Last Summer: A Novel Page 19

  “So are you,” she points out.

  “Not for much longer.” He eases in on her, lifts a hand to her jaw. His long, wide fingers thread loosely in her hair. “You once told me you’d leave Damien for me,” he murmurs.

  Her head draws back quickly.

  “I fell in love with you last summer.” He whispers the confession.

  “What?”

  “How could I not? You spent almost a week with me on a trail living in the dirt and didn’t complain once. You ski, you run, you’ll get on the back of a snowmobile and have a blast. I bet you’d heli-ski if you were mentally and physically conditioned to do it. You, Ella Skye, love adrenaline as much as me.

  “But more than that, you’re fun to be with. You’re witty and intelligent. We can have a deep conversation one moment and the next you’re telling me off. And the sex! Whoa.” He laughs the word, hands flaring out. “It’s mind-blowing with you. Last night was only a taste of what it was like between us before. Just wait until we get back into the groove.”

  Her cheeks heat. She wants him to stop talking. His words are too much. “Nathan—”

  “I still love you,” he admits. “And I know somewhere in that head of yours, you feel the same. You told me.”

  She what?

  She steps back, needing a moment to process.

  He lets his arm drop. “You seem surprised.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Her heart pounds in her throat. A sinking, hollow sensation expands in her chest. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I suddenly have the impression a lot of what I’ve been waiting to hear from you will be upsetting.” My god. She fell in love with another man. Worse, she was going to leave her beautiful, magnificent husband. The man she loves.

  The man she just cheated on. Again, she thinks begrudgingly.

  A wise woman would get back in the van and return to the airport, fly to London, and be with her husband. Never tell him about any of this. But she doesn’t want to leave. Hearing Nathan tell her she loved him and was going to leave Damien is shocking, but it does explain things. Namely, how easily she’s falling for him. Then again, the same thing happened with Damien. Ella falls hard and she falls fast. She just wants to love and be loved.

  She’s all sorts of screwed.

  Nathan is standing there, looking as though he’s holding his breath.

  He should have told her everything the first night she arrived. But like Damien, he bit his tongue.

  Bite your tongue.

  There’s that phrase again.

  Ella narrows her gaze. Nathan watches her cautiously. “Is this why you’ve held out on me? You’re afraid of how I’ll react?”

  “No.” He forces out a breath. “Okay. A little. But I wanted you to know where I’m coming from when we do talk. I don’t want to lose you again,” he confesses.

  Her first thought is that she doesn’t want to lose him, too. But that isn’t right. She doesn’t want to let him go. She doesn’t want to leave him. More than anything, she’s confused. She needs time and space to think.

  Rising to her toes, she kisses his neck, his jaw, his mouth. “Go,” she whispers against his lips. “We’ll talk tonight.”

  Nathan leaves to meet with Scott, and later, Ella joins them for dinner. Afterward, while Nathan finishes up downstairs, she goes back to the room to continue work on the article. By 10:00 p.m., Nathan hasn’t returned. Exhausted, Ella shuts her laptop and climbs into bed.

  What must be an hour or so later, she wakes as Nathan eases into bed. He spoons her, his warm breath dusting her shoulder. He traces his thumb along the scar over her pelvis. She clasps his fingers, stilling his touch.

  He buries his face in the crook of her neck and murmurs something incoherent. From the tone, it sounds like an apology.

  She twists her head in his direction. “What?”

  He kisses her shoulder. “Do you think you’ll try again?”

  She feels his hand, still over her scar.

  “To have kids?” she asks. “I don’t know. I’d like to.” But Damien hasn’t wanted to talk about it. And she doesn’t want to think about Damien while in another man’s bed. Right now, she doesn’t want to think at all.

  Rotating in Nathan’s arms, she pushes him to his back and straddles his hips. He’s ready, and she takes him inside. His hands palm her breasts.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “You can’t see me.” The room’s pitch-black. She can barely make out the outline of his face.

  “I can feel you.”

  She can feel him, too. Everywhere, which is exactly what she wants. To feel. This moment. In the dark.

