After the Climb

by Kristen Ashley

  SOMEONEKILLMESOMEONEKILLMESOMEONEKILLME.

  “Right. Yeah. Cool. The ladies got their wine. Nut Brown, on tap. And while we’re perusin’ our menus, bring us some of those beef pinchos,” Harv ordered.

  I looked up to see the waitress standing by our table.

  “And the fig with goat cheese,” Heddy added.

  “Is that good?” Harv asked her.

  “Oh my gawd,” she said as answer.

  “Should we get two ’a those?” Harv inquired. “’Cause even though Bowie’s mostly veggie, I think we should get two ’a the beef pinchos. Breakfast wore off at least an hour ago.”

  Heddy was about to answer, but I was so stunned at what Harvey said, I turned my head Duncan’s way and asked, “You’re a vegetarian?”

  He opened his mouth.

  But Harv answered.

  “Mostly. Something about methane. I can coax him into a burger every once in a while. And chicken, if he’s assured they’re free range.”

  “I can speak for myself too, Harvey, and it’s not just methane,” Duncan said to Harv and turned to me. “It’s the rain forest.”

  “Of course,” I murmured.

  “Since we got a veggie amongst us, we’ll do the brie nachos and falafel too,” Heddy decreed, then queried of Harv. “You down with that, big man?”

  “For starters,” he allowed.

  “Liquid Amber,” Duncan stated his drink preference when the waitress cast her gaze his way.

  “I’ll get those drinks in and your tapas out when they’re up,” she promised and took off.

  Heddy instantly turned to me. “Speaking of the rain forest. Do you remember that dress you wore to that fundraiser to save it?” She didn’t let me answer. She turned her attention to the gents. “She looked beautiful.” She then homed in on Duncan. “And she gave, like, I don’t know…a bazillion dollars to that charity.”

  “Heddy,” I hissed.

  When I received her gaze, it was all innocence. “What? You did.”

  I ignored her, turned to Harv and began to explore new territory in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

  “So, Harv, what do you do?”

  He jerked a thumb at Duncan. “Work with this guy. I’m his COO.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled.

  Perhaps we were in new territory.

  But not the right territory.

  “Best gig I ever had,” Harv stated. “We were friends, see. Been friends years. Back then, I managed a pro shop. Made shit…’scuse my French, money. But that shop was in the shitter, ’scuse my French again, when I started there. Bitched, damn, ’scuse my French again, to Bowie the whole time about the hassle it was. He gave me a couple pointers, which were helpful. The story is longer, due to the fact the employees were a pack of hyenas, but makin’ it short, after I turned it around, he poached me.” Big grin. “The owners were ticked. The history of that shop was not good, they were finally turning a profit, and their manager is gone. Though, big risk for Bowie, seein’ as there’s a difference between managing one little shop and overseeing the operations of fifteen huge ones. Though that was then. Now we got seventy-five.”

  He turned to Duncan and gravely bowed his head.

  And then kept talking.

  “My wife thanks you, seein’ as she’s toolin’ around in a shiny new GMC and not that crappy ten-year-old minivan. And my daughters thank you, seein’ as they won’t have to sell a kidney to go to college, and they found it embarrassing, being ferried around in that crappy ten-year-old minivan.”

  Duncan said nothing to Harvey.

  He turned and said it to me.

  “We have a River Rain here in Prescott. It’s not far, though if I take you now to get you some waders, something I think we both need considering how deep it’s getting out here, we’ll miss the goat’s cheese.”

  It came out before I could stop it.

  A rush of laughter.

  This was something else I had not forgotten about Duncan.

  How funny he could be.

  And how much I’d loved I had a guy who could make me laugh.

  I managed to get a handle on it as fast as I could.

  But I would find it wasn’t fast enough.

  For when I was done, Heddy had a gleeful expression, Harv had a hopeful one…

  And Duncan’s eyes were soft and warm on me.

  God.

  “Okay, there’s an elephant on the patio, and before that bastard sits on us,” Harv started, attention on me, “he’s my boy so I’m his boy and she’s your girl so you’re her girl and we all obviously know what’s goin’ on here so I’ll just say it. Your dead friend was an asshole. He did you so dirty, it’s killin’ me he’s dead so I can’t track his ass down and choke the life outta him. But that said, I’m glad you two are gonna have the chance to talk things out.”

  “I, well—” I didn’t quite begin.

  “Me too,” Heddy chimed in.

  “You wanna give it a rest?” Duncan said words directed at his friend that seemed like a suggestion, but the tone in which they were spoken stated clearly they were not.

  “I am giving it a rest,” Harv replied. “Is Beth here?”

  “Jesus Christ, if you call her—” Duncan clipped.

  “I’m not above it,” Harv stated. “The threat is real, my man. So get with the program.” He lifted an exceptionally large hand and whirled it over the table. “Talk amongst yourselves. I’m sure me and Heddy got all sorts we can gab about.”

  He then went so far as to turn a mountainous shoulder to the table and lean toward Heddy, who did the same damned thing.

  I huffed out a breath, reconsidering my dedication to remaining friends with Heddy.

