Chapter 33
33
One minute, Sophie was leaning against the rough stone, numb and limp, her reserves of hope and goodwill completely dry, and the next, she was scooped upright and conveyed around a dark corner by the large form of Andreas, his arm curled around her waist.
‘What are you?—?’
‘Shh, we’re just going somewhere we can talk.’
‘I don’t need to talk! I need to get back to my disaster of a wedding!’
‘I think you’ll find it’s not your wedding,’ he said in a pointed tone that briefly robbed her of speech.
‘And I don’t need to get lost in a tunnel with you!’ she hissed when she’d recovered.
‘We’re not going to get lost.’
‘Because your sense of direction is superhuman and you have a map of these tunnels tattooed on your arsch?’
He stopped, the headlamp turning as if in slow motion until it flashed in her face again.
‘Ow!’ She slapped a hand over her eyes.
‘No, because we’ve only gone around one corner. The others are safe with Kira for a minute.’
Her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath.
‘Besides, you know I don’t have any tattoos – on my arse or anywhere else.’
She crossed her arms. ‘Did you drag me down here to talk about your arse?’ She caught a twitch of a smile on his lips, but she couldn’t see much else. ‘Can you take that thing off? It’s glaring.’
He tugged the headlamp down to hang around his neck, leaving his face with a pasty glow, all harsh lines of shadow. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘What’s not the matter?’ she threw her hands into the air. ‘This is nobody’s idea of a dream wedding!’
‘Lily and Roman don’t want a dream wedding. They want their wedding.’
She eyed him. That platitude was nowhere near enough to combat the truth of how badly she’d screwed up. ‘That’s rich, coming from you.’
‘What about everything you told me back in June – in February? Pushing the limits of the human heart?’
Heat flooded her cheeks and she cringed at her own words. ‘What a stupid thing to say,’ she muttered. ‘It’s all for show. People get married for a whole host of reasons, but I don’t think anyone does it to prove what their heart is capable of.’ She snorted. ‘It’s just an excuse for a huge party and I haven’t even managed that this time. I was just looking for meaning where there is none.’
She swiped a hand across her nose, distressed to find moisture on her cheeks that was too warm to be rain.
‘A divorced wedding planner was ironic enough, but a wedding planner who has no clue about lo—’ She cut herself off with a hiccough that emerged around the lump in her throat.
She wished she’d kept it together until tomorrow, after he was safely gone.
He was standing too close in the confined space, the air around her full of his energy. He was breathing heavily – too heavily to be from exertion – and she noticed his jaw working fiercely.
‘Where has this come from? You were so excited about this wedding. The florist and cake and the nice dress. And them. The wedding party. You’re magic with your clients because you mean it.’
Despite her misery, the sudden chill that made her teeth chatter and the complete failure of the day, having Andreas call her ‘magic’ lit a warm light inside her that tried desperately to catch.
‘You don’t believe in weddings, Andreas,’ she said flatly.
It was so quiet in the dank tunnel that she heard him swallow. ‘I believe in this one,’ he finally said. ‘And I believe in you.’
There was an unfamiliar quality to his voice. His face was in shadow, but there was something brewing in him that made her wary – and kept her gaze riveted to his features.
‘You believe I can climb a via ferrata. But I’m talking about life – I’m talking about commitment and what do you know about that?’
‘Nothing.’ This time, his voice shook and he propped a hand on the wall behind her, his eyes bright. ‘But I’m trying to learn – for you.’
Her knees wobbled as she thought for a moment he meant he wanted to learn to commit – to her. But she must have misunderstood. Shaking her head to clear it, she said, ‘Is that what you were doing last night when you asked about Rory? I don’t think that was a good reflection on me – or marriage.’
‘No, that’s not what I mean – and that’s not why I was asking last night.’ He fell silent again, glancing upwards as though the tunnel ceiling could help him find the right words. ‘I think our relationship – relationships, whatever – were a good reflection on you.’
‘What?’
‘I was trying to work out if… you really loved me.’ He said it with a huff of disbelief.
Her throat closed and she blinked frantically to hold back another tear. ‘What am I supposed to say to that? I said it once when it was more a feeling than a conviction and you ran as fast as you could in the opposite direction! You didn’t want to hear it – and you’ve told me a thousand times that you couldn’t return it. We said we weren’t making the same mistakes again so I don’t …’ She couldn’t finish the lie.
