“I didn’t come to say anything. I wanted to see with my own eyes that you were alive and well.” Her voice wobbled, like it had to pass through bubbles of emotion in her throat. This would be easier if she would just shout.
“And now you see.”
“Alive. And I need to understand why the man who said he loved me, the only—” She stopped midthought, and closed her eyes, hands slipping from her sleeves enough to fidget before her as she struggled for composure. “Why would you just leave without word, three days before our wedding? I deserve to know what I did wrong.”
There it was, her taking the blame for it. An example of exactly what she would do if he told her the whole damned story, try to take his guilt away or at least share the load. She’d probably say his brother had committed suicide because she’d taken too much of West’s time, or that it was her fault because she was the subject of West’s ultimatum. He couldn’t have an addict around his new family, and he’d picked Lia over Charlie. And Charlie had picked drugs over rehab and family. A choice Charlie obviously wasn’t ready to make, and he should’ve seen that. If he’d listened...
He lifted one hand to mash against his forehead, trying to rub away the tension headache already starting to drill in.
Don’t think about Charlie.
He didn’t need to explain. He wasn’t going to explain. But if he wanted her to believe him, not take the blame, he had to give some excuse. Pinning some action on her would be an even greater sin than the lie he was about to tell. He couldn’t make her take the blame. He’d take it. He deserved it.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” The muscles all seemed to have tightened, and making his mouth form words was harder than running in water. “Something happened, and I needed to go. So I left.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to talk about any of this, and you know that.”
Her shoulders bobbed quickly under the fluffy pink onesie she’d zipped herself into. In any other circumstances, the ridiculousness of her outfit would delight him—with the hood and the footsies attached—but he hadn’t smiled in a long time.
“I don’t care about your aversion to talking about the past. It’s not that far in the past, and I need to understand.”
“Aye, I see that. But you don’t need to know everything. You’re not part of my life now, Lia. We’re not friends. We’re not lovers. We’re not engaged.”
“If you had to leave, I would’ve gone with you.”
“No,” he said swiftly, searching for any route that would get through to her. “When I proposed, I thought it was love. I thought I loved you. Turns out, I didn’t.”
The color drained from her face.
“But when I left...” she started, but then just stopped. Like she didn’t even have an avenue to try and argue it. Like it was almost expected.
Which it probably was. He had left her days before their wedding.
That was something he should apologize for; he could do that without explanations. But softening his position now would be a bad idea. Inside, he was already as soft as peat; it wouldn’t take much for him to sink into the dreck. He’d apologize another day, after she’d accepted things.
“Is there anything else you want to discuss?”
Speak now, or forever hold your peace... She didn’t even have to say the words this time.
“I guess I don’t have anything else to say,” she said, the words hanging there, sucking the air out of the room as she extended her left arm a bit, eyes fixed on the hand she’d let slide out from the cuff she’d tucked it into for warmth. “Just...”
He followed her gaze down to her hand. And the glittering diamond ring still perched on her finger. Where he’d slid it almost a year before.
The ice he’d felt cramming into the back of his neck earlier returned, a single, hard throb in his head stopping him from saying anything else. Why would she still be wearing that?
“I came to give this back.” Her voice wobbled, then cracked, the sound as sudden and startling as a gunshot. “This beautiful ring we designed together, and the lie that it represents...”
* * *
Lia had other things she wished she had the strength to say, but as soon as she got feeling back in her face, she might be able to be proud of herself for still breathing after having him say the worst thing he could have to her. But all she could think of was to return the ring.
She flexed her hand, noted the way it trembled, the way her body could respond while mentally she still scrambled for anything to say. Her heart rabbited away. She heard her breath as if through a stethoscope, but it was as if every part of her brain was focused on keeping her upright and breathing. All emotion. No reason.
West stared at the ring, his jaw bunched and his brow beetled, but he didn’t say anything.
Take it off. She was supposed to take it off now.
Forcing her arms to move, she latched on to the exquisite trigold engraved band and pulled.
In the first days, when she hadn’t been able to locate him, the ring had been a comfort to her. When she discovered his empty flat, she’d clung to the promise she’d still trusted in and wanted to protect.
Her hands were cold enough that the knuckle, which always snagged it, had contracted, and it took nearly no effort for the ring to pop free. But everything still wobbled. Her hands. Her voice, when she finally found some words, the last she hoped she’d ever have to say to him. “I can’t carry it anymore, or the weight of your broken promises.”
The last word was whispered, no strength left to fake, all swept away with the sudden, sickly warmth washing over her face and down. Lightly stinging in her eyes and cheeks, then like a fever in her throat where muscles tensed, opened, hollowed so that when she breathed in it sounded strangled, choking...
Oh, no...
She was going to cry. As if she needed one more ounce of humiliation. The cascade of physical processes had already begun, the ones she could feel and which let her know it was too late to stop.
