Seven Nights with Her Ex

by Louisa Heaton

  He looked at their sombre faces.

  ‘Walk with a stick when you’re out in the wilds alone. You can tap the ground before you, and if there is something you’ve missed, the stick is more likely to get attacked before you.’

  ‘And that stick will come in handy for a river crossing—let’s not forget!’ said Conrad.

  Everyone smiled and the sombre mood was lifted.

  ‘The next thing is stating the obvious—you need to keep an eye on your buddy. Heat exhaustion and dehydration can set in quickly. This time of year it’s hot—you’re sweating constantly and you’ll need to keep up your fluid intake and stay out of the midday sun for as long as is possible. Beau, do you want to let people know the signs?’

  She coloured, feeling Gray’s eyes upon her, and her answer, when it came, was not given in her usually confident voice. ‘Erm…you might feel weak, thirsty. When you go to the loo, your urine might be only a little amount, deep in colour, or it might even hurt to try and pass water… Erm…’

  Gray helped her out. ‘You might feel drowsy, tired, dizzy, disorientated. Faint when you try to stand. These are all signs of it getting worse. You must keep putting the fluids in, even if it means stopping to purify water. Water should be your top priority.’

  Mack nodded. ‘Then there are the mosquitoes, the leeches, the spiders, the ticks. These could all just be minor irritants, but long-term might lead to other problems. Tick bites, especially, could lead to Lyme disease.’

  ‘Ooh, that’s nasty. My cousin has that,’ Barb said.

  ‘I know you’ve all got bug spray, and some of you have citronella. These are all good repellents, but you need to check each other at every stop for ticks. If you get one, don’t just try to pull it out. You need to remove them by twisting them out with tweezers or proper tick removers.’

  He smiled and stood up.

  ‘Right! Let’s pack up camp, douse the fire, and then I’ll hand out your coordinates and maps. You’ll each be given a different route to follow, but we should all arrive at the ranger station by Heart Lake sometime tomorrow afternoon. When we do, you can all tell me how wonderful I’ve been whilst you sip real drinks and eat a proper meal. Sound good?’

  They all cheered, and he nodded and headed over to his own tent, started to take down the guy ropes.

  Beau helped Barb wash the breakfast dishes. ‘Are you nervous about heading into the wild with just you and Con?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I know he’ll look after me and I’ll look after him.’ She looked up at Beau. ‘You nervous?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘About the wildlife problem or the cute doctor problem?’

  Beau blushed. ‘One more than the other.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry, honey. That man has got your back. And maybe some time alone together is just what you two need. A romantic walk together… A campfire beneath the stars all on your own…’

  ‘But what if it isn’t what we need? What if we find ourselves alone and it all turns bad? What if we really hate each other?’

  Barb tilted her head as she gazed at Beau. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen. Do you?’

  Beau wasn’t sure. Having the others around had provided a security she hadn’t realised she’d been relying upon. Now they were all about to go their separate ways and she’d be on her own with Gray… Well, there were enough butterflies in her stomach to restock a zoo.

  When the dishes were done and packed away, she headed over to collapse her tent—only to find that most of it had been done already and Gray was kneeling on the pine-needle-littered ground, putting her rolled-up tent back into its bag.

  ‘Oh! Erm…thank you.’

  ‘No problem. I saw you were busy, so…’

  She nodded. ‘I can take over now.’

  She held out her hands for her things and took the tent from him, started to rearrange her pack. Keeping her back to him, she breathed in and out slowly, trying to keep her heart rate down. But it was difficult. He was so close! So near. Watching and waiting for her…ready to say goodness only knew what when they were alone.

  Perhaps she could pre-empt him. Let him know there wasn’t going to be a continuation of what happened yesterday. Because if there was… Well, she wasn’t sure her senses and her heart would survive the onslaught. Gray was like a drug to her. She could feel that. The effect he had on her was as if she had been bitten by a rattlesnake! With her body turning to mush and her ability to think shot to pieces…

  She had to let him know where she stood. Where they stood.

