by Lia Riley
And now this.
My cock softens, and I don’t bask in any afterglow. Shame steals around me as my heart rate slows to normal. Should I say something? I don’t have the first clue as to what.
“So, um, that was good.” She speaks first. The way she pronounces the word confirms my suspicions. It’s as if she is trying it on, hoping it fits.
“Yeah,” I find myself responding in turn. “Good.”
“Happy Almost New Year.” She rolls and gives me a soft kiss on the shoulder before crawling into her sleeping bag.
“Aye, you, too.” I glance over, but she’s already turned and her back tells no tales.
Every muscle in my body screams in protest. Why didn’t she just tell me what she was after? I’d have done anything to please her. Instead, she played me, and there are no winners in this sort of game.
I peel off the condom and set to work cleaning myself. Every noise is magnified, highlighting what I’ve done, that I’ve been the chump who came while the girl faked it. This doesn’t make me unusual. All across the world right this second are thousands of assholes thinking they’re getting their girl off when she’d rather be watching the telly or eating an ice cream.
I collapse on my mat, but for once, my tent is the last place I want to be. I reach to touch her back and freeze. My hand, the one that did the deed I’ve spent the last six months hating myself for, continues to be useless. It remembers every inch of Auden’s hips, the exact geography of her small frame, but it can’t do a damn thing to improve the situation.
I close my eyes and cross my arms tight to my chest, remembering the last woman to ever share my tent. Sadie, a base-camp emergency doctor who specializes in high-altitude medicine, respected the fact that the mountains are my true love, which is part of the reason we lasted three years. We met on my twenty-first at an expat dive bar in Kathmandu. I’d gone out to a pub with Cameron after a successful Himalayan expedition. She leaned in from an adjacent barstool, sexy as hell, and whispered in my ear, “Want me to make you a man, darling?”
And she tried. But beyond her easy smile and her unblinking acceptance of my addiction, she was older, past thirty. Our age gap never bothered me none. She was beautiful, confident, with a posh London accent that drove me a little wild, but eventually her mind traveled to the next inevitable steps: marriage, a child.
At twenty-four, I wasn’t ready. That’s the easy answer, the one that looks good on paper. It’s also not the whole truth. The thing of it is, I could always forget her. When Sadie was around, we were good. The sex was adequate, our interests similar. But whenever we were apart, I couldn’t recall the finer details of her face, the notes of her laugh, the way she tasted or gasped in my arms.
Shouldn’t that be part of true love? Remembering such specifics? Taking the time to cherish the little things? I hadn’t even thought of it until she’d proposed. Yes, she’d been the one to ask for my hand, not that I minded. I’ve always preferred strong women, ones who make their wants plain. Better than the alternative, the endless guessing games I watched other blokes put up with.
We’d been at Everest Base Camp having breakfast in the expedition canteen. She was working there for the season, and with bad weather keeping people off the mountain, she didn’t have much to do, except me, and treating the odd case of altitude sickness.
“Darling, we should get married,” she’d said nonchalantly, like she was giving the time.
At first I’d laughed, and she’d joined in, before leaning back in her chair, crossing her legs, still smiling.
“I am serious,” she’d said, and I’d choked on a currant. “Rhys, I’m thirty-four. That thing they say about biological clocks? It happens. Mine’s ticking away.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I opted for the truth. A few other mountaineers entered, sitting nearby.
She’d leaned in, steepling her fingers. “Yes does seem like the best answer.”
“But I… It’s…” I’d stood, abandoned my bowl on the table, and walked outside. Fresh air and open skies were a sudden necessity.
Everest hid behind a shroud of thick gray cloud, the summit socked in since my arrival. No one moved on the mountain on account of the unexpected spring storm.
She walked behind me, and I spoke first. “Think I’ll meet up with Cameron after all.”
There’d been a long pause as the reality of my unspoken decision sank in. Was I being a dick? Absolutely. But I was also scared as shit, my gut clenching with anxiety.