She thrust her hand out to him, the ring on her quaking palm.
He started to say something, but stopped dead a split second before her chin began the quiver and tears spilled.
Focusing on the process of it was the only thing she could think to do.
Useless Science Fact Number One: tears from grief and pain were chemically different from those summoned by dirt or onion fumes.
Useless Science Question Number One: How would these tears have dried on a microscope slide? Spiky or like a web of fractals, like that strange theory she’d once read which hypothesized that different tears produced different crystalline salt structures.
She looked away from his eyes, not wanting to see him through the wavering watery line, or the horror there. But that coping mechanism fritzed and she had to reach for any other information to sedate her emotions.
“Lia?”
What else?
Something...
Prolactin.
Useless Science Fact Number Two: prolactin was somehow present in tears—a hormone initially believed only to govern lactation and the reason babies instinctively suckled. There was no way to stop it.
“Lia?” He said her name again, confusion present in his voice. As if she shouldn’t experience grief. Like she wasn’t a human who’d gone through loss in the past, who wasn’t having her third round of grief in a handful of months, just because he’d wanted to share those old pains with her, or know her. Never wanted to let her close enough to love her, just close enough to fool her into thinking she’d finally found someone who would.
Lia never cried.
Ophelia had, but only when she was alone. She needed to be alone now.
He said her name again, but she could only shake her head, her eyes fixed on the little closet at his shoulder.
Why was he still standing there? Didn’t he have any decency? Couldn’t he see that she...
The ring. He hadn’t taken it; she still felt it weighing her palm down.
When she gave it to him, he would go...
She thrust it forward, finally looking again at his face, his horrified face.
Enough. He had to go.
She opened her mouth to tell him, but a short, choked hiccup came out instead, and in her own horror, she slammed her free hand over her mouth to hold it.
“Lia?”
He had to stop saying her name like he could make her stop feeling by him being horrified by it.
One step forward came with his word this time, so her knuckles touched his chest.
The brush of his hand on her well-padded arm got through the grief fogging her brain.
He thought he could be horrible and cruel and then just...what? Comfort her? Maybe tell her to stop being dramatic?
No.
She peeled her own hand from her mouth and slapped his hand away hard. Then again, because it wasn’t far enough. She’d come all this way, and now all she wanted was distance.
Distance and getting rid of the ring, which he still hadn’t taken. A quick survey of his attire provided an array of pockets where she could stick the cursed thing. She found one, and as soon as she’d stuffed the diamond band inside, she shoved at his chest.
“Lia, you have to take a breath. Calm down.”
“Stop saying my name.” She panted the words, because she was only half functioning on intention.
“Okay, but you have—”
“Get out!”
West lifted both hands, palms forward, to stay her, and backed warily out the door.
As soon as he stepped through, she took two big steps, made sure it was as closed as possible, then flipped the locks.
She crawled back into bed and pressed her face into the pillow to muffle the sounds she couldn’t stop.
It was done. It was over. She’d wanted to know what she’d meant to him, and now she knew. But she’d always known that, in the back of her mind. She’d just let herself pretend otherwise.
CHAPTER THREE
WEST PUSHED INTO the clinic early the next morning, before anyone else had arrived, and flipped on the lights before heading straight for the supply room.
He’d endured many sleepless nights when he’d first arrived at Fletcher Station, but with the absence of dark, there was a healthy insomniac population for him to blend into.
Last night, he’d been unable to will away the image of her with tears on her cheeks, the complete breakdown of the steel-framed woman he’d known. In the moment, he thought he’d heard everything she’d said to him; he’d tried to listen, but it wasn’t there in his head. All the times he’d concentrated, pressed the mental replay, all he got was the vision of her shaking and crying, and the understanding that it would take a long time to scab over.
Worse, he couldn’t shake the notion that he’d ruined her as badly as he’d ruined Charlie. Yet more proof that he shouldn’t be trusted with the psychological well-being of anyone.
The only good thing a sleepless night afforded him was early breakfast and getting to lock himself away before she arrived for her first shift. If he was lucky, he could busy himself counting everything, a task that would minimize contact with other people, while staying mostly out of sight. For her.
Instinct said give her time. Trust Jordan to be there for her to lean on as he was sure she had done at the start. But it also said keep an eye on her. Because he just wasn’t sure how bad this could get. He prayed not as bad as it had with his brother, but then Lia wasn’t an addict. She had Jordan looking out for her. Maybe he should quietly ask her to keep a closer eye...
He opened the digital inventory and sent it to the office printer. Working on paper would be easier on his fried brain, and anything he could do to make today easier, he would. Including throwing himself into monotony, testing the status of everyday machines used for testing and upkeep. Centrifuge, autoclave and irradiator for sterilizing equipment that would be reused—something he’d never encountered in any other hospital but was in Antarctica. Everything brought onto the continent had to be shipped out again, including all forms of garbage.
