by Lia Riley
She knew who I was all along.
Who I am.
The guy who cut the rope.
She knew.
Everything between us these last few days was a ploy to get my story.
These are the only words my brain can string together. Someone calls out in the distance. Not her, though. The voice is male, even though it’s high-pitched.
“Mr. MacAskill! Excuse me, Mr. MacAskill!”
I freeze. Who the fuck wants my father? It takes a second to realize that it’s me. I’m Mr. MacAskill.
I turn slowly, and a tall, wiry guy rushes through the forest. He’s dressed in khaki shorts, ready to scamper off on some African safari, and breathing hard enough to scare away any animals within a five-hundred-meter vicinity. The camera swinging around his neck must not get much use. “Ah, very good. Here you are! Mr. MacAskill, allow me to introduce myself. Diedrick Overbeek at your service.” The guy pants, bracing his hands on his knees. “And, wow, you move fast.”
Auden appears. “Leave him alone.” She’s not talking to me, but him. Her voice is uncommonly cold. “You said you would.”
“Oh, well.” He gives a high-pitched laugh. “Looks like I lied.”
“What do you want?” I snap, already knowing. I heard Auden’s whole conversation play out like my worst nightmare a few minutes ago. Clearly I’m a fucking masochist to want to listen to a replay.
“Only a few moments of your time.” He straightens and removes a blue handkerchief to loudly blow his nose. “I have many questions for you.”
“‘Few’ and ‘many’ don’t pair well together. You’re another journalist,” I say flatly. If I watch the two of them fight over me like hyenas with a fresh carcass maybe that will be enough to purge her from my system.
“I’m freelance,” he says, clicking his heels together and issuing a salute. “Here to be of service.”
The laugh that comes out of me is laced with bitterness.
Diedrick clears his throat, ready to make his pitch. “The world thinks you’re a monster—”
“Stop. Enough. Just… shut up, for Christ’s sake,” Auden breaks in. “Rhys, you don’t have to talk to him.”
“Aye, I know.” I don’t spare a glance in her direction.
“Go back to our tent,” she pleads. “Wait for me there. I’ll take care of this.”
Half of me never wants to see her again. The other half, the daft-as-shit half, wants to ask her why.
Why would she lie to me? Did she not feel the same?
“Are you together?” Diedrick frowns at her. You can almost hear the wheels turning over inside his weasel-looking skull.
“I’m not fucking around here,” Auden snaps. “You aren’t asking him a single question.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” I shout, the sound bringing them both to full attention.
Diedrick only increases the speed of his chatter. “Your brother, Cameron MacAskill, crawled for three days through crevasse-infested glaciers. His right hand was so badly frostbitten, it had to be amputated. He has the survival story of the year, the decade. I hear they are making a movie of it.”
“Stop. Stop talking right the fuck now.” I don’t know how it happens, but somehow I’ve moved, gotten right in this guy’s face.
“What’re you going to do? Punch me?” Diedrick taunts. Either I’ve lost all ability to intimidate, or he has no sense of self-preservation. “Go right ahead. Hit me. One way or another I’ll have a story.”
“You sneaky little bastard.” Auden looks ready to leap on his back like a spider monkey.
“Go,” I say to him. “If you go now, nothing will happen. I give you my word.”
“What does that mean? You’re a man of honor?” Diedrick spits on the ground. “I do not think cutting your own brother loose to save your life is honorable.” He’s baiting me. A part of me understands this. He’s realizes I’m not giving him what he wants, so he’s trying to generate his own material. Not much different from when paparazzi harass stars in Hollywood for a behaving-badly shot.
But I’m not a star—quite the opposite: I’m the human equivalent to a black fucking hole.
My fist aches to connect with his chin, but that’s only playing right into his slimy hands. Still, I shouldn’t have done many of the bad ideas I’ve had in my life.
What’s one more? My hand twitches.
“Rhys.” Auden’s voice demands my attention even when I don’t want to give it.
