It was hard to tell in the candlelight around their table but there was a glint in her eyes that could be due to unshed tears. Or possibly anger.
‘You’ve ruined everything,’ Fizz murmured.
Cooper still couldn’t be certain whether she was angry or sad and he didn’t get any more time to wonder because Fizz had turned on her heel and was leaving the restaurant so quickly she was virtually running away from him.
Running out of his life...
CHAPTER TEN
THERE WAS NOWHERE actually to run to but Fizz couldn’t go and shut herself away in a bathroom.
They were on the top of a small mountain and, as far as Fizz knew, the only way down was in the gondola or via the tracks in the mountain bike park, which was undoubtedly closed after dark. She kept going, anyway. Past the bathrooms and the entrance to the restaurant. Past the area where you waited for a gondola cabin to arrive.
‘Oi!’ The crew member in charge of getting people safely in and out of the gondolas called after her. ‘Where are you going, love? The next stargazing tour doesn’t start for thirty minutes.’
‘Just need a bit of fresh air,’ she called back. And freedom, she thought. She was feeling trapped. By walls. By words. By the thought that she might risk everything by trusting a future that couldn’t be trusted.
‘Well, don’t go far,’ the man warned. ‘It’s dark out there. Easy to get lost.’
Fizz nodded but kept going. She simply had to get away.
Cooper loved her?
He couldn’t see a future without her? It had probably only been a matter of minutes before he’d want to start talking about a wedding. A honeymoon. Having a family and planning how they could fit their careers around shared parenting. Making promises about ‘for ever’.
How had she not seen that coming?
Fizz had always sensed when one of her male friendships was getting out of control and someone wanted far more than she was prepared to offer them. It hadn’t always been easy but each time she’d managed to escape without hurting anyone too much in the process.
But she hadn’t seen it coming with Cooper. Why not? Because she’d believed that he was held back by the same barriers she was. The kind of barriers that were built, brick by painful brick, from the pain of losing someone so special that life could never be the same. Losing hope that the future would be the way you assumed it would be. The way you wanted it to be.
Fizz knew the answer to that question, of course. It had been so blindingly obvious in that moment when she’d turned her back on Cooper and tried to get as far away from him as she possibly could. She’d been drawn to him from the moment she’d met him. She admired every quality he had. She believed that he deserved the best that life could offer and she’d believed that she could help him achieve that by being his friend. By pushing him to overcome any barriers that might be holding him back.
Well, that had just backfired in a fairly spectacular fashion, hadn’t it?
Cooper had overcome his barriers. And by doing so, he’d given Fizz a clear glimpse into what had been sneaking up on her. She’d come so close to falling into that moment when he’d been holding her gaze and telling her that he loved her. So close to telling him that she felt the same way. To making promises and those plans for a shared future.
She had recognised what Cooper Sinclair was searching for because...because it was what she was searching for herself. She’d just been too blind to see it.
She wanted all the good things life could offer to Cooper because...because she loved him. She loved everything about him. She had wanted to keep this friendship with benefits going as long as possible, not just because she enjoyed his company so much but because she felt the same way Cooper did. She was having trouble imagining her own future without him as a part of it.
This was the worst thing that could have happened. She was in love with Cooper and she wanted that future, too—possibly more than he thought he did. She wanted to see him every day for the rest of her life. To hear his voice. To feel the touch of his hands or his lips.
She wanted his babies...
Fizz was in the position she’d sworn never to be in ever again. With dreams and hopes for a future. And it felt like a huge, emotional, wrecking ball was swinging through the air directly at her. Waiting to show her how destructive it could be when those hopes and dreams were wiped out in an instant.
She couldn’t go there again.
She wouldn’t survive a second time.
Fizz had gone past a helipad now, and signs showing her the direction to take if she was here for a luge ride or a tandem paraglide. Good grief...that was kind of ironic, wasn’t it? As if she needed reminding that clearly of how easily dreams could be snuffed out.
She turned away from the signs, away from the defined pathway, heading for the edge of the pine forest. Maybe being amongst trees with no sign of human habitation for a few minutes would ground her again and this feeling of panic would subside. That wrecking ball would not be able to get close enough to do any damage at all. Trees were huge and solid and safe.
Like Cooper was?
Oh...help. Half-blinded by tears, Fizz set off into the forest. There was a warning bell sounding somewhere in the back of her head with tones of getting lost, of tripping over a tree root and breaking her ankle, but there was no way she could stop just yet.
She’d tried to persuade Cooper to stop feeling guilty over his brother’s death by telling him that he might not have been able to stop Connor from having that accident because his brother had been living so much in the moment he wouldn’t have listened. That’s what Fizz felt like right now. Even if Cooper was somewhere behind her and yelling at her to stop, she wouldn’t be able to. It wasn’t the thrill of an adrenaline rush that was pushing her forward, though. It was fear.