“But, darling, you’d decided against that climb, said you were going to…” She didn’t finish her sentence. The idea had been for me to stay the month with her. And here I was breaking the plan before the first week even finished.
“Sadie—” I turned around.
“No.” She held up a hand. “Please. Don’t say another word.”
“I…”
“I know.” Her small smile belied the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “You’re not ready.”
We’d left it at that. She came to me during the night, and I let her take what she needed. It wasn’t so much a joining as a severing. As she fell apart in my arms, I knew this was my last chance to put us back together, but I didn’t. Instead we rolled apart and spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling in silence. The next day our good-bye was short, businesslike, a peck on the cheek and a promise to stay in touch. I’d started the hike out back to civilization and a week later caught a flight to Cameron in Pakistan, where he was getting ready to lead an expedition.
If I’d stayed with Sadie, tried to make it work, nothing that happened next would have ever occurred. I don’t regret our breakup but would gladly endure any sort of penance to turn back time and have missed that damn plane. I thought letting her down was bad, but that was only the start of my fall.
Turns out anytime I care about anyone, all I do is let them down.
I glance to Auden’s back and lock my jaw. Looks like my new year is starting out much the same as the old.
14
AUDEN
Cameron!”
I bolt upright, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on high alert, heart choking my throat. The light outside the tent is dim and the time is definitely early evening. We must have passed out post-sex. Rhys jerks inside his sleeping bag, gripped in the throes of another nightmare, one that sounds worse than before.
“Hey?” My hand hovers over his shoulder, unsure if I should touch him. Stupid to be tentative given everything we’ve just done, but them’s the apples. “Wake up. Please. Wake up, Rhys.”
“Shit,” he grinds out. The tendons on his neck tighten, stand in sharp relief. “Fuck it. Answer me. Cameron!”
“Shhhh.” I wipe sweat-soaked hair off his forehead. “Shhhhh. Hey, it’s OK. It’s all going to be OK.” I keep a running monologue of meaningless words. Everything is nowhere near fine. He’s sweating. The sharp tang of fear fills the tent, makes my own skin prickle in alarm.
I’m the last person who deserves to witness something so private about him. Guilt tightens my throat, the same sensation that gripped me when he slid into me. Turns out I’m not big on taking advantage. I wanted him, but not at the cost of my own moral code. I messed up by not sharing the truth of myself. Turns out sex without honesty is a lady boner killer. The only relief is learning that deep down inside I’m not Harper; I’m unable to use people like the consequences don’t matter.
He yells, a frustrated cry tinged with pure anguish. I push my own misgivings away, focused on getting him back from wherever he’s trapped.
“Wake up.” I shake harder. “Rhys, I said wake up right now. Come on. Wake up, Rhys.”
His eyes open, wide and unseeing, and he flies to sitting, his forehead crashing into my nose.
“Ouch. Holy shit.” I fall back, cradling my face as white stars cascade across my vision. My stomach gives a sick roll. Dampness spreads across my upper lip. Crap, I’m bleeding. “Is my nose broken? Did I break it?” I flinch fr
om his outstretched hand. “Never mind. Don’t touch. It hurts too much.” Warm wetness splatters my chest. Excellent. I’m shirtless, with blood dripping onto my bare breasts. Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn’t the sexiest post-coital look.
I pinch my nose and rock my head back. Intense copper flavor fills my mouth, and it’s gross to swallow. “Can you get something to clean me, please?” I mutter stiffly, determined to hang on to any loose thread of dignity.
He presses rough wool into my hand, and I glance down. “A sock?”
“I don’t have a tissue at the ready.” His cheeks flame. “Don’t worry. It’s clean.”
“Fine.” I dab at my chest. Not sure it’s helping. If anything, I’m just spreading gore across my body.
“Why were you up in my face?” His dull monotone is a sharp contrast to the anguish that strained his voice moments ago.
“You were having a nightmare, screaming. I wanted to snap you out of it.”
“Sorry.” He kneels, giving me his back, rummaging through an orange waterproof gear bag. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It was an accident. You freaked me out though.”
