Kathmandu, Nepal
The late-morning sun shone through my hotel room as I pulled myself up on the bathroom doorframe for the twenty-eighth time. I’d done my best to sleep on the plane last night when we’d flown from Agra, but I still felt twinges of exhaustion as I pulled up for number twenty-nine.
There was a knock at my door. “Come in,” I said, proud that my breathing wasn’t heavy as I hit number thirty. I’d busted my ass to stay in shape this trip. While Wilder had been hitting on Leah, I’d been hitting the gym.
All for this trip.
“Hey, did you want some lunch…?” Rachel’s voice trailed off, and my smile lit right up. She might not want to want me, but that didn’t change the fact that we still had some undeniable chemistry.
I dropped to the floor and grabbed the towel I’d left on my chair, wiping the sweat from my face and neck. She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts, looking anywhere but at my bare chest.
Her cargo pants hung on her hips like a wet dream, and her long-sleeve henley and Patagonia vest hugged her perfect torso. Rachel did the impossible—made expedition gear sexy.
“So, lunch?” I asked.
“So, shirt?” she responded, glancing up and then right back down.
I shook my head and grabbed the shirt I’d left on the bed with my pack. “Not like you haven’t seen it before.”
She snorted. “Yeah, well…that doesn’t…whatever.”
Rachel is flustered. The revelation brought a bigger grin to my face, until I was pretty sure I was reaching clown proportions.
“Let’s go,” I said after pulling on the shirt. I grabbed my wallet off the dresser and locked the door behind us as we walked down the hallway. “Where is everyone?”
“At the café across the street,” she answered as we took the stairs down from the third floor.
“And you came to get me? How thoughtful!”
“Wilder sent me. He’s still hung up on throwing us together at every possible opportunity.” She made it to the ground floor first, but only because I really liked to sneak peeks at her ass when she didn’t notice.
Yes, I was going to hell.
“And you agreed?” I asked as we walked into the lobby.
“He said no one was going to get you if I didn’t, and I figured you’d eventually get hungry.” She shrugged.
Damn, that sweet, swelling feeling was back in my chest.
“So you decided to give in so I didn’t go hungry?”
She spun in the middle of the lobby, blowing a strand of her purple highlights out of her face as she stared me down. “Look. Just because I don’t want you weak before we head up to twenty thousand feet doesn’t mean that I have gushy feelings about you. Don’t read into it.”
“Gushy? Pretty sure you killed every gushy feeling yesterday.” God knew she’d effectively removed my heart and stomped on it. I was getting used to it when it came to her.
Her face scrunched. “It needed to be said, and I’m not sorry.”
“Well, you made your point.” I yanked my beanie out of my left cargo pocket and tugged it over my hair, already missing my baseball cap.
She shifted her weight and recrossed her arms. “So…friends?”
I laughed, the urge to kiss the frown off her face stronger than almost anything. “Rachel, we will never be just friends. But we can fake it for as long as you like. I owe you at least that much.”
She sighed, and when I gestured toward the door, she led us out. From the lobby, I’d barely noticed that we were in Nepal, but once we walked outside, there was no denying it.
My eyes were drawn everywhere at once. The bright flags hanging on streamers stood out against the crystal-blue sky. Sounds of traffic, people, and bells from passing bicycles rang out on the crowded street.
“Is that…?” Rachel asked, looking toward the awning of the next building over.
“That’s a monkey!” I told her.
The smile that curved her lips was breathtaking, breaking through the prickly barrier she kept up.
“Does it ever hit you how amazing this all is, how lucky we are?” she asked, stepping into the street to cross.
I yanked her back just before a bicycle could take her out. She fell into my arms, and I held onto her for a second longer than was necessary. “Every day since you showed up.”
She looked up at me. “Lunch,” she whispered.
I nodded and let her go. We picked our way across the street to the café where the others waited.
“You made it!” Pax called out from the circular table. Leah, Little John, Alex, and Gabe were there, Penna holding down the opposite side of the table with her leg elevated on an empty chair. “We already ordered for you guys.”
“We would have waited, but the plane leaves in three hours,” Leah explained with a sympathetic look.
“No problem. Thanks for taking care of us,” I said, pulling out a chair for Rachel. She eyed me with a healthy dose of skepticism but took her seat before I did mine.
“So, I know your name is Rachel…” Alex started, his eyes locked on her.
This was not going to go well.
The guy was grunge to his core, shoulder-length hair and a permanent half-baked look. He was also one of the only Renegades who might be able to snowboard that ridge with me and not get himself killed.
“Yep,” Rachel answered, playing with her fork.
“We’re dying to know, are you…the Rachel?” Gabe questioned, leaning forward. He was cleaner cut, but I was going to punch his pretty little face if he looked at her like that for one more second.
