Chapter 17
DEVLIN
He’d spoken the truth. It really wasn’t far.
But it was hard work, and slow. Every step he took, Devlin expected the ground to open up beneath him again. He tested every inch of snow, poking the toe of his shoe in until he felt solid rock. It got harder with every passing minute because his feet were like blocks of ice. In fact, his entire body felt frozen solid, especially with no coat to keep him warm. Not that he was complaining about having to give it away.
He kept looking at Darcy as he walked. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was no doubt about the fact that she’d saved his life. He never would have been able to pull himself out of the crevasse, not with his broken arm. If it hadn’t been for her, he would have hung there until his strength gave out, and even now he’d be lost in the darkness of the mountain. The thought terrified him more than anything else in his entire life — not just dying, because there had been plenty of times he’d come close to that doing extreme sports around the world. No, Devlin couldn’t quite put his finger on what felt different this time. Only that it might have something to do with Darcy and the sudden urge he had to kiss her.
He snuck another look at her. Her face was fierce with concentration, her lips moving in an unspoken conversation. She looked incredible. It was such a ridiculous thought that he almost laughed. But he didn’t, because he knew it was true. Something had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours — a fundamental change in the way he saw himself and the world. Yes, part of that was to do with his near-death experience of crashing in the mountains, but part of it was to do with something else, too.
It was to do with Darcy.
“Whoa, careful,” she said, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him was another crack in the rock, this one too narrow to fall down, but wide enough to get a foot stuck in.
Pay attention, you idiot, he told himself. He really needed to stop thinking about Darcy and start thinking about getting to the ranger station alive. But it was impossible. Right then, she was the only thing grounding him. The sound of her bubbly laugh, her wide smile, the size of the heart she was carrying around with kindness and compassion for everyone. Even him. He felt himself smiling at the very idea.
Stepping over the crack, they continued up the slope. Now that the sun was out, the top layer of snow had started to melt. That was a good thing because the bigger crevasses in the ice were now visible — yawning mouths in the rock that wanted nothing more than to swallow them both. They stayed well clear of them, making good progress upwards.
“You really think that helicopter was looking for us?” Darcy asked, her cheeks a sweet pink with the cold and exertion.
“I’m sure of it,” he replied. “I’m surprised there haven’t been more of them.”
“There might have been,” she said. “But they’ll be concentrating the search on the area between the Royal Alpine and the airport, thinking we went down there. Seeing as that’s what you told them we were doing.”
He nodded. That was a smart observation, and one he hadn’t thought of. Of course they wouldn’t be looking here. Who in their right mind would fly onto one of the biggest mountains in the country in the middle of one of the fiercest storms of the year?
“Can you tell me why?” Darcy asked, as if reading his mind. She seemed to have an uncanny ability to do that. “Why did you head here, knowing it was so dangerous?”
Devlin felt the familiar hollow feeling eating away inside him at the reason he’d been so reckless. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop asking him so many questions. Then he stopped. She deserved more than that, and not just because of what she’d just done. She deserved more than that because she was a good person. And, truth be told, he was starting to enjoy Darcy’s questions. He liked the way they popped out of her mouth and how she sometimes looked as surprised at them as he felt. Devlin was feeling more open to answering them too.
But he wasn’t quite ready to share this secret yet.
“There’s something I needed to do,” he said. “Something I still need to do. It’s . . . it’s incredibly important to me.”
He expected her to ask more questions, to hunt for the truth like a journalist. Instead, she just nodded, and said nothing else. It was that silence, more than anything else — that silence, and the kind little smile she gave him — that made him feel like he was rolling right back down the mountain they were climbing. A freefall that scared him.
They walked side by side, swapping the jacket between them when they felt the cold biting, occasionally reaching out for one another and holding hands to help each other when they reached a crack in the rock, or a hillock of loose stones. They kept pace, step for step, working in such perfect harmony that it was as if they’d been climbing mountains together their whole lives. Darcy carried his case without once complaining about it, and on the three occasions he offered to take it back, she refused to even acknowledge him. It was just as well, because between his broken arm, and the ache in his other hand from holding onto the side of the ravine, he didn’t think he’d have been able to carry it another dozen yards.