Fear of putting her arms out to hold tight to what had become so incredibly important to her only to have it snatched away again.
Cooper...
A sob escaped her lips at the same moment that Fizz felt the ground beneath her feet begin to slide away. She reached out to catch a tree branch but it snapped and slipped through her hands as her speed increased. And then she lost her balance and hit the ground hard. She could feel herself rolling now and protruding rocks were hammering at her body, which was scary but not nearly as terrifying as when that pain suddenly stopped and Fizz knew she was falling over the edge of a cliff.
She was going to die, she realised in that moment, but the sound that came from her lips wasn’t a scream of terror.
It was simply a name.
‘Cooper...’
He sat there for several minutes.
Well, he couldn’t have chased Fizz into the ladies’ toilets, could he, however much he might have wanted to. And he trusted that was where she’d needed to go because Fizz wasn’t someone who would simply run away from something. She was the bravest person he’d ever met.
It was clear that he’d said too much, too soon. That he’d ruined everything. So, for a few minutes, Cooper sat there and felt a bit sorry for himself. Sad that a future he’d truly believed would be all he could ever hope for in his life was not going to be possible. Sorry for Fizz, as well, because she needed more in her life than a brilliant career and the excitement of chasing adrenaline rushes.
Everybody needed to be loved and he could do that. He could love her with all his heart and soul for every day they were lucky enough to have together.
The way she’d been looking at him, on more than one occasion today, caught in his mind. Sharing the excitement of flying into Queenstown this morning and looking as if he was the only person she wanted to be here with. When he’d been walking towards her on that single cable tightrope, swinging over a scarily high drop to the rocks below, and she’d looked...well, proud of him—as if his achievements were just as important to her as her own.
And, just minutes ago, when her empathy for the loss of his brother had been written all over her face and the touch of her hand on his had given them a link that had seemed so much more than merely physical. It had felt as if their hearts were connected. Their souls, even. It had been enough to make Cooper believe that she was thinking that they could both escape from a space where a real relationship was not going to happen. That they could both get out of that safe but confined space—that empty room she’d been talking about that was no kind of living—because surely being too careful applied to emotional safety as much as anything physical.
The more Cooper thought about it, the more he could remember what he’d seen in Fizz’s eyes and he could add that into so many moments when they’d been together in these last weeks and wrap those moments inside the cloak of the extraordinary physical connection they’d found in their lovemaking.
He got to his feet.
He wasn’t going to push Fizz into doing anything she didn’t feel comfortable doing but he wasn’t going to let this die by letting her run away without at least talking about it. At some level, he really didn’t believe that she wanted that, either.
And...she’d been in the toilets for rather a long time, hadn’t she? Cooper went to take care of the bill. They would have to both return to the motel room where they’d left their bags, so that would provide an opportunity to talk if nothing else.
A woman with a small child was coming out of the ladies’ toilets when Cooper left the restaurant.
‘Is there anyone else in there?’ he asked.
‘Don’t think so,’ the woman replied. ‘No, I’m sure there wasn’t.’
Cooper went further. He got to the gondola station. ‘Did a woman take the gondola back down?’ he asked. ‘About ten to fifteen minutes ago?’
The man shook his head. ‘I saw her, though,’ he said. ‘She said she needed a bit of fresh air. I thought she might be waiting for the next stargazing tour.’
‘Which way did she go?’
The man shrugged. ‘She won’t have gone far, mate. It’s too dark on the tracks now. You’ll find her.’ His sympathetic glance suggested that he thought they were an arguing couple that needed to make up. ‘Good luck,’ he added, before shaking his head. ‘Women, huh? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them...’
* * *
Taking the gondola down these steep slopes would be the only safe way to descend at night but Cooper knew all too well that Fizz wouldn’t hesitate to take a less safe option. She would probably prefer it, in fact.
He wandered the areas that were well lit, ignored barriers that carried warnings of being out of bounds and used a flashlight app on his phone when he followed a smaller track and found himself in the darkness of a fairly dense pine forest. It would have been useful to have already done the course they were intending to do tomorrow, he thought. He could do with some extra knowledge of how to tell if someone had walked along these tracks recently. How long ago had that branch been broken, for example, and had it been done by a human or an animal? Was that a fresh footprint or a scuff from a mountain bike tyre? He tried sending a text message and calling Fizz but received no reply.
He should go back, he realised a short time later. He could ask for help in searching for Fizz. But what if she’d simply walked down one of the main tracks and was now safely in their motel room? Sending out a search party that could actually involve some of the personnel they might meet in their course this weekend could end up being a source of acute embarrassment. It would also increase the distance appearing between himself and Fizz by shining a spotlight on how differently they approached life, and that was the exact opposite of what he’d hoped to achieve by joining her in some adrenaline-producing activities today.
