Chapter 13
13
Do you remember when we went swimming on the last day of the Selvaggio Blu?
Sophie kept her mouth shut and stared up at the sky as she reclined on the pebbles, the cool water lapping at her waist. Since she hadn’t exchanged any harsh words with Andreas for several hours, it was far too dangerous to start reminiscing about the trip to Sardinia where they’d got to know each other, even though the water and the rocks and the shirtless man with golden skin took her right back.
The lake was several degrees cooler – a blessed relief for her sore legs – and the man several years older. But metaphors about fine wine meandered through her thoughts as she sneaked a peek at him.
Rory had been on that trip too… That thought poured cold water over her reminiscences. She didn’t remember struggling to peel her eyes off Rory, finding every little thing he did attractive. But, damn, she’d been on fire for Andreas by the third day. He’d licked his thumb once after eating the fish they’d cooked on the camp stove and she’d felt the action in her stomach. One word from him had burrowed deeper than all of the friendly conversations she’d had with Rory on the trail.
Her fascination hadn’t been a good basis for a relationship. She’d dived in too deep and learned that lesson the hard way, but that didn’t stop the renewed tug now, when she was supposed to know better. She was still fascinated by the twitch of wistfulness on his face as he strode through the water in her direction. His face. She was fascinated by his face, even as droplets streamed down his body and the muscles in his torso bunched and released, sunlight caressing the dips and swells of his chest. Okay, she was fascinated by a little more than just his face.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked, swiping his wet hair off his forehead.
She smiled and nodded as he sat down beside her, resting his arms on his knees.
‘I think we should do Cima Rocca next – the via ferrata,’ he said decisively.
Her stomach clenched. There had been a time when the thought of a via ferrata hadn’t given her a spike of fear, but that time had been short and was firmly in the past. ‘Shouldn’t I work up to that?’
‘It’s a very basic route, not much more difficult than what we did today. You’ll do fine.’
‘I’m not twenty-six any more, you know,’ she said, aiming for peevish, but not quite managing it.
‘You’re pretty fit. You had no problems on two moderately technical hikes, despite the lack of practice. I wouldn’t worry about it.’
She sighed deeply. ‘You always did push me out of my comfort zone.’
‘Do you mean that as a bad thing?’ His tone was even, as though he’d accept her opinion if she were criticising his methods.
‘Not necessarily,’ she acknowledged. ‘I did have problems today. I felt as though my legs were on fire during the last part of the first ascent. I got wobbly climbing down from Monte Castello di Gaino and the thought of a via ferrata makes my stomach churn.’
He shook his head, dismissing her concerns. ‘You weren’t close to your limit. I was keeping an eye on you.’
‘How do you know what my limit is? I don’t even know any more.’
Turning to her in an irritatingly matter-of-fact manner, he began, ‘Sophie, it’s been a while, but you still approach a challenging hike the same way you used to. I’m a mountain guide qualified in two different countries. You were fine. And the only reason the thought of a via ferrata makes you nervous is that you’ve forgotten what you’re capable of.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to be challenged any more!’ she blurted out, disliking the cold, sinking feeling that accompanied her admission. Had that been Rory’s appeal?
But there was no disappointment in the way he studied her. If anything, there was just a touch of sympathy. ‘Maybe you’re just out of practice at that, too,’ he said.
‘I’m not Kira,’ she insisted. ‘And I’m not the same person I was eight years ago.’
‘No one is the same person they were eight years ago.’ The only evidence that he was smiling were the little brackets at the corners of his lips.
‘You must have been bored today,’ she insisted, raising her chin.
He regarded her intently, the sheen in his eyes turning to copper as the sun dipped low and reflected off the water. ‘I hope I didn’t give you that impression. I couldn’t take you up Manaslu, Fini, but… it was good today.’
Fini… The old nickname gave her goosebumps.
‘What was it, 1279m of altitude? How high is Manaslu?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘It’s an eight-thousander,’ he said, biting his lip as though he was trying not to smile. ‘But if I can’t be up there, I may as well be here.’ With you . Surely he couldn’t have meant that. ‘What did you do on holiday with Rory then? He seemed a hardcore outdoor type on that trip.’
‘Possibly we were both pretending,’ she said grimly.
‘Pretending? You weren’t pretending.’
‘I was trying to impress you! It was silly, I know.’
His brows lifted as he processed what she was saying. ‘You didn’t enjoy the cliffs in Dorset?’
‘God, it was always so windy!’ Sophie said. ‘You had to patch my wounds every time. That rock was sharp!’