  Beau turned and faced him, squaring her shoulders and standing her ground as if she were about to go into battle. ‘Gray? You need to know that after…after last night…what happened…I… It won’t be happening again. We can’t let it happen. We can’t.’

  Try to look him in the eyes!

  ‘But we do need to work together to get back to the ranger station, so can you promise me that you won’t do anything? You know…won’t provoke something of a similar nature?’

  The corner of Gray’s mouth turned up in a cheeky way. ‘Provoke something? What do you mean?’

  Beau looked about them. Was anyone listening? She leaned into him, closer, so that she could whisper. ‘I mean the kissing! Please don’t try to do anything like that again!’

  Gray stared deeply into her blue eyes, searching for an answer he obviously couldn’t see. But he must have heeded her words, because he stepped back and nodded. ‘I won’t start anything. You have my word.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She felt her cheeks flush with heat again at the relief.

  ‘But only if…’

  ‘Only if what?’

  ‘Only if you can keep your hands to yourself.’

  He turned away from her to haul on his backpack, and when he turned back to face her, he was grinning widely. He really was maddening!

  ‘I’m sure I’ll try to restrain myself.’

  *

  A few hours later they had been given their coordinates and were walking to their first checkpoint. Or so Beau hoped. Gray was the one reading the map and leading the way and she was putting her trust in him totally.

  Feels familiar. And look where it got me before!

  ‘Er… Gray? Could I just glance at the map?’

  ‘Well, that depends…’

  ‘On…?’

  ‘On how often you’ve used a map to navigate across country.’

  She let out a tense breath and glared at him. ‘I made it from Oxford to Heathrow in one piece.’

  ‘By GPS?’

  ‘It can’t be that hard! Could I just have a look?’

  He handed her the map with a smile on his face. ‘There you go. You’re in charge.’

  She nodded with satisfaction and glanced at the map. She’d expected a few place names, splodges of green for woodlands and trees, maybe patches of blue to mark out lakes and blue lines for rivers. This map had all of those things—but it also had other lines that went all over the place. And where were the grid references…? 1…2…3… It was all numbers!

  She bit her lip, her eyes scanning the map, looking for some sort of point of reference that was familiar with their surroundings. ‘Is this even the right map?’

  ‘You have to know our longitude and latitude to start with.’

  ‘Which is where again?’

  She wouldn’t look him in the eye. So he stood by her side and pointed at a small spot on the map. ‘Just there.’

  ‘And we’re heading to…?’

  ‘Over there.’ He pointed again. ‘Our first checkpoint.’

  ‘Right.’

  It wasn’t getting any clearer. What were all those other lines? Elevation? That seemed about right…

  ‘So we need to take this trail ahead of us until we reach this…’ There were a lot of lines all tightly together. ‘This high spot?’

  He nodded and smiled. ‘Looks like it. We should make it there by nightfall. Camp overnight and then tomorrow we need to cross another rive
r.’

  Now she looked at him, feeling the cold memory of her previous accident shiver through her body. She wasn’t looking forward to that. What if it was deeper and more dangerous than the last one?

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘But we should be able to get to the ranger station by lunchtime. Just imagine—tomorrow we can be drinking real tea and tucking in to a restaurant meal with all of this behind us.’

  ‘Sounds simple.’

  ‘Should be.’

  She passed him the map. ‘Maybe you should have this.’

  They’d parted company from the rest of the group—everyone with nerves and butterflies in their stomachs, everyone hugging each other, whispering words of encouragement into each other’s ears before setting off—turning around occasionally until the others were out of sight.

  Each pairing had been given a different checkpoint to reach, and then from that checkpoint they all had to navigate their way back to the ranger station. Nothing too arduous, but enough of a toe in the water to prove to themselves that they could do it, that they’d survive and, if need be, could cope with any injuries on the way.