  With Nathan.

  CHAPTER 24

  “Ella.”

  She groans, burrowing under the covers.

  “Ella.” Nathan nudges her shoulder.

  Her eyelids flutter. The room sits in darkness but her internal clock tells her it’s morning.

  Nathan turns on the bedside lamp. She groans again, burying her face in the pillow. “Turn it off.”

  “Wake up, Skye.”

  Her eyes snap open at the order. Nathan grins. Energy radiates off him.

  “What?” she grumbles, her voice hoarse, drowsy.

  “We’ve been cleared to fly. I secured a spot for you on the heli.”

  “You did?” She sits up and tosses off the covers. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  Nathan stands, moving out of her way. Already dressed for skiing, he can’t stop grinning.

  “Excited much?” She picks through her clothes, selecting items. Ella mentioned last night that if there was room, she wanted to ride with them. She’d photograph him heli-skiing for the article.

  She glances over her shoulder at Nathan. He’s inspecting his gear. “I can’t believe I didn’t hear you get dressed.”

  “I wore you out last night.”

  She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Yeah, right. That must be it.”

  “You were snoring.”

  “I don’t snore.”

  “You were making little squeaky noises,” he says, pinching his fingers together.

  “I don’t squeak.” She whips his upper back with her shirt and locks herself in the bathroom to change.

  They meet Scott and another guide for breakfast, and after, they sit through what Ella believes is the longest, most detailed safety presentation she’s ever heard. It lasts an hour, covering everything from loading and unloading from the helicopter, skiing conditions, avalanche preparedness, and the importance of listening to their guides. Their word is final. Disregarding the rules means an immediate extraction from the mountain and return to base without a refund. Each guide is trained as an EMT and every skier is outfitted with a radio to communicate with their guides.

  When it comes time to load into the helicopter, Ella sits up front between Cam, the pilot, and Trey, one of their guides. In the rear are Scott, Nathan, and a Canadian couple from Whistler who are over the moon to be skiing alongside Nathan Donovan. Nathan graciously poses for pictures before they board the helicopter. Scott loads the skis and poles into a cargo carrier that looks like a rescue basket attached above the landing skid. He climbs aboard and they’re off, lifting, up and over a stark white landscape.

  The ride is bumpy but the views are magnificent, the mountains majestic, and Ella can’t help but feel the skiers’ excitement. Her heart races and palms sweat as they climb in elevation, following the lay of the land as it rises from the channel and up. Ella smiles broadly, thrilled she can witness Nathan in action. She waves at him over her shoulder and he gives her a thumbs-up.

  Basically, the helicopter is a chairlift. The first drop is eight minutes from base, and each successive drop is a two- to four-minute flight apart until they return to the lodge. The entire trip takes no more than ninety minutes. Depending how things go, Scott hopes they can get in seven rides. That’s seven landings on various ridges—w
hich aren’t true landings, but a hover inches above the surface—and seven pickups with fly time in between.

  Skiers will ride downhill one at a time, from safe zone to safe zone, until they meet up at the pickup zone, or PZ, as Cam calls it, at the end of the run. Scott will lead, followed by Nathan, then the Canadian couple. Trey will bring up the rear.

  After the first drop-off, Cam comes over the com. He and Ella are the only two with headsets in the helicopter so that they can communicate over the whir of the helicopter’s rudder and blades while the others ski.

  “We’ll do a flyby so you can watch.”

  The heli dives down the mountainside and Ella’s stomach shoots up into her throat. But she waves her thanks to Cam and gets her camera ready.

  As Scott explained during the safety meeting, the skiers take off one at a time. Scott descends first, cutting across the pristine mountainside, digging his poles into the fresh snowpack. He’s fast. Full speed ahead, until he skids to a stop at the first safety zone, a spot about one-third of the way down.

  Nathan follows, full throttle. Ella’s heart pounds in her throat. A fresh layer of nervous perspiration blooms across the back of her neck, yet she has her camera ready and takes a ton of photos.