Nobody would launch a search and rescue mission at this time of night, anyway. They would wait for first light so that they could see what they were doing and keep everybody in the search team as safe as possible. And perhaps Fizz hadn’t headed back to the motel. She could have circled back to the restaurant after giving herself a bit of breathing space and be in there now, wondering where on earth he’d got to.
Cooper turned back, looking for the gleam of light through the trees to show him the direction he needed to take.
And that was when he saw it. The pale gleam of a small branch where it had been snapped.
It had to be fresh. Part of the branch was hanging on by a thread of bark that would snap at any moment due to the weight that was gradually tearing it from the rest of the branch. Cooper approached cautiously, using his torch to scour the surrounding ground. He could see that the ground was starting to slope steeply even before he got near the broken branch. And he could see the marks where someone had slipped and where those marks suddenly vanished.
All Cooper’s training was telling him exactly what he should be doing right now. Marking his trail as he went to call for professional help. People who had the kind of gear that would make navigating this landscape so much safer. Headlamps, for example. And ropes. Abseiling gear. A stretcher in case it was needed for someone that was badly injured...
That did it. Cooper couldn’t turn around. Not when that injured person could be the woman he loved.
Very carefully and slowly, he edged down the steep slope towards the drop, using tree branches and rocks for support. He lay down then, to peer over the edge, but he couldn’t see anything but more rocks and vegetation.
‘Fizz?’ His call was tentative. ‘Are you there?’
He listened carefully but could hear nothing apart from the sound of the gondola mechanism as its cars moved along the cable not far away. The hum and clicks slowed and then got quieter and it was in that moment that Cooper heard something that sounded very much like a groan.
‘Fizz?’ He scrambled a bit further down the slope, hoping that the branch he was using for support was not going to snap under his weight when he felt his feet slipping at one point.
‘Cooper?’ The call was faint. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes... Where the hell are you?’ Stupid question, he realised as soon as the words left his lips. How on earth would she know? ‘Keep talking,’ he called. ‘I’ll find you.’
‘I’m sorry...’ The words floated through the darkness. ‘It was a stupid thing to do...’
‘That doesn’t matter right now...’ Cooper pushed sideways towards the sound of her voice but found a barrier—a deep fissure between two rocks. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m not sure. I slid over a few rocks on the way so I’m sure I’ll have some bruises. There were some bushes that broke the fall quite a bit and I might have bumped my head when I landed. Scratched it, anyway.’
He was much closer now. The place where Fizz had landed was right behind the rock on the other side of this fissure, where there appeared to be a ledge. As Cooper shone his torch on the rocks to try and assess whether it was possible to get across the gap, the light caught movement on the other side. A hand appeared on the top of the rock and then he could see Fizz’s face as she hauled herself upright. He hair was a wild mess around a face that looked far too pale and she had a streak of blood on her forehead and cheek.
‘Don’t move,’ he told her. ‘I’m coming over.’
‘No...’ Fizz looked dazed but she was staring at the gap in the rocks between them. ‘You can’t do that. It’s far too dangerous.’
‘You’re hurt.’
‘I’m okay. I can wait for help. Coop...don’t do that...’
It was too late. Cooper had chosen a foothold on this side. All he had to do was make sure he could catch what looked like a suitable handhold on the other side and he would be able to scramble onto the ledge. If he missed—or slipped, of course—it could be disastrous but Cooper felt completely confident. Plus, he didn’t give himself time to tap into any familiar safety checklists.
There was a split second as he hung over th
e gap when Cooper thought his confidence might have been misplaced but he found a boost of strength so that he could push with his feet on one side as he hauled himself up on the other and then there he was, right beside Fizz. Close enough to gather her into his arms.
Except that she pushed him away.
‘How could you have done that?’ Fizz sounded furious. ‘Have you any idea how scary that just was for me?’ She burst into tears. ‘I could have lost you...’
Cooper’s heart stopped. He’d never seen Fizz cry. Her head injury must be worse than he feared. But then her words sank in. She’d been afraid of losing him? She would only feel like that if she felt the same way about him as he did about her. If she loved him?
‘It’s okay,’ he said softly. ‘I’m here, babe. I’m not going anywhere if you don’t want me to.’
But she was still crying as she shook her head. ‘You have no idea how that felt,’ she said again. ‘I thought you were going to fall. You could have been injured. Or killed...’
‘I know exactly how it feels.’ Cooper found himself smiling wryly as he gathered her into his arms. ‘How do you think I feel every time you do something risky?’
‘Really?’ The word came out as a hiccup.
‘Really.’ Cooper was holding Fizz gently. Part of his brain was trying to assess whether she was in any pain or having trouble breathing from an injury rather than being upset. ‘I wouldn’t stop you doing those things, though. It’s who you are and I love your courage but...you might have to get used to me trying to protect you sometimes or making sure you don’t do something stupid—like running off the edge of a small cliff like this one. Now, let me check you out and then I’m going to call for some help to get us out of here.’
Resisting Her Rescue Doc Page 14