There’s the sound of a lid unscrewing followed by a quiet splash. “Here. I remembered I have a bandanna. There’s some cool water on it. That will wipe the blood easier.”
The initial shock of pain fades and I am able to hold still while he pats around my nostrils. “Do you think it’s broken?”
“No, but I got you good. Might have bruising.”
“Wow, get busy with Rhys MacAskill at your own peril.” I mean it as a joke, to smooth over the awkwardness in the situation, but he doesn’t laugh. If anything, he folds into himself, drawing up the hatches and shutting me out.
“What were you dreaming about?” The pain from my nose spreads through my forehead, settling into a tension headache. If he unloads his whole story right now, while I’m sore between my legs, I don’t know what I’ll do, but he’s hurting. And even though I barely know him, I want to ease a little of that suffering.
“Nothing.” There’s finality to the word. The turn of a key. The door locks. I’m on the other side of the moat with no way to cross.
“Please remember, I am here for you.” God, even saying such a phrase out loud makes me cringe. So generic and cheesy. I want to reach out, to touch him, but can’t bring myself to, not when he’s built the Great Wall and I have the world’s most dubious motives. He was honest about wanting to use me, while I couldn’t find the way to be truthful in return. “How’s your head?” I ask. “My nose is kind of big.”
“Thick as ever.” His voice softens a fraction. “I truly am sorry if I worried you.”
“It’s fine.” It’s not.
He’s quiet except for a ragged exhalation. “I want to go back to sleep.”
“OK.” It isn’t, but we’re trapped in this weird politeness spiral. He’s been inside me, and I still have no idea what’s going on inside him or what I can do to repair the situation.
I burrow back into my own sleeping bag. It’s not dark, and I’m positive I’m not going to sleep another wink. From the sounds of Rhys’s breath and subtle movements, he’s wide-awake, too, but the gulf between us is impassable.
Heck of a way to start a new year.
Eventually though, the exhaustion from the day’s stress causes me to drift off again. When I awake, it’s well and truly twilight, and Rhys is gone. I crawl outside and sit on the rock where he cooked breakfast, fed me porridge from a spoon, and afterward licked it clean. Then I realized who he was and what he represented. A way to advance my career. And what did I do? The stupidest thing possible.
Sex.
I had sex.
I had sex with Rhys the scruffy Scottish God. I had sex with Rhys MacAskill the Infamous Rope Cutter Whose Story I Covet. Oh dear God. I bury my face in my hands. The whole situation is ridiculously awful.
What’s worse is that I even faked it, as per usual. That’s what I do because I can’t manage to get off when a guy’s inside me. I know what works when I’m alone, but with another person? Yeah, that’s way more complicated than a showerhead.
A sickening realization takes hold, a sensation like riding backward on a train. I have this feeling Rhys knows I didn’t really come. But how? Brett never suspected anything. All I ever had to do was make a few breathless moans, arch my back, and it’s like I was a normal girl, experiencing sexual magic. It’s not that the motions don’t feel good. It’s always nice, in the same way that eating carob is pleasant, or gluten-free baked goods. But it sure as hell ain’t the real thing. There were a few moments when it seemed like Rhys could give me chocolaty goodness, but then my guilt took over, barring the path to the great and mysterious O.
I’m in over my head here. Rhys will go on to bigger and better things. Climb impossible mountains. Marry a former Victoria’s Secret model. Me? I’ll be fine with my life partner, the showerhead. Maybe when I’m thirty I’ll have a commitment ceremony, make things official, not to mention squeaky clean:
Do you take this nozzle to be your committed and devoted partner, for better or worse, even if the hot water runs out?
I do.
You may five-speed-massage the bride.
The sound of whistling carries through the trees. That’s not Rhys. Someone is coming. My ears prick as I rise on alert like Bambi’s mother right before she says, “Man has come into the forest.” A stranger entering the valley shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the stream has receded enough for me to cross and the trail runs both ways.
The whistle grows louder. The tune is “Eye of the Tiger.”
