather brush of dolphin skin against my body. I’ve dropped down the side of a building and floated high above the world. I’ve been marched across by penguins as I lay enraptured on an ice-sheet and moved to tears by a touch more reverent and gentle than I had ever imagined could exist.
I couldn’t do everything on your list, but perhaps that was always the point. That life fully realised is something you strive for but should never attain. Because once you tick off that final box, what is left to do, then, but wait for your allotted heartbeats to run out?
Somewhere in my childhood I learned that love is earned, not bestowed, and believing myself unworthy of it—yours, my father’s, even my own—has shaped my life. But it has made me more determined than ever to believe that there is a love out there—somewhere—that strikes like lightning. Because surely if love demanded perfection then none of us would ever find it. And if it is no more than a thing to be won via strategic campaign, then who amongst us would ever have the heart to try?
It has taken me weeks to accept that I am the apple fallen from your tree. I have avoided risk in my life every bit as much as you did and I’ve let the excuses become truth, every bit as much as you did. In protecting myself I’ve damaged myself.
Therefore, today, I step out of the shadows into full sunlight, naked and exposed. I hope and trust that the respect and commitment my reading community has shown to Shiloh they’ll extend to the real me.
I am the silent child watching, breathless, under the stairs. I am the girl with no parents. I am the blogger behind the mask. I am the woman who loved.
I am … and always will be … your daughter, Shirley Marr.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A YEAR ago she could never have conceived of standing here, swathed in thermal clothing and yak furs, gasping for breath, minutes from the base camp of Everest.
Yet here she was.
She’d outed herself publicly a month after getting back from the dinosaur trip and published her mother’s list, along with the letter to her. The outpouring of support—from readers and media and sponsors alike—had blown her away and, not long afterwards, a ticket had arrived courtesy of a local travel agent who wanted to help her finish the list.
I can’t help with both of the final things on your list, the agent had written, referring to her mother’s desire to hold her grandchild, but I can get you to Nepal.
Ten days of flights, buses, yaks and hiking later and here she was … Staring at the bright wind-tattered prayer flags so typical of Nepal and the scattered synthetic tents of the climbers. Being practically carried by her patient, serious-faced guide.
Five thousand metres above sea level, all uphill. And they called this ‘base’ camp?
She lifted her eyes to the peak of the mountain. ‘Holy Mother’ to the Tibetans. Despite being more than halfway up it already, Everest only got bigger. Less imaginable. Getting to base camp had nearly killed her, even with the compulsory acclimatisation days midway. No roads, no tracks, just vague, invisible trails lined with rocks. She couldn’t begin to understand what scaling to Everest’s summit would be like.
The tents in front of them looked like acne—bulbous and out of place on the spectacular natural landscape. She laughed out loud at the image and her guide threw her the latest in many concerned looks.
‘Rest,’ he ordered and then thrust a flask of hideousness at her. An iron-based drink. Good for blood cells, good for altitude sickness. Bad for taste buds.
She could have gone to North base camp. That was accessible by road. But no, she’d had to do it the old-fashioned way. Ready or not.
And, in her case, definitely not.
She looked around as her guide saw to their trusty yak. She’d become quite fond of the matted, stinky thing that tootled along under the very small burden of her backpack, tent and food supplies. It finally dawned on her, halfway up the trail to base camp, that the yak was actually for her, if she passed out, so that her Sherpa could get her back down again without having to carry her himself.
She might have been wobbly but she was still, at least, on her feet.
And she was here. The entrance to Everest base camp.
Tick.
Something about being halfway up this mountain made her feel very close to her mother. And to God, though she was not a religious person, generally. Here, it seemed, she was.
Her breath came as shallow and tightly as ever, thanks to the altitude, and she did her best to only half-fill her lungs the way her Sherpa had shown her. But she’d grown accustomed, now, to dizzy spells and dark patches at the edges of her vision and to slowing her pace to accommodate the lack of oxygen in her blood.
‘Shirley?’
She spun at the sound of her name. Pure instinct. Visions were something else she’d grown used to as her oxygen-starved brain played tricks on her but that was her first aural mirage.
Except that it wasn’t.
