by Lia Riley
So for now, I am walking away. I do love you as a family member, but I have to love and respect myself, too. If you ever want to put in the work to repair this relationship, let me know. I’d like that. Until then, please know that I’ll be distancing myself from you.
Auden
I didn’t get a response, only a notification that the message had been opened. Maybe someday she’ll be ready to try to heal what’s broken between us, but until then, I’ve acted in good faith and need to let it go.
I change into a pair of stretchy yoga bottoms instead and head back downstairs with my iPad. My mom fixes me a gigantic bowl of my favorite dessert, apple cobbler with vanilla-bean ice cream, and says for once I can eat in the living room. Dad’s got a fire roaring. I came from summer and it’s back to winter. The night comes early, so I can’t see the Rockies. There’s nothing to remind me of Rhys. No reason that my fingers should reach for my iPad and do the one thing I swore I wouldn’t do.
Type his name into Google.
What will I do if I read he’s had an accident?
But how can I stand never knowing?
I can’t.
For once, the Internet takes forever to load, or maybe it’s just my own impatience. I shove in ice cream by the spoonful and am in mid brain freeze when the news page finally downloads.
The brain freeze must have spread to my whole body, because I lose control of my hands. My iPad falls to my lap. When I blink my eyes, the headline is still the same:
RHYS MACASKILL RETURNS HOME TO BURY BROTHER AFTER TRAGIC PLANE CRASH
My parents are both washing up in the kitchen, so no one but our two dogs, Gog and Magog, bear witness to my tears.
“He didn’t do the climb,” I whisper to them. “He went to Cameron instead. He went to his brother.”
Magog wags her tail simply because she’s friendly like that. Gog perks his ears but clearly is missing the significance.
Rhys flew home with his brother. He can’t move forward until he faces his fears, and it looks like he’s finally taking a step away from self-destruction and toward peace.
Even though Scotland is thousands of miles away from Colorado, I look out the window and whisper, “I’m proud of you.”
On my first day at Outsider magazine, I submit a new story, not a profile on climbers and La Aguja, but something more autobiographical called “Fear and Loving in Patagonia.” To say my editor adored it is an understatement. I jump from internship to paid staff. She fought and got the story into the magazine, and the day it appeared in stores, let’s just say not many things could compare with seeing my name in print.
Only the memory of a big Scottish guy pressed against me.
It’s been two months, and radio silence from Rhys. Somehow, after reassuring myself that he wasn’t engaging in any kind of crazy climbing death wish, I managed to resist the urge to Google stalk him. It hasn’t been easy, but I feel like he deserves that from me, that he deserves that from everyone. He’s been through so much, and what he needs is time to heal away from prying eyes. Even though I am dying to know what he’s up to, I can give him that.
I never told anyone about meeting him. In part because it’s so unbelievable—who falls in love in a couple of days? Jesus. I can see my friends rolling their collective eyes or muttering, “Yeah, yeah, you mean you fell in love with his wang.”
I don’t want to cheapen what happened in Torres del Paine. I know how I feel, and as crazy as it sounds, it’s true.
I fell in hard, fast love and still have whiplash. Even though Rhys hasn’t contacted me, I haven’t wanted to date, even turned down a couple of coworkers who are easy on the eyes. This wasn’t lust. It’s like our masks got knocked off and I got a good look at his soul and he got one at mine, and how do you come back from that?
It’s five o’ clock, and while normally I’m not the kind of girl who bolts from her desk right at quitting time, I’ve got a hot date with myself at the local rock-climbing gym. I’ve enrolled in a beginners’ class, and while I’m not particularly strong or brave, it feels great to try an activity that I never thought I’d do in a million years.
I don’t have a jacket. It’s a perfect early-spring evening, so it’s warm enough to get away with a lightweight knit top. The sky is clearing up after a day of rain, and the air is filled with that delicious fresh smell. I breathe in deep when I hear the thing I’ve been waiting for since leaving Patagonia.