‘I have good memories of that,’ he said with a rueful smile.
‘Me too,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘I played a damsel in distress a little too eagerly.’
‘The Dolomites? You didn’t enjoy that?’ His tone was pained.
Sophie stared out over the gently lapping water. There was a light breeze, just enough for the windsurfers gliding smoothly in the distance. ‘I did,’ she confessed. ‘And I was glad I’d had the climbing boot camp beforehand, because those routes were incredible. But… I had thought maybe I was finally invited to meet the family.’
She was embarrassed to admit the truth, but it was a relief as well, in the same way it was a relief to look at him and see a flawed man and not some kind of god. He grimaced and followed her gaze to the other side of the lake: lush hills, crooked peaks and sun-baked villages below.
‘That was my issue, not yours.’
‘What’s wrong with your family then? The little things you mentioned sounded pretty normal.’
‘My family is completely normal. Parents married for forty years, they live in harmony with each other and the world. They’re so normal, they don’t understand why I climb mountains.’ His smile was tight. ‘And they would have marched you to the church in my hometown and emotionally blackmailed me until I married you.’
‘Ah, so I had a narrow escape.’
‘Exactly!’ he said with emphasis, not looking at her. ‘How’s your sister? I hope she didn’t say, “I told you so,” when we broke up.’
‘She’s good. She took up trail running and now has a super-fit husband and two super-fit kids and lives in Scotland.’ She glanced at him. ‘Of course she said, “I told you so.” It’s her responsibility as the older sibling.’
‘She never liked me,’ he commented mildly, as though Tash had been right to be sceptical of their relationship.
‘You know she dragged me on that trip to Sardinia? I’d never done anything like that before and didn’t particularly want to. “Kicking and screaming,” was how she put it.’
To Sophie’s surprise, Andreas smiled broadly. ‘I know.’
‘You know?’
His hand hovered over her calf, as though he might give her leg a squeeze, but he quickly reconsidered. ‘Of course I know. You screamed, “Tasha, this is your fucking fault,” all the way down the zipline on the second day.’
She stilled, stunned that he remembered that.
‘And the boats… You thought the rafting would kill you – at least it sounded that way. I know just how quickly you learned to deal with your fear. I had thought you’d learned to love outdoor sports, but…’ He gave a shrug and picked up a stone, brushing his fingers over it before flinging it into the water. It skipped four times because skipping stones was exactly the sort of thing that Andreas was good at: distractions from difficult conversations.
She was surprised they’d lasted so long in this one.
‘But what?’
He glanced at her with half a smile that would have been cheeky on anyone else. ‘Na,’ he said with a shrug, a German word he’d once explained as something between ‘so’ and ‘well’. ‘Maybe you did learn to love it and you’ve just forgotten. Maybe you wanted to forget because of me.’
Her brows flew skyward. ‘Is there no limit to your conceit?’
‘I saw you today,’ he insisted with an expansive hand gesture to assert his innocence. ‘You were looking at Monte Pizzocolo with that glint in your eye.’
‘Maybe because the name almost has “pizza” in it and I was starving! But the part I took issue with the most was the suggestion that I gave up something I enjoyed simply because you left me.’
‘I didn’t?—’
‘Break, break-up – whatever. I resent the suggestion. I might have been a moron back then where you were concerned, but I never missed it – climbing, the mountains.’ I just missed you . And maybe missing him had got rolled up with the mountains and the squeezing feeling in her chest whenever she thought about ropes and climbs and dizzying drops.
A rock formation on the opposite shore caught her eye and she inclined her head to study the ridges and forested gullies, the prominent spurs and jagged mountain profiles.
‘Is that where we were today?’
He leaned in to follow her gaze, the fresh scent of the water and sunshine on his skin. ‘Mmhmm. There’s Cima Comer directly across from us, the highest point.’ He gestured further to the left. ‘And there’s Monte Castello di Gaino, and Monte Pizzocolo.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘We didn’t get your Gipfelstempel!’
‘My what?’
‘At each summit, there’s a box with a stamp in it for you to collect in your Wanderbuch – your hiking book. We missed two today.’ His teasing smile grew wider.
‘I don’t have a hiking book.’
‘Na, maybe you should get one.’
* * *
When Andreas offered to collect pizza for dinner, Sophie assumed it was because he didn’t want a repeat the awkwardness of their ‘date’ from the evening before. They were spending a lot of time together and she wouldn’t be surprised if he was uneasy – she was uneasy.
