by Fiona Harper
He couldn’t stand here and watch her like that. He had to go to her.
The urge intensified when she pulled her face from her hands. Simon, who was operating the remote-controlled cameras, zoomed in closer, and now Finn could see how the setting sun had picked out a single vertical track down each cheek, making them sparkle. He almost pressed a finger to the monitor screen, but reined himself in just in time. No point in giving the terrible two back there even more ammunition.
Allegra’s face disappeared from shot and he started. Camera three had been in too close to follow her when she’d suddenly moved, and Finn frantically searched the other monitors for a sign of her.
His heart rate slowed. She hadn’t fallen or run or panicked. She’d merely crouched again and had picked up the knife and flint.
He let out the breath he’d been holding. So brave. So determined. This time he left a smudgy fingerprint on the monitor and he didn’t care who saw it.
Okay. He’d had enough of this.
He marched over to the pile of kit he’d left on his sleeping mat and started strapping his spare knife to his calf. Then he pulled his trouser leg back down.
Simon turned round. ‘What are you up to?’
Finn just kept getting ready. It was perfectly obvious what he was doing. He was getting ready to rescue Allegra.
‘Finn?’
He pulled a long-sleeved shirt from the pile and put it on over his T-shirt and turned to face his producer. ‘I’m going. You can’t stop me. We just can’t leave her like that!’
Simon stood up. ‘That’s not the deal with the celeb guests and you know it.’
‘Tell that to someone who cares.’
And then he strode from the tent into the twilight. He had mere minutes before complete darkness fell now.
‘Finn!’
He ignored Simon’s angry yell.
He had to go to her. He couldn’t abandon her when she needed him. He couldn’t stand by and do nothing. So he was breaking a rule or two. He did it all the time. And he’d never heard Simon complain before—especially if he got a good shot out of it.
‘Finn!’
He paused, right on the verge of stepping from the clearing they’d chosen for their camp and into the jungle. There had been a different tone to Simon’s voice. Less angry. More urgent.
He ran back towards the tent, his heart pounding with fear now, not frustration. ‘What?’
Simon appeared through the tent flap, grinning. ‘She did it!’
Finn pushed past him and rushed to the bank of monitors. Sure enough, there in the centre of each one, bathed in warm orange glow was Allegra. Through the speakers he could hear her laughing quietly to herself.
His hands dropped to his sides and his face fell as Simon slapped him on the back.
‘The girl done good,’ he said, before going back to his camera controls and adjusting a shot.
Finn knew he should be laughing, too. Smiling, at least. But he’d been all revved up to go, to see her, and now there was no need. What was he supposed to do with all this adrenalin crashing round his system now? If he couldn’t take flight and go to Allegra, the only other option was fight, and he was pretty sure Simon wouldn’t want him punching anyone.
He looked at the tent door, flapping in the cool evening breeze.
He could still go.
One more night with Allegra on the island. One more night of feeling as if they were parts of a two-piece puzzle, where he could wrap himself around her and hold her to him. Keep her there.
So she didn’t need him. Who cared? He could still go…
Why?
The question slid into his brain so innocently that he hardly noticed it at first.
Isn’t it because you need her?
No.
It wasn’t that. He just needed to… He just needed… Allegra.
Finn couldn’t find a word to replace her name, no matter how hard he tried. That was bad, wasn’t it? Really bad. Because it showed just how far things had gone. It showed just how badly he’d gone off course without even realising.
Finn McLeod was Mr Self-Sufficiency. The TV adverts for the show said so. He didn’t need anything but a good pair of hiking boots, his knife and a flint. That was all. No extraneous baggage weighing him down.
For that reason he turned away from the tent door and parked himself in the chair next to his cameraman. Dave chuckled and handed him a bottle of water. Finn would much rather have had a cold beer. The perfect beverage for swapping adventure stories and embellishing near-death experiences with the other blokes, because that was what he made sure they did for the next few hours. And Finn made equally sure that he didn’t glance at the bank of monitors once.
Allegra woke face down in a pile of palm leaves and peeled her face from her forearm. Even before she focused on the fuzzy orange glow outside the shelter she realised her fire had lasted. She could feel the warmth on her face. She blinked. It wasn’t big, but it was still flickering away.
She’d done it.
A surge of triumph pushed the sleep further back in her consciousness and she sat up and yawned.
The sky was still dark overhead, but near the horizon it was turning pale. Morning was mere minutes away.
Back home, a view of the moment night turned to day was always blocked by the skyline; but here there were no Georgian townhouses or glass and steel creations to hide it from her. And, since this new beach faced eastwards, she was going to have a completely uninterrupted view of the sunrise, maybe her first ever.
She hauled herself out of the shelter, determined to make the most of it, and tossed another couple of logs on the fire, hoping they’d keep it going until she worked out what she was going to eat for breakfast. Her mouth was dry, so she rooted around in her shelter for her canteen and drank deeply.