Hayden stood in front of her, bright orange trekking gear, tan even darker than normal.
Her breathing escalated. The dark patches swarmed.
She reached for her guide on instinct.
And then she passed out.
Gentle fingers stroked her back to consciousness.
She opened her eyes a crack and stared at Hayden.
The real one. Not the Hayden of her walking daydreams. Or her fevered night dreams. Her brain wasn’t so oxygen-starved that it had forgotten how to deduce.
She sagged. ‘You sent the ticket.’
Played again.
‘I saw your blog,’ he said. ‘I wanted to do something to reward your courage. It was the only thing I could do.’
‘Most people would send flowers.’
He smiled and quoted her. ‘I’m not most people. I had to find something far more dramatic and convoluted.’
Her wind-cracked lips turned up at the corners just a little. ‘Figures.’ She looked around. ‘Where am I?’
‘Medical tent.’
‘Did you carry me?’ Lord, please no. As if passing out in the first place wasn’t unseemly enough.
‘You had a yak.’ He laughed at the horrified expression she couldn’t mask. ‘The altitude hit me hard too; I wouldn’t have been able to carry you here.’
She struggled to sit up. ‘So you slung me over the yak, butt waving in the air?’
‘Pretty much,’ he conceded. ‘You’re going to be fine, by the way. You just hyperventilated.’
‘I don’t care why I got here. I care how I got here.’
‘Shirley …’ He smiled, reaching out and tracing a loose strand of hair. The soft expression on his face spoke volumes.
Her outrage dried up. Her smile died. How was he even here? She asked him.
‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘You knew I was coming?’
‘I knew you’d use the ticket. I hoped you hadn’t decided on a lengthy tour of Nepal first. I nearly died when I discovered there are two base camps. Who knew?’
Anyone who’d done the slightest bit of planning? ‘What if I’d gone to the other one?’
‘I had spies along both trails. I knew word would very quickly spread of a lone woman trekking towards base camp. Besides,’ he added, ‘I figured you wouldn’t do the easy one.’
So he did know her, just a little bit. She narrowed her eyes. ‘How did you get here ahead of me? Chopper?’ She knew him a little bit, too.
A dark flush crept above the pinched neck of his trek gear. ‘Yeah. From halfway up. Greatly jeered at as I landed by the climbers.’
‘So that’s “how” taken
care of.’ She swallowed. ‘Now why are you here?’
‘I needed to see you.’
‘You have my address.’
‘I needed to see you far from home, somewhere magical.’
Her breath started to thin out. Was it the air again, or just her usual reaction to Hayden’s presence? She took what passed for a deep breath in the highlands of Nepal.
‘Why?’
He stared, glanced around to see if they were alone. ‘Because …’
She waited. The first month of being away from him had been pure misery. Knowing he didn’t love her. Knowing he didn’t even want her enough to just tell her what she wanted to hear. The second month, marginally better and by the third month she’d made some decent progress on getting her life back on track.
Hence the Everest trip.
‘Were you overdue to throw my life back into turmoil?’
His eyes softened. ‘Is it turmoil—seeing me?’
She swung her legs off the side of the stretcher and sat up. Her head spun. She breathed back the nausea. ‘Nothing I won’t survive again.’
His gaze changed. ‘I don’t know whether to be proud of your courage or ashamed of myself that you need to call on it.’
She held her tongue. ‘Why are you here, Hayden?’
‘I missed you.’
Was he serious? ‘Couldn’t find a blonde?’
‘Not sex, Shirley. I missed you. The moment you left the dinosaur campsite, the moment you climbed out of bed that day.’
‘You turned your back on me that morning in the tent, Hayden. The message was pretty clear.’
‘I didn’t want you to see my face. And I couldn’t look at yours again. At the pain.’
The first part stopped her cold. But the last part rankled. ‘Don’t pity me.’
He took her hands where they’d bunched into fists. ‘I don’t pity you, Shirley. I pity me.’
What?
‘I’d convinced myself that the pain I felt that day was yours. That I was simply responding to hurting someone I cared about.’ He resettled himself on his haunches. ‘But it went on. And on. And it finally dawned on me that it was my pain. I’d never been in pain before.’