My fist doesn’t land in that prick’s face with a satisfying thwack but is held back in her grasp. I outweigh her by at least four stone, could break her hold as easily as cracking an egg. Yet I allow her to restrain me. I close my eyes, and her touch feels so good even as it makes me hate myself.
“Go on.” The guy’s openly taunting. “Slug me all you want, but you can’t escape the truth. You left your brother for dead.”
“I thought he was dead.” The words shred my throat.
He cocks his head. “A new piece to the puzzle. Come on, then. This is a chance to clear your name. Clear the air.”
I can never escape the past. It’s a shadow that I’ll never be rid of.
“Hit him and you’re giving him exactly what he wants,” Auden murmurs. “Don’t be stupid. Think, Rhys. Think.”
Her words appeal to some rational part of my brain, but Jesus God, I want to hurt someone.
“Go. Walk it off.” She shoves me toward the trees ahead. “Get out of here. I’ll deal with this.”
She’s got a lethal look on her face like a tigress mid-hunt. Strange, she’s half my size and is defending me. She’s right, though. I need space. Otherwise I’ll do something stupid. I’m already accused of being a wannabe murderer. Adding actual murder to my reputation wouldn’t do me any favors.
As I stalk away, Auden’s voice drops to a menacing hiss. “This is your second strike with me, Diedrick. One more, and you’re in serious trouble.”
Second strike?
“Rhys! Wait! Hey, listen, please,” she says, catching up to me, once it becomes clear I’m going to maintain a stony silence. “You don’t have to say anything, but I meant what I said back there. I’m not going to tell anyone your story.”
“Why not?” My hands drop to my sides, forming two fists. “It’s a good one. And while you’re at it, throw in this afternoon. How you got to screw me in more ways than one.”
Her head rocks back with force, as if I’ve struck her, and for a moment I’m ashamed but anger wins out. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. But if I’m such an idiot as to fall for it, maybe you should get your reward.”
“Please.” She’s crying now and still I push forward, my voice sharpened to a point.
“Last May, I reached a… a… crossroads, for lack of a better word. I had a woman, a doctor who spent the Everest climbing season working at the base camp. She wanted to get serious, get married, have children. Sadie was older, ten years older; that’s where her head was.”
“You don’t have to tell me this.”
“Maybe it’s festered long enough.” I give a halfhearted shrug. “When it came to Sadie, my head wasn’t in the same place as hers, nor my heart. Making a long-term commitment with her didn’t feel right, and so things ended. Instead of spending the season at Everest together like I’d planned, I decided to meet up with Cameron, who was going to the Karakorum.” It’s strange talking about this, like I’m telling a story about a person who is me.
“Cameron was in Pakistan. Highest concentration of tallest mountains in the world. I barged in on his show, but he didn’t seem to mind letting me join the team at the last minute, despite grumbling from the others. He never minded my moods. He was unusual in that way. My brother is the one everyone likes. He has that way about him. He’s a troublemaker, but when he smiles, you forgive him anything. I’m more…”
“Difficult?”
I arch my brow.
“Sorry.” She gives a short laugh, wiping her eyes. “I can’t believe you ar
e still talking to me.”
“It isn’t hard. In fact, it’s dangerously easy. You act as if climbing La Aguja is reckless. That’s nothing. This, right now, remaining here with you? This is me at my most reckless. This story is a knife placed in your hands. You can cut my throat with it.” I tear off a leaf from the bush beside me, shredding it in my hands.
“Why do it?” Her eyes scan my face as if my features are a narrative she wants to read and reread. “Why tell me anything?”
“Maybe I’m a fucking masochist, like I said. Or sick of evading. What’s the cost of privacy in a digital age? More than I am willing to pay. Thought if I kept my head down, everyone would leave me alone. Instead, it’s the opposite. People want what they can’t have. So take it.” My last sentence is no more than a harsh whisper, but it hangs in the air as if I’ve roared the words. “Go on, take what you came back for.”
“Stop.” Any trace of her tentative smile erases. “Please stop.”
I jab my finger at a boulder. “Sit.” Her legs fold at my command. “You wanted the story of why I cut the rope. Here’s your big chance. Have a fucking front-row seat.”