They’d be here soon. Finn had said so. She supposed she should have been disappointed she hadn’t been able to spend her last night on the island with Finn, but the sense of achievement wouldn’t allow her to mope. And she’d felt connected to him all night—every time she’d used a skill he’d taught her.
The morning was so perfect she almost wanted to cry.
And not just because of the scenery. She’d be seeing Finn soon. Her ears began to tingle at the very thought of it. Just the thought of laying eyes on that floppy dark hair, those laughing eyes, made her jump to her feet and run to the edge of the fort. Where she was going and what she was looking for she wasn’t sure; she just needed to move.
Oh, today was going to be glorious. Because today she felt as if she could do anything. Even the impossible.
Especially the impossible.
Because today she was going to stop being such a coward and let Finn McLeod know exactly how much she needed him in her life.
A slap on the back from a large, overenthusiastic hand brought Finn to consciousness. He didn’t open his eyes straight away—they seemed to be welded shut. And what was he sleeping up against? A rock?
He prised his eyelids open and blinked. The blurry information his brain was receiving was just about enough for him to work out that, somehow, during the course of the night his chair had worked itself from the other side of the tent to just in front of the monitor rack, and the cold hard surface supporting his cheek was in fact one of the folding tables.
‘It’s time to go,’ Simon said softly, and Finn realised the whole crew had gathered round him. Or, rather, he was in the way of their attempt to watch the monitors. He sat up just fast enough to make little silver flecks dance at the edge of his vision.
Only inches from his face, multiplied four times, was a slender figure at the edge of the ruins, looking towards the horizon.
He swallowed, his throat dry and thick, and his slumbering pulse began to wake.
The first glint of bright, warm light burst above the horizon, as if it could hardly wait to get the day started. Allegra held her breath. For some reason the sight made her unbearably excited. She began to move, clambering down the rocks at the edge of the ruins. Once her feet hit sand she ran down the beach towards the shore. It seemed to be the proper thing to do, to greet the rising sun. And there was no one else here to do it.
As a soft golden stripe appeared on the horizon she started to grin.
She’d done it, hadn’t she? She’d really done it! Survived a whole night on her own in the wilderness. Finn had been right—she felt wonderful.
She’d built her own shelter, found her own food and made a fire. Not skills she’d need back home, but that hardly seemed to matter. At the moment she felt that if she could do all this, there were no limits to what she could accomplish back on familiar turf. She could certainly go back home and face whatever music was coming her way, make some decisions about what to do next.
What she couldn’t do was just stand there. She needed to do something, let this glowing feeling she had inside her out somehow.
So she ran, her bare feet leaving dents in the damp sand—deeper at the heel, shallower at the toes. And when half the untouched shoreline of the smallish beach had been branded as hers she decided to do a cartwheel. Just because she could. Just to change the pattern of marks in the sand, to see fingers instead of toes, two starfish handprints amongst her running tracks.
That done, she started making other shapes in the sand by turning, jumping, drawing arcs with her toes as her hands and fingers drew them in the air.
And then the oddest thing happened—it started to rain. She glanced up to see the clouds up ahead, blown over the island from the west, but off in the east the sun still hovered unobscured, painting the bottom of the sky with peaches and pinks and yellows.
She paused for a moment, looking back at her tracks across the beach. It was almost shocking to see the physical evidence of her movement, as ice skaters did with their traces and figures, but there it all was—her dance of joy, carved in the sand for all to see.
But she didn’t stop yet. Couldn’t. Even though the tiny drops of water peppering her skin were picking up their tempo.
It was all still bubbling inside of her, wanting to be let out. So she did. She spun around fast, her arms flung wide, laughing, and almost toppled over face first into the sand. When gravity forced her to change direction to save herself she used that momentum into a leap, and then another.
She’d swear that this morning she could finally fulfil the illusion ballet promised: that she’d finally fly.
Simon’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. ‘I still can’t see her.’
Finn, Dave, Barry and Tim were standing in the centre of the ruins, staring at Allegra’s shelter. The rain was splashing into the fire, causing the hot logs to sizzle. Close up, Finn could see the lean-to wouldn’t have lasted more than a few nights without improvement, but that hardly mattered. It had done the job last night, and that was what counted.
He turned in a circle, his hand shielding his eyes from the rising sun. Simon had radioed through about five minutes ago, while they’d been between the two camps, to say he’d lost sight of Allegra on the monitors. She couldn’t have gone far, surely? The rain would bring her back to the shelter pretty soon.
While Dave and Barry got some shots of Allegra’s temporary home, Finn strode to the edge of the ruins, his eyes restlessly scanning from left to right and back again. That was when he spotted the footprints heading off down the beach.
Moments later he was standing on the sand, frozen by the beauty of the scene in front of him—and he hadn’t even noticed the sunrise yet.
She was dancing.