  Beau had learnt a few things on this trip so far. She’d learnt that she could cope with being around Gray. With talking to him. Being civil. They’d even got…close…and she’d discovered her feelings for him were still very much up in the air. He was maddening and gorgeous and frustrating and sexy and… Had she mentioned gorgeous?

  He still bought her favourite chocolate bars. He’d been incredibly hurt and had survived alone. The idea of him lying there, broken and hurting, at the bottom of that remote sea cliff had been nauseating. Heartbreaking. What had he thought of as he’d lain there? Had he thought he was going to die? Had he had regrets?

  Was I one of them?

  Beau had never rested. Since the day he’d left, she’d pushed herself. Striving, challenging herself, working harder and harder, until the hospital had become the only thing in her life worth a damn.

  But there was always a part of me missing…and that part was Gray.

  She’d never had any closure. She’d never found out the reason for his disappearance.

  There were a few clues now. Maybe it was something to do with his family? Had someone warned him not to marry her? It certainly couldn’t have been anyone from her family. They’d all been so pleased for her when she’d announced their engagement.

  Beau glanced at him as they walked, admiring the cut of his jaw, the stubbornness there in the line of his mouth, his tightly closed lips, his lowered brow as he slowly led them up an incline.

  And he was doing all this with a prosthetic leg! He was amazing. He was still the man she’d known all those years ago, still challenging himself, pushing the boundaries, taking risks.

  I’d be a fool to get involved with him again.

  *

  Gray held out his arm in front of her chest and Beau walked straight into it, frowning.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Shush!’ He held his finger to his lips and pointed ahead through the treeline. ‘Look…a herd of bison.’

  Bison?

  She stared hard, feeling the hairs rise on the back of her neck as the huge beasts passed them.

  It was a large herd. Easily a hundred or so animals, maybe more. It was made up of mainly adults, as tall as her and Gray, with a few youngsters trotting alongside. They were thick, broad animals, with shaggy fur, some of it clumped, accentuating their humped backs as they ambled along, in no hurry at all. Several of them nibbled at the ground, others were snorting and looking around, keeping watch.

  Instinctively Beau and Gray knelt out of sight by a large rock at the side of the trail. Beau’s legs felt like jelly, but she drew on the reserves inside her that she always drew from. The reserves that had got her through sixteen-hour surgeries, nights on call and the all too numerous occasions when she’d had to sit at a family’s bedside and deliver bad news, trying her hardest not to cry alongside her patients’ relatives.

  She’d had to stay strong. She’d made a profession out of it. Forcing herself to stay dry-eyed, forcing herself to stay on her feet, to answer one more patient call, to do one more consultation, perform one more surgery.

  Shifting her feet, she glanced at Gray, excited at having seen these amazing animals up close. ‘Should I take a picture?’ she whispered.

  ‘Does your camera have a flash?’

  ‘I can switch it off.’

  He nodded and she struggled to get her camera out of her fleece pocket. Once she’d deactivated the flash, she pushed herself up onto her knees and peered over the top of the rock. Breathing heavily, she used the zoom to focus in on one particular specimen that was snorting, using its tail to bat away flies as it scanned the horizon, alert for any danger.

  ‘Wow…’

  Back down behind the rock, she showed the digital picture to Gray and he smiled and whispered, ‘It’s good. But no more. We don’t want them to know we’re here.’

  ‘Surely they can smell us?’

  ‘Maybe. But I think we’re upwind, so I’m going to go with no. Let’s stay out of sight until they’ve passed.’

  They sat with their backs to the rock and got some fluids on board.

  Beau glanced at Gray. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got another chocolate bar stashed away in those pockets?’

  He smiled. ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Trail mix it is, then.’ She rummaged in her pack for the small resealable bag and pulled it out, offering him some.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  She shrugged. ‘More for me.’ She ate a mouthful. Then another, savouring the taste of rich nuts and dried fruit, regretting that none of them was covered in chocolate. ‘You know…you surprised me a lot the other day.’