  Duncan turned to me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I replied. Then asked, “Who’s Beth?”

  “Harvey’s wife.”

  “Is she scary?”

  “No. But if she wants something, she’s single-minded about getting it.”

  “I think we’ve had enough of people being single-minded about things they want in regard to us, don’t you agree?” I inquired.

  “There’s an important difference when it comes to Beth. She’s only single-minded when she wants something for someone she cares about. And in this case, it would be me being happy.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  Though I was lamenting my choice of wine and wondering where our waitress was and if it would be gauche to order an entire bottle of gin.

  He shifted a little my way.

  I stiffened.

  He shifted no farther.

  But his voice lowered. “I would still like the chance to talk.”

  I caught his gaze. “And I still feel there’s nothing to say.”

  “In discussing this with Harvey this morning, some things I wasn’t admitting to myself came clear, and Gen, I’d like to share them with you, and I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to me.”

  “I know a few things about wishing someone would listen to what you have to say.”

  His lips tightened and his jaw popped under his beard.

  Then his expression grew perplexed as he focused over my shoulder.

  He returned that focus to me. “There’s someone taking a picture of us.”

  I didn’t bother to look.

  I fluttered a hand between us. “It comes with the territory.”

  “Do you want that?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

  “And I can take from that response you don’t want that.”

  “Again, it doesn’t matter.”

  I barely finished the words, and he was pushing out of his seat.

  We got Harv and Heddy’s attention, but I moved quickly to grab Duncan’s forearm.

  “Duncan, sit down,” I ordered.

  He looked down at me. “I’ll ask nice that they stop.”

  “Please sit down.”

  “I won’t be a dick about it.”


  God, he was stubborn.

  “Bowie, please, sit down.”

  His head cocked sharply.

  Then he moved to resume his seat.

  I removed my hand from his arm.

  He then shifted into me and didn’t stop until he was right in my face.

  “They’re gonna post that on social media,” he declared.

  “Yes, they probably will.”

  “I know you’re used to that, Genny, but—”

  “Duncan, it hasn’t escaped me that you are no stranger to the media feeds.”

  “Yes, pictures taken at events, and rallies, and press shit we do for the stores. Not at a restaurant where I took my boys and their mother to eat, repeatedly, but now I’m sitting next to a beautiful woman who is not their mother. She’s a world-famous actress who they don’t know their dad once loved more than his own life.”

  I could feel my pulse beating hard in my neck.

  He continued speaking.

  “So it may be no big deal to you, just another thing you put up with because that’s a part of your life, but it isn’t part of mine.”

  I’d seen him.

  But I hadn’t researched.

  I’d wanted to.

  However hard it was (and it was hard), I wouldn’t allow myself.

  Thus, now he’d mentioned it, I had to know.

  “You have boys?” I asked quietly.

  “Yes. Two. Sullivan, we call him Sully, and Gage.”

  I wondered if they looked like him.

  “And are they not over your divorce?” I queried.

  “They were so relieved we ended it, I think Gage considered writing us each a thank you card. And he’s never done that in his life without his mother riding his ass to do it.”

  So it wasn’t a happy home.

  “That doesn’t sound very good for you or them or her.”

  “It wasn’t. It was unhealthy, but I put an end to it before it became destructive. But they’re good kids and they care about their mother. More, we’re tight and they’d be pissed I was with a woman and they didn’t know about her, at least before we were all over Instagram. And that would be even if you weren’t who you are. But it goes without saying, it’d be worse that I didn’t tell them because you are who you are, and more, you are who you’ve always been to me.”

  I didn’t field that last part.

  I wasn’t even planning on thinking about it.

  “We are not out together, Duncan.”

  “We’re sittin’ side by side, Genny.”

  I suspected my lips thinned at that.

  I unthinned them to ask, “How long were you married?”

  “Sixteen years, six divorced. And yes, it took me so long to find someone partially because no one was as good as you, but also because I was tryin’ to make a go of my stores, because I wasn’t gonna hook up with another woman and not be able to provide for her the way I needed to do that.”

  This was a refrain I knew oh so well.

  And even now, it irritated the hell out of me.

  Because of the reason behind it.

  “The way your father made you think you needed to do that,” I corrected.

  “The way I needed to do that, Genny,” he retorted.

  “So he is actually stuck in your head,” I deduced.

  “No, honey, you dreamed of having your own trailer and making acceptance speeches. And I dreamed of not having to worry about money, being in a position my family would not worry about it either and living in a big house surrounded by nothing but trees and maybe a lake.”

  He didn’t need to tell me that.

  I knew his dream.

  “So we both got what we wanted in the end.”

  “Yeah, but it would have been nice to have had the shot to do it together.”

  “Sadly, that didn’t happen.”

  “We finally agree on something. Though ‘sadly’ for me isn’t a strong enough word for it.”

  Time to resume our earlier topic.

  “And why was your marriage unhealthy, Duncan?”