  When Nathan reaches Scott, the Canadian couple follows, then Trey, until eventually, they all reach the PZ. Scott comes over the com, giving Cam the signal they’re ready for a pickup.

  Nathan loads first and their eyes meet. She can tell he wants to tell her how epically awesome it was, but his words would only get lost in the noise of the copter. Instead, they share a smile. He’ll tell her all about it when they get back to base.

  They follow this pattern for another three drops, until they reach the highest ridge of the day, where they’ll be able to cut lines in a sixteen-hundred-foot run at almost a fifty-degree angle. After they unload at the LZ, landing zone, Scott gives the signal and Cam lifts off. They fly down the mountainside and cut a wide circle so that Ella can watch. Scott takes off, and when he reaches the first safety zone, she has her camera ready.

  Nathan descends the mountainside, following Scott’s trail. Ella lifts her camera and the good vibe inside the helicopter plummets. Cam swears.

  Ella lowers her camera and looks around, thinking something’s wrong with the helicopter. But Cam’s attention isn’t on the controls. It’s locked outside.

  Ella looks in the same direction and gasps. Her chest clenches as her mind tries to catch up with what she’s seeing. Scott, skiing for his life, with Nathan right behind. The entire mountainside has ripped out from under them. Avalanche. And the wave of snowpack is gaining on Nathan.

  Scott, who has a couple hundred yards on Nathan, quickly skis out of the avalanche’s path. He radios in to Cam. “You seeing this?”

  “Yep. Coming in.” Cam closes in on the mountain, ready for the pickup when they’ll need it. “Ski, you bastard,” Cam mutters into the com. There isn’t anything he or Ella can do but watch in silent horror as Nathan tries to outski the rushing snow.

  Ella realizes that watching an avalanche as it’s happening is a whole different game than playing a YouTube video where she can speed ahead to skip the horrific parts or stop it and walk away. She couldn’t look away even if she tried. She can only watch, stunned speechless, as Nathan points his skis downhill and furiously digs in his poles to get away. But the avalanche consumes him, and suddenly, he’s tumbling, flipping head over skis, over and over and over.

  The last thing Ella hears before Nathan disappears under a white sheet are Scott’s clipped words over the com. “He’s heavy. Going down hard.”

  “You keep that up and we won’t get any sleep.”

  After spending the afternoon at the medical clinic and a better part of the evening downstairs with Scott and his crew as they exchanged tales of their own near-death experiences, Ella finally has Nathan alone in their room. He’s whole, he’s alive, and she can’t stop touching him. His body isn’t having issues reacting to her ministrations either.

  “Sorry.” She adjusts his flannel sleep pants so that the elastic waistband doesn’t press into the large contusion on his left hip.

  Aside from a couple of bruised ribs, some contusions, and a dislocated shoulder, compliments of an old motorbike injury, Nathan survived the avalanche unscathed. On the grand scale of avalanches, it was minor. Just a shelf of snow that broke off, triggered on Nathan’s descent. As soon as the snowpack had slowed and Nathan stopped sliding, he radioed to Scott that he was okay, even dug himself out before Scott could ski to him. Nathan was already standing and talking about the burn in his shoulder before the Canadian couple and Trey skied down the mountainside after him.

  A lot of things come into play to trigger an avalanche, but Scott thinks this one happened because the fresh powder fell onto a section of harder packed snow.

  Small avalanche or not, it’s not something Ella wants to witness again. Her hands shake as she helps Nathan into his shirt since his arm’s in a sling. No wonder Stephanie worried for Nathan. She can’t imagine feeling this way every time he left the house.

  Ella tugs his shirt to his waist and Nathan sinks onto the bed. “I ache.”

  So does she. Dead center in her chest.

  She bites into her lower lip and distracts herself by adjusting the bedcovers over Nathan. Between the business deal with Scott, his pending divorce, and his injuries, Nathan has enough to contend with. The last thing he needs is a blubbering mess hovering over him.