Her tears start fresh.
I should care more that her cheeks are wet. Stop and fight for calm. But I’m a rock on the steep slope, rolling without care toward who or what I hit. I tell her how I joined Cameron. How he and I were picked from the group to lead the ascent. The weather window was predicted to be short, and we moved the fastest. We’d been in the mountains together since we were lads, knew what each other was thinking without needing to muck with words. “If anyone on the team could make the summit, we had the best shot.
“We climbed quicker than anticipated, up into the death zone, high enough that acclimation was impossible. You can’t stay at such heights for long. The storm came in faster still. We made it to the summit, ken, but the weather was upon us before we were close to camp. It got to near whiteout, slow going. The wind, it screamed in such a way as to take the heart of you. What happened next was so quick. Cameron was there. And then he wasn’t.”
“Oh, God, Rhys—”
“He’d gone, disappeared over a ledge below. His weight drew on the rope, and at that angle, in those conditions, I couldn’t down climb. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t reach him. It was impossible to haul him back up, and since he didn’t reappear, he clearly wasn’t in a state to climb back himself. My body was connected to his deadweight, sliding me inch by inch toward the precipice. I called again and again. For hours I tried everything I could think of to save him. Then an avalanche came down, a great wall of ice and snow. It missed me by a mere foot, wildly careening over the side. I knew if he wasn’t dead already, he’d surely be dead after that. Still, I pulled with everything, and nothing. I thought my brother was gone. He’d only just married. I imagined what I’d tell his wife, Amelia.”
I cleared my throat, the words coming harder now. “I was half-stupid from cold and assumed I’d soon be dead, too. We’d go out together. Seemed fitting. We were brothers, and best friends. Why should I make it if he didn’t? But survival’s a strange thing. I swear in the wind I heard his words telling me to cut the rope. Let him go. Not to let Mum lose her two children in one awful night. Getting out the knife wasn’t easy. My fingers had no feeling. Took ages to reach it and longer still to open the blade. Cutting the rope was the easiest part—too easy. A back-and-forth grind of the wrist and then only me, alone on the fucking mountain.”
She gasps, but I don’t want her pity. Nothing will make this easier to bear.
“Hell isn’t fire. Hell is ice that needles your eye sockets, burns any bare trace of skin. I’ve no idea how long it took to work myself back through a glacier riddled with crevasses. A thousand times death crept close, but each time something spared me. It wasn’t until the next day that I reached camp. Hadn’t even felt this.” I massage the thick scar splitting the back of my skull. “Falling rock or ice must have struck me. Didn’t notice until base camp. I credited my survival to Cameron, as if his ghost looked out for me. Even took comfort from the idea. The satellite phone was broken, so no one, not his wife, Amelia, or Mum or Da knew he was gone. And then, as I gathered his few belongings, my mind fixated on mounting a search party to at least find his body to bury, there he was.”
“He survived,” she whispers. “Despite everything.”
“He was a shade, caught between the world of the living and the dead. One of his hands was completely black with frostbite. That’s the one he ended up losing. Then there was the broken ankle, concussion, and fractured clavicle.”
“How do you think he lived through the fall and the aftermath?”
“Sheer stubbornness. He couldn’t say much, just how he’d hung there off the cliff, dangling like a fucking pendulum on a clock, waiting.” My voice breaks. I’m seconds from losing control. “He said he’d made peace that I’d eventually have to cut him. There was no other option. That he had to survive the fall and what would come after, and live for Amelia. He landed in a crevasse and had two choices, to lie down and start dying or get up and crawl, hoping it would eventually lead him out.”
“It sounds like there wasn’t an option,” Auden says. “And he understood that. Didn’t you talk to him?”
“He was no in a state to speak. I got him to the hospital in Islamabad. Figured out how to get Amelia to him and told my parents what I’d done. Word spread fast, and news stories leaped on it. Within a week I was world famous for being the prick who sent my brother to his death.”
“You thought he was already gone.”