“Auden.”
I don’t have to turn around to recognize that voice. All I can do is stand there, on the sidewalk, next to the koi pond, and close my eyes.
“Auden.”
This time closer. I turn and he’s there, and all I can say is “You shaved.”
There’s his face, and holy God. I could make a hobby out of studying the lines on his face, the angles in his cheekbones, the edge of his jaw.
“Aye.”
A couple of marketing staff walk by us chattering, and slow when they see Rhys.
“Whoa. Friend of yours, Auden?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
One gives me a sly thumbs-up.
“Maybe?” Rhys asks.
I hug myself. “Depends on if you’re ready to treat me like one”
“I had to be alone for a few months. Went back to Skye and buried Cameron. After that, I spent time with Mum and Amelia, and it helped. I miss him. I—I won’t ever stop, but I’m better now than when you last saw me.”
“That’s good.”
“I am sorry for any hurt I caused you. I know I did wrong in so many ways. And I didn’t want to contact you again until I was sure that I had my head screwed on right, or at least better.”
“And you do?”
He nods. “You were right. I had a choice, to tear myself apart, or forgive.”
My snuffle is audible. “I’m glad.”
“But even if I can make peace that what happened to Cameron wasn’t all my fault, I needed to see you, to let you know I’ve worked hard, and always, when I thought about giving up, there was a little voice in the back of my head, a voice that whispered that I needed to push on, take another breath, keep going. A voice that sounded exactly like you.”
“Really?”
“You seem to have left a part of yourself inside me, and I’ve done my best to look after it. I wonder if you have a part of me inside you, too.” He shifts his weight.
“Yes,” I whisper, a smile spreading across my face even as the waterworks are turning on. “You’ve been with me this whole time.”
“Tonight, while I waited for you, all I could smell was the rain. That’s your scent. When I was home, I’d smell it, and it would be like you were with me. I’d talk to you then, like a mad bastard.”
“How long are you here for?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Long as it takes. I’m half-American, so the country can’t go kicking me out.”
“Long as it takes for what?”
He finally looks straight in my eyes. “To convince you that I’m the guy to take a chance on.”
I throw myself into his arms, and he hikes me up, locking my legs around his hips. “I’ll always take a chance on you, Rhys.”
“I’ve got a job at the Mountain School for the summer, not far from here. I’m teaching outdoor ed courses to save up money for university.”
“That’s only ten minutes from where I live.”
“If you’d like, we can see a lot of each other.”
“You’re going to stick around here and work? What about climbing?”
“You have a job here. I know what it means to you.”
“Yes.”
“The rest will figure itself out. And that was a bloody good article you wrote, by the way,” he says with open pride, his face shining with admiration.
“The ‘Fear and Love’ one?”
“That and all of them. I’ve read every word you’ve written.”
“You have?”
He kisses me then, long and slow, and it doesn’
t take long for the urgency to settle in. His hands are lost in my hair, and I’m done for when his tongue slides over mine, a dance that I haven’t forgotten. We sigh into each other, and I know he’s feeling the same way as me, that we’re home. “I make you this promise: We’re a team, partners. I’ll never put your interests ahead of my own. Climbing will always be in my life, but it’s not the sum total, no’ anymore. Any decisions we make about the future, we do so together. I won’t cut you loose.”
I cover his smooth cheeks with my kisses. “You couldn’t if you tried. What ties us together is stronger than anything.”
EPILOGUE
I think I have it,” I say, snapping my fingers. Rhys and I are having a picnic in a meadow next to a climb we just finished. Nothing nuts, a straightforward novice route, but it’s my first attempt out of the gym and I feel like I’ve conquered Everest. We’re celebrating with chocolate-covered granola bars, bananas, and water, a banquet for champions. “I have a perfect nickname for you.”
He glances up from the Edward Abbey book he’s reading. “I don’t—”
“Loving you is Rhysy Peasy.” I clap my hands. “Get it? Like easy peasy?”