Not the pretty, precise movements he’d seen her do on stage. This was sometimes graceful, sometimes clumsy. Her clothes were dotted with large rain spots and her hair had fallen out of her ponytail and was starting to look damp and stringy, but what she was doing eclipsed all of that. It was wild and free and definitely, definitely beautiful. Even when she stumbled and landed on her rear end. Because this dance wasn’t just movement, it was truth. This dance was Allegra.
And, right at that moment, Finn realised he’d reached the end point of the journey he’d started with her a week ago. He had a sense of things falling into place, that something permanent and inevitable had just happened.
He was finally there. His ultimate destination.
And now it made sense why he’d never been able to find it, why he’d always had to search one more place, try one more map reference. Like most great discoveries, this one had a twist to it, something Finn hadn’t expected or planned for.
Not for one second had Finn McLeod thought that his ultimate destination, the end to all his restlessness, might not be a place but a person. That elusive beauty wasn’t to be found in the great outdoors, but in this woman. All of that in one tiny frame. It must have been a powerful miracle that had put it there.
Allegra paused in her dance and spotted him just as the full terror of his situation hit him.
He had to move on.
Because Finn McLeod always moved on. But he didn’t run away; that was cowardly. He was always moving towards the next destination, not away from where he’d just been, so he needed a plausible sounding reason to pin his departure on.
She started to run towards him—not pretty little gallops, but full-out sprinting—and Finn had to dig his heels into the sand to keep himself there. As she came closer he saw that a grin was lighting up her face. She did a cartwheel just before she reached him, clean and precise and elegant, and landed in a little jump in front of him.
‘I did it, Finn! I did it!’
He wanted to smile, but the need to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering prevented it. ‘Yes, you did.’
But he discovered he didn’t need to smile back. His gaze moved upwards from her lips and teeth to her eyes. There it was again. That feeling of something finishing, of something being knotted and tied…
‘Oh…you were right, Finn! There’s nothing like this. I feel so alive!’ Her smile outgrew her words, stopping her from talking for a few seconds, while she shook her head in disbelief. ‘Thank you. Thank you for giving this to me…’
She stepped forward and touched her damp and slightly sandy fingertips to his cheekbones. Finn stopped breathing.
And then she kissed him, a sweet, slow touching of the lips, full of gratitude and so much more. It was the briefest of moments, and she did it again, just because once wasn’t enough.
Once wasn’t nearly enough.
But he peeled her fingertips from his face, pulled his lips from hers.
‘Allegra…’
She rested her forehead against his shoulder. He could hear the rain slapping on her scalp and his, see it running through her hair and down her face. She closed her eyes.
So beautiful…
An idea formed in his head. A reason. A very good reason. One he could just about buy into himself. One that would make leaving the right thing instead of the wrong thing.
He knew now that one could be selfish with beauty. Hadn’t he had the urge last night to rush in and rob her of her chance to discover she could do it on her own? If he’d followed his instincts, she wouldn’t be feeling this now, wouldn’t be looking at him as if she were a firework waiting to shoot straight into the sky.
He’d almost put his need above hers. Even worse, he couldn’t promise himself he wouldn’t do it again. How could he stop himself wanting to limit her, by tying her to him? It was so wrong. Not what she needed.
She’d had too much of that in her life already. She needed a chance to stretch her wings and fly, to see if she could do it on her own. He couldn’t take that away from her.
She smiled against his lips and then tipped her head up to look at him.
No, don’t, he wanted to say. Don’t look at me like that, like you’d throw all that freedom you’ve just earned for yourself away on me, because I really don’t deserve it. I’m not even man enough to want it.
Their fingers were still intertwined and he brought them down so they were between their bodies, the flimsiest of barriers. He wasn’t sure if he was holding her fingers to stop her doing anything more, or to prevent himself.
He got his answer when he pulled away and stepped back, letting her hands drop. ‘I can’t do this for you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t be this for you.’
She opened her eyes and Finn wished she’d kept them closed. No one should have to witness such bleakness in the eyes of another. He didn’t want the guilt of having caused it, but he had no other choice. Allegra’s roots had already started to burrow deep inside him. He couldn’t let them continue to grow. It wouldn’t be good for either of them, and it was better to cut them off now before they got so embedded he wouldn’t survive when they were pulled out.
She stood very still, her eyes saying the words before they left her mouth. ‘I think I love you.’
The honesty and bravery of her statement slammed into him, making him take yet another step back.
‘You told me to make a choice,’ she said. ‘And I choose you.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s impossible.’
One corner of her mouth curled in a heartbreaking attempt at a smile. ‘I thought I was supposed to “expect the impossible” with you around. Don’t you live up to your hype?’
Not even close, he’d discovered. And it was time for her to know that about him.
She kept talking. Finn closed his eyes. He wanted her to stop.
‘I feel I could do the impossible now, thanks to you,’ she added softly.