“I deserve what I got. I lost faith. In being tested, my true nature was revealed.” My hands clench into two fists. “I’ve a coward’s heart.”
Auden shakes her head. “I don’t buy that, not for a second.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know. You can’t make it better.”
She approaches me warily. “You can trust me.”
“I can’t.”
23
AUDEN
I try not to flinch at his words, but it’s hard. “You said he wrote you a letter. Have you really not spoken to Cameron for all these months?”
“Not since he was in hospital,” Rhys says in a monotone. “He was in rough shape, so we didn’t exactly have a heart-to-heart. Besides, I don’t have anything to say.”
I tilt my head. “I don’t believe that.” He left before his brother could react. Rhys isn’t giving Cameron a chance.
“What I mean is that I haven’t the right.” He takes a shuddering breath. “An apology won’t return his hand. I ruined his career¸ stole away the same joy in his life that is the core of mine. He can’t climb again, at least not like he used to. Sorry is a weak fucking word. People say it when they spill a glass of milk.”
“You thought he was dead.”
“I lost faith.” His tone is stubborn. Nothing I say is going to change his mind.
Still. I have to try. “Climbing a mountain and risking your life isn’t the answer.” My ears fill with the panicked throb of my own pulse. “You matter, Rhys. You matter a great deal.”
“I don’t believe you came into this valley by accident,” he says softly.
I bristle. “You don’t have to believe me, but I had no idea you were here.”
“That’s no’ what I mean.” He grasps one of my hands, holds it tight in his own. “Don’t you see? You are brave, braver than me.”
I laugh. At first, it’s somewhere between a snort and a guffaw, but it spreads to a cackle. His dubious expression makes me convulse all the harder. How can he be so perceptive and yet peg me so wrong?
“I’m not brave.” I gasp, wiping my eyes. “That’s like calling the Cowardly Lion courageous.”
“You don’t see what I see.” He leans forward and whispers in my ear, “You followed me here. You didn’t run away.”
I swallow hard as a rush of heat runs down my spine. “There’s a funny thing about running. You can’t do it forever.” I’m tal
king to myself as much as to him. For years, I’ve tried to rationalize my sister’s toxic behavior to keep peace. Accepted blame and punishment for things I had no control over. I’ve been running from the truth, too, that maybe the burden of Harper is too much to bear. But how can I cut that relationship loose? What will that mean for my family? For me?
His arms tighten around me. “I didn’t know what to do after the accident. And that’s not me, how I live. I always have a plan. For months I was lost, holed up at Da’s, avoiding the reporters, listening to his fire-and-brimstone talk. Finally, one night, half pissed out of my mind on bourbon, I got an e-mail about the La Aguja weather window. I had enough in my bank account for the trip and figured, why not? Might as well see if the legend is true. What I want most in the world could be there.” He looks away. “Who knows, right? Stranger things have happened.”
“Forgiveness,” I murmur, realizing. The look he has, it’s someone eaten inside out by guilt. “That’s what you most want, isn’t it?” He hopes this crazy climb will help him find atonement.
He casts his eyes away as color splashes over his high cheekbones. “You think I’m daft.”
“Not at all,” I answer quickly. “But there’s got to be an easier way. Reading the letter for starters.”
He looks as if I’ve suggested he volunteer to be cannibalized.
“Stay inside the tent, lass,” he says. “I told you before, I don’t trust the others here. People are getting impatient with the weather. Twitchy. The mood is off, and I don’t want you to face any trouble. But I need to get away and think.”
Rhys has been gone sixty-five minutes and I’m attempting to assemble the camp stove. Brewing a cup of tea isn’t a big adventure. In fact, it’s probably an unconscious act for most of these guys. But I’ve never done it before. I screw together the different components, and yeah, hmmm, don’t think that’s right.
My fingers tremble as I reassemble the various finicky parts, and my vision blurs with tears whenever I try to read the directions. I hate that I hurt Rhys. The look on his face, the look I put there, sad, vulnerable, ashamed, and full of self-hate? I helped send him back down the rabbit hole.