His brows raise in mock horror. “Rhysy Peasy?”
“I like it.” I arch a brow. “Or we can go with Rhyses Pieces?”
“Absolutely no—”
“Fine. Want to hear the real one?” I lean over to kiss him right on the furrow in his forehead. That’s a part of him I’ll take as the complete package. I’m well aware this guy can brood, grump, and be gruff. But behind the bark isn’t bite. It’s a guy who can move mountains when he turns his single-minded focus to something.
There are circles under his eyes. At night he still wakes up, and I roll over to discover our bed empty.
He’ll be outside against our balcony, watching the stars, or in the spare room he’s turned into a bouldering gym, shirtless and sweaty. That’s when he’s missing Cameron and going to darker places. But he never ventures so far as to where I can’t find him. In those times, I take hold of his hand and say, “You’re a good man.”
“Why do you tell me that?” he whispers.
“Because it’s true.”
We repeat this conversation again and again, but I don’t mind.
And when he looks at me, like this, he certainly, ahem, moves me.
“My love,” I say, and sit back with a smile.
He waits as if I’m going to deliver a punch line.
“That’s it.” I tousle his thick dark hair, and the lightness of his eyes is a startling contrast. His mouth opens a fraction, but he doesn’t say anything.
“My love,” I repeat again with a soft but firm insistence. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No.” He runs his hand up my calf and squeezes my knee. “Reckon that’s a good one.”
“You saved me, you know.” It’s true, and I don’t just mean the night he unwillingly rescued me in the Valle del Frances. He saw something in me that I didn’t know was there, that I am a girl who can climb mountains, that I am a girl who can do anything I put my mind to.
“That’s no’ how the story goes. You saved me.”
“How about we saved each other?” I murmur.
He brushes his lips tenderly against the corner of my mouth, and before taking our kiss deeper, murmurs, “Aye, that we did.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my fearless editor, Lauren Plude, and agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, for their support and belief in my ability to write this story (even when—no, especially when—I had my doubts). To Elizabeth Turner for my favorite cover to date—you knocked it out of the park. To everyone at Team Forever for being so supportive and dedicated to getting books in the hands of readers. To my family, who dealt with my moodiness while I drafted this over Christmas holidays and was less than holly jolly. To Nick, who hiked Torres del Paine with me and helped give me this plot bunny. To Amy Pine, who always helps me show, not tell, and Jennifer Blackwood, Jules Barnard, and Natalie Blitt for reading snippets and being blunt. To my readers… you are the ketchup to my fries.
If you never get lost, you’ll never be found…
See the next page for a preview of
UPSIDE DOWN
by Lia Riley,
Book 1 in the Off the Map series.
Available now.
1
TALIA
I breathe on my bedroom window and smear a spy hole in the condensation. Not much going on this morning. A lone crow dips over California bungalow roofs while in the distance Monterey Bay is shrouded in mist. I’m a Santa Cruz girl to the bone, love that fog like it’s a childhood blanket.
The downstairs phone rings and Dad turns off NPR. He’s a sucker for Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Once I get on the plane this afternoon, the only noise in the house will be that frigging radio. Guilt grabs me with two cold fists, right in the gut. I should be plopped beside him on the couch, trying to kid around, but I’m not even sure he wants my company.
My sister, Pippa, would know what to do. She was the expert in easy affection. She’d blow through the kitchen on a Friday night, swig a sip of Dad’s beer, sling an arm around his neck, and torture him with wet cheek kisses. I’ve never been a hugger. My role was easy, the joke-cracking sidekick. But there’s no work for a sidekick without a hero. These days, if I wander into a room, Dad’s gaze automatically slides to the empty space beside me. Somehow, despite everything, I’m the ghost child. I don’t want to haunt him, so I keep to my room.
My room.
Not ours. No one’s slept in the other bed in a year and a half. My sister’s one-eyed sock monkey, Seymour, reclines in the middle of her calico pillowcase, wearing an evil expression. I know your secrets, he seems to say. What you keep hidden. I give the monkey the finger and instantly feel worse.