  He turned to her, an eyebrow raised in amusement. ‘On which occasion?’

  ‘The chocolate. That was my favourite bar. The kind you always used to buy me whenever you passed the shops on the way home from a shift. You said you still buy them. Why?’

  Gray shifted on the hard ground, as if it had suddenly got a lot more uncomfortable in the last few seconds. ‘Because…’ He let out a heavy sigh. ‘Every time I pass a store, every time I have to shop, I buy them. Eat them. They remind me…’

  ‘Of me?’

  He gave a smile. ‘Of some happier times. I have this image in my head of you curled up in the corner of the sofa, your head buried in a pile of medical texts, nibbling away at a bar, one piece at a time, savouring each block before you ate the next. I don’t know…it probably sounds stupid…but having them, eating them, makes me feel…closer to you.’

  Beau stared at him, her heart thudding away in her chest. That was so sweet. That he still bought those bars. And for him to openly admit… She wondered if he would talk to her about his family, open up more if she asked.

  But she didn’t. This moment wasn’t the right time. Now was the time for being honest—but not in that way. It was not the moment to bring up painful stuff that could turn all this on its head. And she didn’t want this going wrong. They were heading in a good direction. Communicating. Opening up about little things. It was a start. And she liked it. Liked talking to him. Right now they were building bridges. They were forging new pathways ahead of them and they were doing it together. That was what was important.

  So instead she smiled at him. ‘We’re close now.’

  She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it, looking up into his eyes and feeling warmth spread within her, as if her heart was opening up and letting him in again. It was scary, but strangely, suddenly, it felt so right.

  Their kiss now seemed like a dream, and she began to wonder how it would feel to kiss again—but this time when she was ready for it. Prepared. Able to appreciate it properly. Even instigate it?

  Perhaps she ought to take a leaf out of Gray’s book? Be daring. Take a risk. Put herself out there on the ledge. Make that leap of faith.

  To where, though? Where do I want us to end up? If I kiss him,
what message will that send?

  Gray smiled at her, then laid his head back against the stone and closed his eyes.

  I could kiss him now, but…

  Something held her back. She stared at him for a moment longer and then let out a breath, the tension leaving her chest, her shoulders relaxing. Now was not the time.

  They continued to wait for the herd to pass. Gray with his eyes closed, resting. Beau just watching him, taking in all the details of his face, questioning her heart’s desire.

  After the last of the bison had gone, they forged onwards until they reached their checkpoint—a tree marked with a wooden first aid box. Upon opening it, as instructed, they found the extra ‘luxuries’ that Mack had promised them would be in there. They’d daydreamed about what they might be. Food? Chocolate, maybe? Perhaps even a small bottle of wine to celebrate?

  But no. Upon opening the box they found a standard first aid kit, a roll of toilet paper and a tick remover.

  ‘Great…maybe we can eat those?’ Beau suggested wryly. ‘What is the correct way to cook loo roll? You’re meant to boil it, right?’

  Gray smiled, then they got to work setting up camp for the night. He successfully lit a small fire that they edged with rocks and they ate a rather tasteless lentil broth, their thoughts drifting to dreams of the next day, when they would be back at their luxury hotels. Though even that dream was tempered by the sour note that by then they would have parted ways, and there was still so much they hadn’t said…

  Beau gazed through the flames to look at Gray. He was looking straight back at her, but this time she didn’t look away. She held his gaze, thinking of how they’d once been with each other. The way he’d made her feel. How happy he’d made her. Before their wedding day anyway. She’d loved him so much.

  She swallowed hard, determined not to cry over something she’d shed enough tears over. That had been then. This was now. They’d both changed and here they were, in the heart of Yellowstone Park, beneath the stars, sitting around a campfire, with just the sounds of crackling wood and distant insects, the air scented with woodsmoke and pine.

  ‘At any other time I would say this is quite romantic.’ She smiled.