“Oh no,” I whisper, dread knotting my belly.
“Auden? Ha! Incredible. It is you! I wondered what became of my favorite American!” Diedrick the annoying Dutchman emerges into the clearing, hands on his hips, still dressed in those same tiny shorts, beaming.
“Oh, come on. You’ve got to be kidding,” I mutter. Of all the backcountry campgrounds, this guy walks into mine?
“Sorry!” Diedrick cups behind his ear. “What did you just say?”
I use my hands as a megaphone. “I thought you would have almost finished the trail by now.” The W trail we’d been hiking on takes around four days to complete. He should be almost done, not here, bringing his indecent khaki shorts into my strange little Eden.
“There was all that rain! Such a storm, hey? And wait…” He scrambles up toward me like a khaki-loving mountain goat. “At the refugio, I heard a most interesting rumor.”
“Oh.”
He looks around at the forest, gloomy in the fading light. “Who else is here?”
For some reason, the avid expression in his gaze is off-putting. “Why?”
He leans in with a stage whisper. “I’m looking for Rhys MacAskill, the guy who cut the rope. You know that story? Of course you do, everyone does. Have you seen him?”
I give an involuntary shiver. “He a friend of yours?”
“No, but I would like to make his acquaintance very much.” He points to the camera equipment slung around his neck. “See if he’ll share his story. Imagine selling that puppy freelance?” He mimes pumping a cash register. “Ca-ching, ca-ching!”
A protective instinct wells inside me. Rhys stands six foot two, and his muscles have muscles. He’s in no way weak, but an intense fragility surrounds him. I might not be able to protect him from the world, but I can keep a single mercenary Dutch dude at the gate. “Sorry. You’re wasting your time. He won’t talk to you.”
Diedrick shrugs, nonplussed. “Oh, I do not think that’s for you to decide.”
I bristle, annoyance blazing through my chest, when an idea occurs to me. “Did I forget to mention that I work for Outsider magazine when we were hiking? Sorry. I’ve already secured exclusive dibs on the Rhys MacAskill story and his attempt on La Aguja. You’re too late.” I wave my hand toward the trail behind him. “Scoot now. Nothing else to see here.”
“But I—”
�
��I said, you’re too late. This is my story now.” I summon my best Harper face, the one that’s the perfect blend of arrogant and contemptuous. My heart beats faster. Any second Rhys could appear. No amount of guilt can change the fact that I did the exact same thing Diedrick is now doing—considered my own benefit to writing the story over the man living it.
“Go. For real, beat it,” I repeat in a cold tone, clenching and unclenching my fists. “You’re too late.”
Diedrick waffles before ultimately backing down, retreating a few steps, perhaps remembering my scro-tack threat from the other day. I’m pretty sure he calls me a bad name under his breath, but I don’t stick around to listen. My mind is made up at last and relief quickens my pace.
No way can I stomach doing an exposé on Rhys. I’m not Harper, happy to step on people to raise myself. His story would make my career, no doubt about it, but if that is the way to catapult forward, I’d rather inch along. At least he’ll never know what I considered, what I was willing to stoop to. There’s no point in telling him.
I almost did a bad thing that would have rendered me a less than decent human, but in the end I stepped back from the point of no return and stayed true to myself and my own values.
No harm, no foul.
15
RHYS
Undergrowth closes in, prickly heath tugging at my legs. White flowers streaked with purple appear and the tiny blue-black Calafate berries. I pluck a few, place them between my lips, and chew. Sweetness spreads through my mouth even though my stomach is as contorted and twisted as the surrounding beech trees. At the stream, there’s a downed tree over a small waterfall. I cross it easily, striding until the earth falls away. The cliff edge provides a viewpoint to Glacier Frances below. Across the craggy ice field, the eastern wall of Cerro Paine Grande rises.
To the naked eye you can’t see a glacier move, but it is, grinding away at the granite, relentless and inexorable as memory.
“Rhys! Rhys!” Auden calls for me through the forest.