Seymour and I go way back. To those days after Pippa died and my room was a safe place to shatter. He saw me research phantom medical symptoms until four in the morning, curl beneath my bed wrapped in the comforter so Dad never heard me weep, watched as I knelt in the dormer window seat and counted cars, closing my eyes if I ever spotted a red one because red was bad.
It meant blood.
Death.
Seymour the Sock Monkey knows me for who I am.
The leftover daughter.
“Sorry, Pippa,” I mutter. Like my sister gives two shits about my relationship with her fucking stuffed animal. If she can see me from wherever she is, and that’s highly suspect, I’ve given her far greater cause for displeasure.
Seymour’s frayed mouth seems to sneer. We’re in agreement on that point.
There’s a knock on the bedroom door. “Hang on a sec!” I slip on my T-shirt and tighten the bath towel around my waist. My computer is open on the desk. WebMD calls my name, softly seductive, like Maleficent to Princess Aurora. In this case, I’m not offered a spinning wheel spindle but reassurance that I’m not going to die. Dr. Halloway urged me to block access to any health-related sites, but in the shower, the freckle on my right foot looked bigger. Bob Marley died from a melanoma on his toe, so I’m not 100 percent mentally unhinged—more like 85 percent on a bad day.
Despite my best efforts, I can’t stop obsessing over what-ifs. What if I have early-stage skin cancer? What if this headache is a tumor? My mind is a bowl of water that I compulsively stir. I want my brain to be still and serene, but for the love of Sweet Baby Jesus, I can’t quit agitating it.
There’s another knock. More insistent.
“Seriously, I’m changing.”
“Your mother’s called to say good-bye,” Dad says through the door. His voice is tense, pleading, like he holds something unpleasant, an old man’s jockstrap, rather than the phone.
I turn the knob and stick my hand out to grab the receiver. “Thanks.” I take my time putting it to my ear, humming the soundtrack to Jaws under my breath. “Hey, Mom.”
“Alooooha.” Wow, a perfect extension on the long o followed by a short, sharp ha. Sh
e’s been practicing.
I mime a silent gag. “What’s up?”
“Your cell went to voice mail.” She doesn’t like calling the landline. “You know I prefer not to talk to him.”
I push up my glasses and roll my eyes. “Such an inconvenience.” By him she means my dad, Scott Stolfi, the man she was married to for twenty-two years. She can’t even say, “May I speak to Talia,” without turning it into a thing. He was her high school sweetheart. They had one of those classic love stories, rich girl meets working-class boy. Now, a two-second conversation with the guy yanks her chain.
“You don’t understand.”
“And you say we never agree on anything.” I bend and struggle with the zip to my overstuffed suitcase.
I bet two coconuts that Mom’s sprawled by the infinity pool on the cliffside deck overlooking the Pacific. She’s been holed up on my grandparents’ estate on Kauai’s north shore since she bailed last year. After they took Pippa off life support, Mom locked herself in the guest room for two days while Dad tackled an endless series of home repairs. When she finally emerged, he was mending the backyard fence. “You can’t fix everything!” she’d screamed. Next thing we knew, she’d bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii. In lieu of a cheesy postcard, she sent Dad divorce papers from the law offices of William C. Kaleolani, Esq.
“Australia is just so far away. You’ve always talked about doing the Peace Corps one day, but to know you’re all grown up…” Her gusty sigh is dramatic. This phone call is her pretending to care, a big show, part of the game she still plays called “Being a Mom.” In all fairness, I shouldn’t snark, because guess who’s bankrolling my trip down under? As much as I hate to ask her for anything, I need this escape.
Mom comes from old Carmel money earned when my great-great-grandfather decimated two-thousand-year-old redwood groves. Environmental pillage made him filthy rich, but the money lost its stink over time, transformed into sustainable energy start-ups and progressive philanthropic causes.