He left in nine days.
* * *
“Are we having fun yet?” Jordan asked after throwing away the last bits of a stitch kit Lia had used on a butter-fingered galley cook, her second patient of the day.
As part of her first day on the job, Lia shadowed Jordan to learn her way around and get a crash course in station medicine, which was like some cross between a small hospital and field medicine. “Oh, sure, nothing like stitching up a hearty thumb slice to get the party started.”
“Or an asthma attack.”
“That was the first party of the day,” Lia corrected her thumb party joke, finishing up the file entry for the thumb.
She’d expected to struggle to find the old Lia, the version of her that Jordan knew, but a few minutes with her almost maid of honor had her stepping into London Lia’s shoes once more, the ones she hadn’t been strong enough to cram onto her metaphorical feet with West last night.
Not that she had to try too hard in that regard. Of all the people in her life, Jordan, who’d known her since medical school, was the most likely to be accepting of changes to the Lia she knew. But it was just one more thing on an already overwrought mind and Lia didn’t have it in her yet to try and sort out who she was supposed to be while trying to sort out everything else. While still hollow and cold from last night’s official breakup. Breakdown. Whatever. From feeling him very close by, but knowing she wouldn’t be welcome if she spoke to him, that she shouldn’t even want to speak to him, that he’d never smile for her again or cuddle under a warm woolly blanket with her to watch some silly movie with more special effects than story.
If being London Lia made it even a tiny bit easier, she’d stick to it for now. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t tell Jordan the truth about her situation, it just meant she had to be strong about it. No matter how helpless and heartbroken she might be on the inside.
“But I guess this is just my life now.”
“While you’re here, you mean?” Jordan asked, her tone saying she’d picked up on the undercurrent of dismay. “It can get more exciting here. Fieldwork can be pretty dangerous—not that you’ll be doing any of that over the winter. Are you nervous about staying?”
“For the winter?” Lia popped her head out of the treatment room to make certain no other patients had come in while they stood there chatting. “Not really. I’ve decided it’s adventurous and as my life is no longer going to be neurosurgery exciting, and even if my cabin is freezing compared to the rest of the station, it’s adventure time and I should enjoy the memory-making.”
“I’m going to come back to that whole life-without-adventure thing, but right now...your cabin was really that cold last night?” Jordan asked. “Inside the station never seems much colder than being at home.”
She had a point. Lia didn’t feel colder in the clinic, but no, her cabin had been colder. “Maybe I was just really tired. But honestly, I was always a little bit cold when I worked in London, and that was before I spent time in Portugal. Maybe the warm temperate climate had made me go soft.”
Jordan snorted her disbelief, a testament to how well Lia had played the self-assigned role of all things unsinkable. “You’ll do more than waste away in a little village. Maybe you can work part-time in Porto.”
All Lia could think to do was nod. “Maybe.”
But even if the authorities were still unsure if her father would return and take over the vineyard, she wasn’t confused about it. Once he lost interest in something, that was it. Her mother. His second and third wives. Her—not that she could remember him ever having interest in her. Just the opposite. Disap
pointment that she wasn’t male, and all the assurances that she’d never inherit. A point that had left her further confused when the lawyers had said, with him gone, she was the one indicated in his paperwork to manage Monterrosa Wine.
But that strange surprise had faded when they’d informed her that as soon as she married it would be her husband who actually inherited the vineyard. At that time, she’d thought that would be West. Now she might never feel comfortable enough to marry, not if she could be as wrong about West as she had been. A man who wanted her to believe he loved her? She’d probably fall for it without a drop of sense.
“But considering the village is called Monterrosa, I feel my first responsibility is to them, the people who have been loyal to Monterrosa Wine since the time of titles.”
“Who was assigned Nigel Gates yesterday?” The question came from the lobby area, immediately shifting both of their attention from the spiky conversation.
“Tony?” Lia mouthed the question to Jordan, not yet able to identify people by voice.
Jordan nodded, then mouthed back, “West had him.”
They both eased off the counter where they’d been leaning and drifted out to the lobby in time to see West coming out of the room where the autoclave and irradiators lived.
“I had him, but he never showed. It’s in the file,” West said, glancing toward the two of them, but focusing again on the medical director. “I was here with a broken arm an hour after end of shift, and he never made an appearance. Called up to the BAT twice before that, no answer.”
Nigel was being uncooperative. Figured.
“BAT?” she whispered to Jordan, staying out of the conversation between Tony and West, despite staying to listen in.
“Big-ass telescope,” Jordan filled in. “There are a lot of goofy acronyms around here.”
Lia nodded, but as it now all made sense, she had to join in the conversation. She could be an adult about this. She had to learn how to coexist with West at the station for several more days, couldn’t spend the whole time avoiding him.
Reunited in the Snow Page 3