Damn it, why didn’t I cover this with them?
Rachel sighed and rolled her neck. “That’s me, the curse,” she said sarcastically.
“Seriously?” Now Alex’s eyes were ready to pop out.
“Absolutely. I have no idea why the hell you guys even let me come along. I’ll probably call down lightning before we get to the airport.”
“How can you think that?” I asked her, unable to sit there and listen to that shit.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Penna snapped at the guys. “She’s not a curse. I was stupid when I said it.”
“You’re not,” I told Rachel. I hated that she’d let that into her head. It wasn’t her fault that I’d been majorly distracted after I left her. Hell, it was less than what I deserved for what I’d done to her.
Our lunch arrived before I could take it any further. I gulped down rice, vegetables, and some kind of curried chicken, knowing it would probably be my last good meal for the next few days. I was going to need some serious carb loading for the week ahead.
“So you ready for this, Nova?” Alex asked. “I only know of two other big-mountain free riders who have done that ridge.”
Rachel paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.
“I’m in the best shape of my life. What can you say for yourself?” I ragged on Alex.
He pulled his shirt up, exposing six-pack abs. “I think I’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, well, let me know how those treat you at twenty-one thousand feet.”
“Twenty-one thousand feet?” Rachel asked, her voice weaker than usual.
With one glance at her, I could tell that she knew, and she wasn’t amused. Or impressed.
“You want to board like a god, then you have to get closer to them,” Gabe answered, high-fiving Alex.
“Wait, I thought we were just going to see the Everest base camp,” Leah said, her eyes narrowing on Wilder.
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry. I’m not going up there with them to board, just to watch from the advanced camp.”
“You’re not?” she asked, clearly relieved.
“He’s not good enough,” Rachel said quietly. “Not for what they have planned.”
“Rachel!” Leah exclaimed.
Part of me wanted to crow that she knew I was better than Pax, but the look in her eyes told me she wasn’t in the mood.
“No, she’s right,” Wilder said. “Sure, I can snowboard, but this big-mountain free-riding stuff is way beyond me. Even I know my limits.”
“How dangerous is it?” Leah asked.
“It’s up there,” I admitted.
“Leah told me you wanted to board up here, but I was hoping my first hunch was wrong,” Rachel begged me. “Tell me you’re not going for the Shangri-La spine wall?”
“I promised I’d never lie to you again,” I answered. I wouldn’t. No matter how painful the truth was, that was all Rachel was getting from me.
“We can’t even get your body down if something happens to you,” she whispered.
She was right. If anything went wrong up there, it was twice as dangerous to try to bring a casualty down, but I had zero intention of dying.
“I always did love the mountains,” I said with a lopsided smile. “I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
The blatant fear in Rachel’s voice got to me like nothing else could. The snarky, prickly shell she wore never intimidated me, because I’d always known what was underneath. Hell, the sharper her tongue, the harder my dick got. But seeing a glimpse of this Rachel, the soft vulnerability she kept so closely guarded—this was the Rachel I loved, the one who could break me down with a look or a touch.
“I’ve spent the last year training for it. I’ve done Denali, the Alps, even headed down to South America to make sure I’m ready for this,” I assured her. “I just need a few days at altitude and then it will be manageable.”
Sure, being at sea level for three months hadn’t done me any favors, but—
“I’m not going to advanced camp. I’ll come back down with Leah and Penna.”
Oh, hell no. “What? No. You’d kill to be in on something like this, even if it’s navigating from camp. I know you can’t board it, but this is the stuff you thrive on.” I needed her there, watching, supporting, keeping my ass in check.
“The last thing you need is me up there distracting you. One stroke of bad luck—”
“No.” I cradled her face, needing contact even though I knew she was likely to shove me away. “You are not bad luck, and no matter the shit we’ve been through—I want you there.”
“Landon.” She closed her eyes and shut me out.
I stroked her cheeks with my thumbs until our gazes met. “Besides, I’ll do better if I’m showing off for a pretty girl. I can’t exactly let myself fall on my ass in front of you.”
She let her breath go on a ragged exhale. Her shoulders fell, but I knew better than to think she was defeated. “Fine.”
The battle was won—for now. No doubt we’d have the same argument up until the moment I hiked up that ridge. “Good.”
Alex cleared his throat, and I became more than aware that we were having a private moment in public. I released her soft skin at the same second she pulled away.
“Okay, final mission brief?” Pax asked, sliding over the file I’d spent the last six months compiling. “This is your show now.”
Damn straight, it was.
This ridgeline was everything I’d been training for, and it was finally time for the plan to fall into place. Sure, there were ten thousand things that could go wrong. But I had Rachel with me, and that was one hell of a right.