  “Because Dora was great. She was fun. She could cook and she loved hiking and mountain biking and she had a beautiful smile and she had drive to make something of herself. In the beginning, and for a long time, she was light in the darkness. She also had two assholes cheat on her before she met me. I did not know this next part. She did not know it. Neither of us saw it coming. But they did a number on her. And for some reason somethin’ twisted somewhere along the line and she got it in her head I was fucking everything that moved. No matter what I said, I could not convince her otherwise. No matter what I suggested to get her head straight and our marriage back on solid ground, it didn’t work. It was frustrating. Then it got old. Then it got aggravating. Then it got crazy. And when that crazy was looking like it would infect our boys, I ended it.”

  This wasn’t a fun story.

  In fact, living it had to have been agony.

  What it also was, however, was a perfect opening.

  And in an attempt to guard my peace of mind, I strolled right through it.

  “I know a little something about how you felt, Bowie,” I said smoothly.

  “And don’t think that hasn’t been the top thing on my mind since the instant I saw those ‘I’m sorrys’,” he returned. “That was my punishment, a thousand-fold, for what I did to you.”

  I felt my head twitch in surprise.

  “So you knew what was coming when you saw those apologies?”

  “It felt like I was on the gallows and they were putting on the noose.”

  “That’s rather dramatic,” I scoffed.

  “That I knew in that moment I threw you away for nothing at the same time I personally understood your pain? That isn’t dramatic?”

  Understanding that pain, and only having the one incidence of it, not what sounded like a rather uncomfortable, heartrending and demoralizing amount of time in failing to protect a marriage from it, I couldn’t argue that.

  Duncan didn’t make me try.

  He said, “Though, I didn’t throw you away for nothing. I did it because I was weak, and I was an asshole because I knew after I ended us in high school that we shouldn’t get back together until I had something worthwhile to give you. But I saw you and I couldn’t stop myself. That was the weak part and the asshole part.”

  God!

  It was like being thrown back in time.

  “I already had the something worthwhile I needed, Bowie,” I told him something he knew.

  “Yes, Genny, baby, and you said that a million times then and you coulda said it a million more. But honest to God, if I said I wanted no part of LA or New York, that to have me, you had to stay in Chicago, I would have taken something integral from you that you needed.”

  That made me angry.

  “I wasn’t holding you back, Bowie.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It sounded like that.”

  “What I meant was, we were too goddamned young to be able to handle how big what we had was. I had come nowhere near sorting out the harm my father inflicted on me. And I was all about you. Lost to you. And I was that at the same time I was not the man I needed to be for you. And I needed that, Genny. Whether you get it or not does not negate the fact I needed it.”

  Since this made sense, even though I didn’t know precisely how in the context of how he’d ended us, I decided it was time to move back to an even earlier topic.

  “Should we have this talk you wish to have, a talk we’re not going to have, and it got past the beginning phase, which it wouldn’t, then it would eventually get to the part where you would have to understand that people taking pictures of me, approaching me, even touching me, people I do not know, is a part of my life, Duncan. Everywhere I go, I do it ready to face something like that. It’s automatic. It used to disturb me, but now I’m used to it. And anyone in my life would have to be used to it too.”

  His lips hitched before he said, “Not sure how yo
u missed it, beautiful, but we just had the first, second and maybe even third parts of our talk. And just for the record, if you’re used to it and don’t care, it doesn’t bother me as long as it won’t upset my sons.”

  I blinked at him.

  “Food’s here, baby,” he whispered.

  Stiltedly, my head turned to the table.

  Tapas were all over it.

  The beers had been served.

  Heddy looked gleeful.

  Harv looked hopeful.

  But Duncan?

  He reached to grab a falafel.

  And he was smiling.

  Chapter Six

  The Afternoon

  Duncan

  Considering Chloe was hanging on his porch with Bettina as he drove up to his house after lunch, Duncan didn’t head around back to the garage.

  He parked out front.

  She was keen, worried about her mother, so he wasn’t out of his Tesla SUV before Chloe was skipping down the stairs in her ridiculously high heels.

  And he hadn’t quite rounded his vehicle, and he definitely didn’t have a chance to tell her not to skip or she’d break her neck, though she appeared to wear heels like they were a pair of Chucks, before she was calling, “Well?”

  “Let’s go inside, honey. We gotta talk,” he replied.

  Her face fell.

  “It didn’t go badly,” he told her quickly. “And because of that, we have to talk.”

  A light of excitement hit her brown eyes that was so Genny, he felt it like a punch in his throat.

  She then skipped back up his steps.

  Duncan followed more sedately.

  He sent a glance Bettina’s way, and his housekeeper was practically wringing her hands with worry mingled with enthusiasm.

  This meant, although Duncan did not share, Chloe did.

  He sighed.

  Bettina had been with them since Dora and he split. Even before he’d built this house.

  She didn’t live with him, but she came every day to tidy, or clean on the rotation she had in her head, do his laundry (and the boys’ when they were home), stock his kitchen and sundries, deal with any house issues that sprang up as well as normal maintenance and overseeing Bill, the man who saw to the grounds.

  And she took care of the horses, chickens and garden when Duncan wasn’t around to do it.

  This was not a full-time job.