Chapter 16
16
‘I can’t do this. Fuck.’ She followed up that sentence with a few more curses that struck Andreas as rather unimaginative. She stood stiffly on an iron bracket bolted into a rock face, the Val di Ledro far below, the only way forward was to traverse the exposed vertical.
He didn’t contradict her, even though he knew what she said wasn’t true. She’d work that out herself soon enough. He wished he could read her as well at sea level as he could on the via ferrata. But that was his life. Everything made more sense up high – everything was just more up high.
His breath was more precious, his body stronger, his thoughts clearer. Sophie was more beautiful. Although, she’d been beautiful by the lake, too. It was his response that was harder to ignore up here. For an easy via ferrata, his heart had certainly been pounding a lot today.
The low technical skills required for this route were usually advantageous because the views were incredible. There were regular spots with secure footing to stop to breathe in the clear air and take photos of the lake. That wasn’t the view that drew his eyes that day.
He couldn’t remember wanting to memorise every detail of her eight years ago. If anything, he’d dragged her out into all sorts of inhospitable places so he didn’t get caught up in his feelings. Perhaps he should have chosen a more difficult via ferrata, since all he’d seen that day was her: Sophie’s wry smile; Sophie’s silver studs; the way her hands looked simultaneously fine and strong in fingerless climbing gloves. She had a strand of hair on her cheek that he would not brush back.
When they’d been together, she’d been so willing to try everything and he’d enjoyed watching her growing confidence. Today, he didn’t care as much about developing her skills. Perhaps that was part of their relationship back then that hadn’t survived. But the fascination was alive and well and distracting him just as much as he’d feared.
‘Did the swearing help?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Maybe you need to swear in Italian like I do.’
‘Cazzo!’ she cried, so suddenly that Andreas jumped.
He stifled a laugh. ‘That helped, right?’
‘Maybe a little,’ she grumbled. ‘There aren’t enough footholds. I can’t see how I can get across.’
‘The extra footholds are in the rock. See?’
‘I’ll slip and hit my head.’
‘You won’t, but that’s what the helmet is for anyway – and the straps.’ He eyed her. ‘One foot at a time, remember?’
She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut. But she didn’t move.
‘Do you trust the equipment?’ he asked.
She nodded wordlessly.
‘Sophie, you won’t fall. I won’t ask if you trust me, because I’m not sure I want the answer, but your equipment is all in order.’ He came closer as he spoke, giving her carabiners one more rattle to check.
She nodded slowly. ‘I used to be so focused on trying to impress you,’ she said suddenly.
Her words pricked him. ‘You don’t have to?—’
‘I know,’ she said again, her voice no longer reedy.
He tried again. ‘Actually, what I meant was… you are impressing me. There’s a side of you…’
‘…I didn’t want you to see back then,’ she finished. ‘Maybe I was pretending more than I realised.’
‘I hope you weren’t pretending everything ,’ he said emphatically, then choked on his own words when she burst out laughing. ‘I meant… I didn’t mean that .’
‘You’ll never know if I was pretending that .’ The playfulness in her expression drew him in. ‘Andreas,’ she said, her voice low, a small smile on her lips, ‘I didn’t intend that as a challenge.’
He lifted his brow. ‘I’m trying not to take it as one.’
‘Are you just distracting me so I forget to be afraid?’ She was so close now. Their hands on the cable were almost touching, her body changing the air around his.
‘I’m successfully distracting myself,’ he said in dismay, his gaze dropping to her mouth and bouncing back up again. ‘But only because I know you can do this.’
‘What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t shown any interest in following you on all those adventures?’ she asked quietly.
Andreas froze with a flash of understanding for how she was feeling. He could cross a ravine with ropes and anchors, scale an ice-covered mountain summit, but answering that question scared him.
‘To be honest,’ he said quickly before panic gripped him, ‘we probably would never have got to know each other. That’s what you thought? You’re right. You’ve got me.’
Her lips thinned. ‘And then I got a little hooked on the adrenaline high and mixed it up with you.’ She nodded slowly, as though the realisation comforted her.
It didn’t comfort Andreas even though it should have. The wash of guilt at hurting her he’d felt when he’d seen her again – guilt he should have shed in the course of eight years – could be assuaged if her feelings for him hadn’t been so deep after all. But he wanted her to insist there had been something more.
‘I’ve told you before I didn’t want to end our relationship.’
A nod. A hint of a smile. ‘Just pause it while you climbed another mountain and we waited to see if you’d come back down alive.’
Which was exactly why he’d never risked another relationship. He’d had no right to send her that message when he got back. It wasn’t fair to leave her figuratively hanging and she’d been right to ignore it, even though he’d blamed her for a few years afterwards.
‘But it’s not your fault if I didn’t realise things were casual,’ she said lightly.
‘They weren’t! I mean… you were important to me.’ More important than he could tell her without starting the whole cycle again.
‘I know, I know. I bet you love Kira, too, in your way. You told me what your limits were and I shouldn’t have tried to cross them – or got angry at you eight years later. I can see now…’ Her throat moved as she gazed at the exposed traverse before her. ‘It’s powerful stuff, adrenaline.’ Her smile gained a little strength.
‘It is,’ he agreed emphatically.
She studied him, her expression this time enigmatic. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly, loosening her body. ‘Let’s do this.’ And she stepped towards him into the small cleft in the rock.
He waited until she reached the first bolt and clipped her carabiners over one at a time. She glanced up with a hint of uncertainty as he shuffled further along to give her space.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he murmured.
