Chapter 15
DEVLIN
He felt the snow give way beneath him, and suddenly there was no ground. It was like the mountain had swallowed him whole, the blazing sun giving way to absolute darkness. He dropped into the black heart of the ice, reaching out with both arms even though the pain was unbearable. His left hand snagged a rock and he grabbed it, arresting his fall. Scrabbling with his legs, he found a ledge, hearing rocks and pebbles drop into the bottomless pit beneath him. It was a crevasse, a deep, narrow one concealed by snow.
Devlin Storm was trapped.
His heart raced as he clung to the rock, the freezing air stabbing at his lungs. He yelled out Darcy’s name, his voice barely carrying over the gusting wind. Panic clawed at him as his mind screamed that he should never have let her out of his sight. He hadn’t even heard her steps behind him. She could be anywhere — or worse, she could fall too. Was she even following him anymore? How could he have been so stupid? The first rule of survival was to stick together. By losing his temper with Darcy he may have just condemned them both.
“Darcy!” he cried out again. One of his feet slipped and he fought to secure it again. His heart was battering his ribs like a tiger in a cage, and his fingers were numbing fast. In minutes they would cramp, and it would all be over. “Darcy, please!”
She was gone, she couldn’t hear him, she—
“Devlin?”
He almost cried at the sound of her voice.
“Darcy, be careful. There’s a crevasse.”
He had a sudden image of her falling into it, falling past him, screaming into darkness.
“Please be careful,” he cried out.
“I see it,” she replied, her voice even closer now. A flurry of fresh snow fell onto his upturned face, and by the time he’d blinked it away, she was there, leaning over cautiously. Her eyes were huge with fear.
“Thank goodness,” he said.
Her eyes were wide with fear, but they steadied when they met his. “What do I do?” she asked, panic creeping into her voice.
The honest, awful truth was he didn’t know. His mind was a hissing mess of white noise, too full of pain to be able to think straight.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, disappearing from the gap at the top of the crevasse.
Devlin took a breath, waiting for Darcy to reappear. What had he been thinking? He had walked on, not wanting to deliberate too hard about what Darcy had said. She was right, had hit the nail on the head. He hadn’t ever been in love because losing himself to someone was a sure-fire way to losing control. She was getting too close and Devlin had no idea what she wanted from him and why she was so curious about his life. He wasn’t used to opening up and sharing, and Darcy had this knack of making him feel it was okay. But it wasn’t.
The sunlight pierced his eyes but Devlin felt as frozen solid as the ice around him. He squinted, feeling his fingers start to twitch and cramp. His foot slipped again, sending a wash of ice flurry down into the gaping void. There was no noise as it hit the bottom and Devlin knew with sickening clarity that the bottom of the crevasse was so far down that he wouldn’t hear it even if it made it all the way down. They were metres deep sometimes, taller than his penthouse on the ninth floor. He gripped tighter, his life flashing before his eyes.
“Please, Darcy” he cried out. “Hurry.”
She did, appearing again and dangling something down to him. It was the sleeve of her jacket — the heavy-duty Gore-Tex was easily strong enough to hold his weight.
But would she be strong enough to hold him?
“I’ll brace myself on a boulder,” she said, as if reading his mind. “There’s one right here. Just tell me when you’re ready and I’ll pull.”
There was no way he’d ever be ready for this. He stared down into the impenetrable darkness of the ravine. All the billions in the world wouldn’t help recover his body. And it hit him, right then and there. It hit him, just how pointless his wealth was. He’d faced death before, yes, but his wealth had saved him because those trips had been pre-planned down to the last minutiae. Now he just had Darcy, and he knew that at this moment in time, Darcy was all that he needed. None of it mattered. Not the cars, not the houses, not the watches and the helicopters and the holidays. None of it mattered, and none of it made sense.
“You can do this,” Darcy said. She’d vanished, but she was close by, the sleeve of the jacket still hanging there. “I know you, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. But you have to believe in yourself. Just fight past the pain, past the fear. You can do it.”
Right there was something that made perfect sense to him. Darcy. He gripped the rock with his bad arm, groaning at the sickening wave of pain that rolled through him. He fished for the jacket sleeve, wrapping it around his wrist twice and then clutching it hard. Then he took a breath and called up.
“I’m ready.”
“I’m ready,” she called back.
He crouched slightly, his knees grazing the rock. Then he jumped. He felt the jacket tighten around his wrist and he pummelled the rock wall with his feet, scrabbling up into the light of day. He managed to grab the edge of the crevasse with his bad hand, screaming as he planted his other hand down, too, but he didn’t have the strength to hold on. He felt himself slipping, then Darcy was there, her hands on his, pinning them to the rock. He managed to dig his toes into a crack, pushing with everything he had. Darcy pulled, screaming with the effort of it. He got his stomach over, then his legs, then he was wrapping his good arm around Darcy and holding on to her as though she was a karabiner and the only thing keeping him safe.
For what seemed like for ever, he lay there, Darcy wrapped up in his terrified hug, on the mountain that had almost killed him.
The mountain that still might if he didn’t get a proper hold on himself. Devlin knew he had made a fatal error. He’d been blindsided by pride and shame and all the other emotions that he kept in a locked box inside his chest. He was ashamed of his past, of his abusive dad, and his caring but permanently frightened mum. He didn’t want people to know, because if they thought badly of his life, then they would think badly of him too. They would think that he was somehow weak, somehow scared. Darcy knew all of this and that put him at a disadvantage. She could use it against him.
It was better to be a mountain, to be strong and unmoving. Sure, it meant you had to build a rock wall between yourself and other people. You had to stay aloof and uncaring. But so long as you didn’t let people in, then there was no way they could hurt you.
But look at where that got me.
He’d been an idiot. He hadn’t been able to hear Darcy’s steps behind him and he knew she was probably fuming and staying as far away as possible. Why on earth would she want to be near him after the way he’d behaved? He’d acted like a child, like a baby.
In other words, he’d acted just like Devlin Storm.
But he’d heard a noise. That’s what had distracted him. He’d been studying the map when he had heard something overhead, a deep, distant throbbing that had pulsed through the air.
A helicopter.
He had squinted into the sun, seeing a black speck between two neighbouring peaks. It had been flying right towards them, and even though it was too far away to possibly see him, he had jumped up and down, dropping the case so that he could wave his arm. He had been standing on rocks, in a grey coat, practically invisible, so he’d been reckless and dashed onto the slope, his feet crunching in the snow as he waved furiously at the chopper, shouting for it to see him. And then he had fallen. He’d been so focused on the helicopter that he hadn’t seen the ravine.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Devlin allowed himself to breathe. The rush of fear and adrenaline slowly ebbed away, to be replaced by a warmth he hadn’t expected. He was okay now. Safe. After what felt like for ever, Devlin loosened his grip, pressing his lips to the top of Darcy’s head.
“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice full of emotion he hadn’t let himself feel until now.
But something was wrong. Darcy wasn’t moving. Her body, still in his arms, was cold. Too cold.
Panic flooded him as he pulled back, looking down at her pale face. “Darcy?” he whispered, fear lancing through him.