But when he arrived back with two flat boxes and then immediately shed most of his clothes and his shoes, peeling off his socks and slipping into a pair of Birkenstocks, she wondered if his real reason had been nothing to do with her.
The late-May evening was cool and Sophie had retrieved her favourite oversized cardigan, but Andreas sat in a vest top and cargo shorts, eating salami pizza straight out of the box with a knife and fork.
After dinner, Sophie set up her laptop at the kitchen table and loaded the photos from the day. She knew from bitter experience that it was easier to sift through the shots regularly than deal with thousands when she got home.
The lighting at the top of Monte Castello di Gaino was questionable. The weather had been undeniably weird: menacing in the morning and then a surprise heatwave in the afternoon. The dark clouds billowing behind Andreas in the first shots were mirrored in his facial expression.
‘What?’ he asked, looking up from his book when she didn’t manage to stifle a chuckle.
‘I’m sorry I made you be the groom,’ she said with another snort of laughter. ‘You look so pissed off.’
Setting his book down, he came around the table and peered at his image on the screen.
Then he said the last thing she expected. ‘It’s an amazing spot for a wedding.’ He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he propped himself up on the table with the other. Leaning across her, he tapped at the arrow button with one finger, scrolling through the many photos of him scowling, until he reached the first one of the two of them in front of the cross and his hand stilled, hovering over the screen.
Sophie froze as well. They looked wooden and miserable, Sophie cringing and Andreas recoiling. With a sigh, she flicked to the next picture and her brow furrowed. Andreas appeared to be staring at her mouth. In the next one, they were standing closer, and the deep twist in Sophie’s stomach had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with longing.
The picture cut them off at a strange spot just below their entwined hands and the whole image was slightly on an angle, but it was so clearly a wedding photo that she couldn’t help herself. She zoomed in until their faces were in sharper detail – Andreas’s eyes glinting, his mouth slanted and tight, but not with disgust this time. It was the expression he’d had on his face in Weymouth when they’d talked about everything that had gone wrong in their relationship.
Sophie clicked ahead quickly, wanting to give each picture only a cursory look so she knew where to file it – under ‘never again’, she decided – but each one contained some kind of truth she didn’t want to see but nevertheless found enthralling.
In the next shot, Sophie was laughing, Andreas watching her wryly. Then they were even closer.
‘God, it really looks like you were about to grab me and kiss me!’ she attempted to joke, but her voice squeaked. He made a choking sound next to her. When she glanced at him, his head was bowed and he was leaning heavily on the table. Her gaze returned to the picture and she felt the prickle again, the merging of past and present. ‘I don’t know if these photos are marvellous or… kind of incriminating.’
Sophie snapped her mouth shut. How exactly would the photos be incriminating? There was nothing between her and Andreas and hadn’t been for eight years.
‘I mean… I don’t know what I mean. You don’t really?—’
Andreas lifted his head, his expression vivid with frustration. ‘I don’t really what? Want to kiss you?’
Her mouth dropped open and her ribs felt as though they were pressing on her lungs. His gaze fell to her mouth and the hiss of air out of his lips made her brain check out for the evening.
‘Where have you been all day?’ he muttered, his voice rasping.
‘Erm, with you?’
He eyed her with a quick grin that turned into a chuckle. ‘Yeah, I noticed that.’ He stretched his neck as though something pained him. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘Already?’ Clearing her throat, she quickly changed tack. ‘I mean, oh, right, yeah. Buonanotte.’ Of course he didn’t want to stay up to chat.
But instead of disappearing through his bedroom door, he paused with one hand on the frame, his posture tight. Then he turned abruptly with an audible grumble and stalked back to where she was sitting, hauling her out of her chair with insistent fingers on her upper arm.
‘Do you truly believe I don’t want to kiss you? Do I have to prove it?’
Her head swimming, the only response she could manage was a nod, but that was enough for him.
His hands lifting to either side of her face, he kissed her – really kissed her – hard on the mouth, then pulled away immediately. As Sophie gasped for breath, reeling and off-balance, he turned and stalked off just as quickly as he’d come.
‘What was that?’ she blurted out after him.
‘A kiss!’ he snapped, throwing an arm up for emphasis. But he paused again, his shoulders rising and falling and a moment later, he was incoming again.
Slinging an arm around her waist, he pulled her in close. ‘No, that was a poor excuse for a kiss,’ he said. Then his eyelids fluttered closed and he stooped to bring his mouth back to hers. He paused for a breath, as though waiting for her to pull away, and when she didn’t, he kissed her again.