  But she can’t help it. The scene on the mountain keeps replaying in her head. Nathan tumbling, on the wrong side of control, disappearing, buried alive under a layer of snow. Who cares if those layers were only inches of loosely packed powder and all he had to do was lift his head and shake off the snow? It was still scary to witness. A tear glides down her cheek, and another slides and clings to her chin. Nathan watches her curiously. Embarrassed, she turns away and wipes her face.

  “Hey,” he murmurs.

  She turns back to him, dragging her sleeve-covered fist across her cheekbone.

  “Come here.” Nathan stretches his arm across the pillow, inviting her into bed.

  She slides under the covers and snuggles up against him, mindful of his bruises. He smells of the hospital, antiseptic and bleach, and she’s unexpectedly taken back to the morning she forgot Simon, those same smells fresh in her nose. She buries her face into his shirt and cries.

  “Why do you do these things?”

  He lifts a hand to her hair, massages the back of her head. “I want to feel alive.”

  Heli-skiing, wingsuit flying, even speedgliding, a crazy-insane parachuting and skiing mash-up. He’s done so much and even though he told her during their sessions that he wishes he could do more—Everest, BASE jumping, and Antarctica trekking, to name a few—he swore to himself that he was done. But now that he is divorcing Stephanie and has had a taste of the extreme again after a long hiatus, Ella wonders if he’ll be able to abstain.

  “Is it worth getting yourself killed in the process?”

  The words are out before she can think otherwise. Nathan tenses underneath her. She already knows why. It’s something Stephanie would have said to him.

  “You aren’t thirty years old anymore,” she risks saying. “Actually, you’re closer to forty than thirty,” she says, trying for levity.

  “I know.” Nathan’s expression softens, and he chuckles. Then he groans. “Ouch.” Laughing and sore ribs. Not a good mix. “Thanks for pointing out my age, Skye.”

  “Anytime, old man.” She props her chin on his chest and smiles. At thirty-seven, he’s still in mighty fine shape.

  “There’s something else I know,” he says, his voice sounding sluggish, his eyelids drooping as the painkillers kick in.

  “What’s that?” she murmurs.

  “You make me feel alive.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Nathan wakes Ella with his mouth. He lavishes kisses on her bare breasts. He skims his teeth along her ribs,
nips her hip, then kisses her scar.

  Self-conscious yet curious about his interest, Ella leans up on her elbows.

  “What is your fascination with my scar?” she asks drowsily.

  Nathan lifts his head and their eyes meet. He rolls to his back and lies beside her.

  “Nathan?”

  He drapes his uninjured arm over his eyes.

  Ella pushes down her sleep shirt and sits up. “Talk to me.”

  He peeks at her from under his arm. “You want to do this now? I’m bruised, battered, and drugged.”

  “Don’t be a baby.” She playfully nudges him. Physically, he’s the toughest guy she knows. “Did you take a pill this morning?”

  “I was going to, but I got distracted.” He reaches for her breasts.

  She smacks away his hand. “Focus. You. Me. Last summer.” She’s done waiting.

  “You’re on your walkabout on the PCT, and after months of being pestered by various media outlets for your story, you decide to give Luxe Avenue the exclusive,” she summarizes. “You call Rebecca, she sends me. You double back and meet me at the Squaw Valley parking lot. We backpack for five days, and then what? What did we do?”

  “Gawd, Skye. It’s early. Can I at least shower and dress first? Coffee sounds real good.”

  Ella glances at the clock. Seven a.m. If they go downstairs for coffee, Nathan will get sucked into conversation with Scott or any one of the other guides or guests. It could be hours before she gets him alone again.

  She shakes her head. “No, now. Let’s get this over with so I can go write. I’m on deadline. What did we do on the PCT?”

  “Okay, fine. We hiked and we talked.”

  “About what?”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “I don’t know. A lot of what we rehashed this week.”

  She frowns. “That can’t be all.”

  His eyebrows rise and hands flip as if saying what else does she expect?

  A lot more.

  There is a significant reason she agreed to go home with him.

  Nathan watches her.

  “Well . . . what happened next?” she prompts.