‘Except Manaslu,’ she added through gritted teeth.
Before he could work out what was behind that comment, she was moving again, sideways along the rock, her feet scrabbling for the steel brackets when the sheer limestone had no natural footholds.
It was a long traverse and they inched across, Andreas always one bolt ahead of her. Her chest rose and fell; he could almost hear her heart racing. He’d loved watching her learn years ago, but his memories were coloured by her admission that she’d forced herself through some difficult moments simply to keep him in her life.
The thought made him weak. He’d lost her devotion, never even mourned it because he hadn’t recognised it. He was mourning it now, but with a curious feeling of detachment. They’d both screwed up eight years ago. But she was here, now, and she wasn’t pretending any more.
Perhaps this new phase of their relationship, even if it wasn’t romantic, was better.
‘Want me to take a picture?’
‘Right now?’ she groaned. ‘I suppose we need to show this part to the bride and groom, even if I look half-dead.’
‘You’re hanging off a mountain, Fini. You look amazing.’
She laughed and he managed to capture the image on his phone. ‘That’s your fantasy, huh? A sweaty woman in a harness? You will definitely love these extreme weddings!’
‘Give you a crown of flowers and I’ll fall at your feet,’ he joked.
‘The flowers looked better on you!’ she shot back, still making slow progress in his direction while he stowed his phone again.
‘You don’t look half-dead,’ he said with a smile. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Wildly alive,’ she answered drily.
She climbed doggedly, up and down and across, gaining confidence with each step. By the time she scrambled down the last gully to the next section of hiking trail without safety cables, she was glowing with energy.
After waiting for her to descend the last few steps and unclip her straps, he should have pushed on, set a fast pace to the summit, which was their goal after all. But she stood close on the narrow path and he paused.
Should he give her a high five? A friendly slap on the back? A hug? Her chest heaved as she stared up at him, almost as though she were wondering the same thing – and coming to the same conclusion.
She moved before he did, slipping a hand around his neck. He only had a moment to accept that this had to happen before she tugged him close and kissed him.
Adrenaline shot through him. His hands slammed into the rock on either side of her for balance. His helmet knocked into hers, but he was too overcome to do anything about it. The heat – the softness. Her lips moving over his, drawing him out and pulling him in. The fire in his skin, the fog in his brain. Her fingers insistent on the back of his neck.
The drag of her mouth over his, her shudder of response when he pushed back, when he inclined his head and opened his lips, sparking a heavy craving. One hand made it to her head, his thumb chafing her cheek as his fingers curled under her ear.
God, he’d forgotten how he could lose himself in kissing her – or he’d blocked it out. She’d always been so sweet and eager and he’d wallowed in the simplicity of it.
She straightened, lifting her head as she deepened the kiss further with a tease of her tongue. A rasping, pent-up groan rose from his chest and he let her drag him closer, her hand curling in his harness.
He was light-headed, his blood rushing, his mind full of Sophie and his lungs protesting the lack of air. When her lips broke away from his, he should have been relieved. His body felt lit up like the June bonfires back home. But he wanted her.
Her face was close enough that he could see the imperfections in her skin; he noticed he’d smudged dirt on her cheek.
‘Andreas,’ she said, her voice low. Whether it was a warning or an invitation, he couldn’t tell. ‘Do you think that was a bad idea?’
‘I’ve been thinking about kissing you all day.’
It wasn’t an answer, but she took it as one, lifting her hands to his face and starting the process all over again.
Her fingertips light on his cheeks made him lose orientation. All he knew was that he needed to stay right here where she was. The second kiss was slower, without the bite of adrenaline but with an aching tenderness that stripped him of some necessary safety equipment and sent him freefalling.
He wanted to wrap his arms around her, but the path where they were standing was too narrow, so he propped himself up on the rock again and leaned close, letting her hands glide over him.
‘Achtung Stein! Attenzione!’
Hearing the shout from above, Andreas reacted in a heartbeat, tugging Sophie away from the bottom of the via ferrata as a shower of rocks clattered down. They weren’t sizeable or dangerous, but the climber above had done the responsible thing and shouted the usual warnings in German and Italian.
When the danger had passed, he found Sophie watching, trying to stifle a smile. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing they dislodged some rocks,’ she whispered, ‘otherwise they might have got a surprise when they reached the bottom.’
He could hear the other climbers scuffling down quickly. ‘They can still go to hell for interrupting,’ he grumbled in response. He settled his helmet against hers and breathed out deeply. ‘I don’t care who sees us.’
‘We have a whole apartment back in Marniga, Andreas,’ she said with a smile. ‘We don’t need to make out on the via ferrata.’
His gaze snapped to hers, amused, hopeful, slightly wary. He pressed one last, heavy kiss to her mouth. ‘Are you serious? You want to do this again back at the apartment? What about?—?’
‘I’m not going to ask you to marry me afterward,’ she said drily.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he protested. ‘But what happens when we leave here?’
‘I’m not the fangirl I was back then. I understand you don’t want commitment and for a week in Italy, I can forget that I do. For one week.’
Andreas tried to ignore the way his stomach dropped at her words, the way memories from the day everything had gone wrong shivered through him again.
The first climber from the other group took the last few footholds down, unclipping her carabiners. Andreas pulled Sophie to the side of the path, his arm around her waist – where it belonged , some forlorn part of him added. Three climbers squeezed past with casual greetings in two languages, which he acknowledged absently in German.
‘Are you absolutely sure?’ he asked softly.
Her brow quirked. ‘Are you?’
‘How quickly can we get back to the apartment?’