Andreas straightened, gazing at her. ‘Sophie, I meant I don’t want to make the same mistake again.’
‘What… mistake are you talking about?’
He took a deep breath and paused to press a kiss to her forehead that made her knees even wobblier. ‘I missed you, really missed you , like my keys when I put them down somewhere, except more permanent. No, not like my keys. ?hm…’ He blew out a calming breath. ‘I wasn’t going to attempt this until after the wedding,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s supposed to be about Lily and Roman today.’
‘Don’t worry about it!’ came a voice from where the wedding party was waiting – apparently listening to every word.
Andreas turned with an arch look.
‘You can do it, Andreas!’ called another, which sounded like Lily.
‘You were saying something about losing your keys,’ she prompted him doubtfully.
‘It’s not about my keys! I need to tell you… what happened after I left for Pakistan eight years ago.’
That wasn’t what she expected. ‘When Miro died?’
He shook his head. ‘I told you that part already.’
She nodded tightly.
‘This was before that – and after.’ He licked his lips. ‘I was in love, once.’
Sophie swayed on her feet, blinking wildly as she processed the hurt of his confession. He’d been in love before? What was he trying to say?
‘I mean, I realised it was love. It was the only time in my life. The only time I wondered if maybe getting married might be a good idea.’ He glanced at her sheepishly for a moment. ‘I tried to forget again, but I did admit it – to myself at least, and to Miro – at one stage.’
That was another blow that stole Sophie’s breath, but when Andreas glanced at her, his expression twisted with wary hope, a suspicion began to blossom in her stomach. Could he mean?—?
‘Andreas, you don’t believe in?—’
‘I know what I said and now I think I know why I said it. But when the woman I loved was gone – or I was gone, I don’t know which any more – I realised what it meant, that I missed her like a part of myself and I hated that I’d left without telling her, without working things out. I was distracted and I needed to settle my head. Miro and I were in a market getting supplies and a salesman offered to take us to buy gemstones. It happens often. Usually, we just say no, but that time, I thought about… her and I went with the man. I bought this.’
He dug into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small zip-lock bag, holding it in his palm in the light of the headlamp. Sophie frowned again, wondering when he would cease to surprise her. But although the bag wasn’t a small, velvet box from a jeweller, the object inside the zip-lock bag was just as valuable.
It was a glinting emerald, round cut. Three-quarters of a carat, she remembered. Goosebumps rushed up her arms as she waited for him to continue.
‘This emerald has been up Gasherbrum I,’ he said quietly. ‘Aconcagua, too. Erm, and the Matterhorn twice. Denali – but not the top. We didn’t make it. A few others as well.’ He trailed off. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to keep it and take it up all those summits. It was supposed to be… I don’t know. A ring?’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘A promise, maybe. But when I came back down – with Miro dead – I was a mess and then I thought she’d wisely moved on… To be honest, I was a bit ashamed I’d bought the emerald, that I thought a relationship could work.’
She knew that feeling. ‘What happened next?’ she prompted him, hoping she knew where he was going with this, that he was telling the story in a way that made the feelings bearable, rather than telling her a story about some other love. ‘Did you see her again?’
His gaze rose to hers, his eyes as serious as she’d ever seen him. ‘When I least expected it,’ he rasped. ‘And I didn’t deal with it well when I realised she still meant something to me. I thought I’d been wrong when I bought this – wrong to think I could be… hers . I thought my choices were made, but it turned out I had another chance – or might have another chance.’
It was only when he swiped a hand over his eyes that she realised they were shining with moisture. She’d guessed he was struggling with his feelings, but she’d had no idea how much.
‘She’s grown more beautiful, more confident, she knows herself better and I love that. She’s also been hurt. She’s a little jaded and something terrible happened to her that I wish I could have supported her through. But…’ He swallowed again, ‘if she does still love me, then I’ll do anything to keep her in my life this time – anything. I’ll cancel Manaslu. I’ll stay down and find a way to…’
Sophie’s breath caught. Her mind struggled to catch up with the expanding heat in her chest. She’d been preparing herself for a painful goodbye, but instead, he was standing before her thrumming with the same longing she felt, and for once, acknowledging it.
His words were a step off a precipice for him, a fall into the unknown, but he was saying them anyway. He was handing himself over to her, however she would have him.
Grasping two handfuls of his shirt to hold him up, she asked, ‘Does that mean,’ she began gently, ‘you still love her? After all this time?’