“I feel like a goat,” Darcy said, taking the jacket back from Devlin and snuggling into it as they clambered across another rocky section.
She let out a cute little bleat and Devlin couldn’t help but laugh.
“A goat?” he asked. “Not Nibbles or Norman the rabbit.”
Darcy cocked her head at him.
“Hmm,” she replied. “Maybe more my style, I suppose. Timid.”
“But with a hefty kick on them,” Devlin added, pointedly, not wanting Darcy to see what he’d said as an insult. “And the way you moved your legs when you were sleeping last night, I’d say you’d give them a run for their money.”
The flush on Darcy’s cheeks deepened and she massaged her neck with her gloved hand.
“You know,” Devlin went on, digging himself into a ravine all of his own making. “I just mean that you moved in bed a lot, not that you kicked me.”
He was making it worse, and now all he could think about was Darcy asleep next to him on that uncomfortable mattress and the way she’d muttered in her sleep as she’d shuffled closer.
“Anyway, a goat you say?” He thought if he stopped talking then he might not melt into the snow like the bumbling fool he seemed to have turned into.
“Yep,” Darcy said, jumping down from a large rock and landing in the snow with a puff. “A sure-footed mountain goat. Like you see stuck to the sides of cliffs because they’re perched on a teeny tiny ledge. Darwinism at its finest.”
Devlin thought Darcy was Darwinism at its finest, but he kept that morsel to himself, watching as she trod ahead, still bleating like a baby goat, her arms outstretched for balance.
Half an hour passed in a heartbeat, and it was only then, as they began to round the side of the mountain, that Devlin noticed the sky growing dark. He’d been so focused on the route they were taking — and who was he kidding, Darcy too — that he hadn’t glanced upwards for some time. When he did, he saw the dark clouds gathering around the mountains at the horizon. His heart tumbled into his boots with the same speed he’d tumbled into the crevasse.
“That’s bad, right?” asked Darcy, noticing where he was looking. “A big cloud like that isn’t bringing good things with it.”
“Not necessarily,” he said, shivering hard. “It might not come this way.”
Darcy hummed sceptically and she was right to, because it did. Twenty minutes later and the stormfront was so close he could smell it, the air coppery and sharp and weirdly electric. He had no idea what the time was, and he couldn’t see the sun any more through the heavy, yellow-black clouds. They were bloated with snow, and judging by the fact he couldn’t see the farthest mountains anymore, either, he knew it was already falling hard.
“The ranger’s outpost station should be right around the corner,” he said, a sudden wind lifting his words away. It kicked up powder from the ground and threw it at him, and he felt the temperature of his body slip another few degrees.
The first flakes of snow were beginning to fall from the ever-darkening sky, but as they passed a giant fist of rock that protruded from the mountainside, Devlin spotted lights up ahead.
“There,” he called out, and Darcy whooped with joy.
The ranger’s station sat on a ledge of rock between two jutting trunks of mountain, light blazing from its windows. Three giant radio antennae stood to attention on the roof. Devlin had a moment to feel hopeful before he noticed that the landing pad was empty.
“You think there’s somebody there?” Darcy asked, waving snow away from her face.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter. It’s warm, there will be food, and most importantly, a working radio. Come on, one last push.”
He put his head down, holding Darcy’s hand as they stumbled through the last of the snow and onto the natural stone staircase that rose to the station. He felt Darcy slowing down, her hand pulling at his as the snow started falling thick and deep, the wind snatching at their clothes. Giving her hand a squeeze of encouragement, he nodded at her through the quickly diminishing visibility. A silent push. He knew she could do it — she just needed to believe it herself. He got to the door, grabbing the handle and pushing it open.
“After you,” he shouted, holding himself strong against the battering winds and snow.
Darcy tucked herself into him, and her body angled against the strength of the winds, she almost fell through the doorway to safety. He followed, pushing the door against the growing storm with his whole body weight until he heard it click shut. It was warm and quiet away from the winds. They were safe.
And, it would seem, alone.