Nepal
Logically, I knew the rotors of the helicopter weren’t beating with the rhythm of my heart. They were faster, almost a whirl, but everything around me slowed as we flew across the snowy ground toward the base of the ridgeline.
It’s taking too long.
I fumbled with the seat belt clasp, my hands shaking.
“Here,” Pax said, his voice calm as he undid the buckle. We touched down, and I flung the door open, jumping to the ground below.
Wilder shouted something to Little John and tucked me under his arm as we cleared out from underneath the chopper. As soon as the bird was in the air—headed back to advanced camp to get more searchers—he grasped my upper arms.
My gaze swung in every direction. There was so much snow. More than I’d ever seen in my life. Landon was under it.
Somewhere.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. The chant began in my head and wouldn’t stop, drowning out every other thought as my eyes grew wider and my chest tightened. Was that altitude? Oxygen?
The whole chute had come down, and I’d only been able to keep my eye on the tiny speck that was Landon for milliseconds before he’d been swept away.
“Rachel.”
I looked up to meet his gaze.
“You’re panicking,” he said softly.
“No, I’m not,” I fired back. “I don’t panic. Landon doesn’t have time for me to freak out.” I shoved my gloved hand into my side pocket and retrieved the small handheld device.
“Right,” he said, calm and steady as always. “You got this?”
“I got this.” I could lose my shit later.
We spread out over the avalanche field. Alex arrived and took the far side. Then Pax, Little John, and I walked a silent, steady line up the snow path, our avalanche beacons all held in front of us like we were searching for buried treasure.
Landon was so much more precious than gold.
Every minute felt like an hour as we carefully picked our way over the snow.
Please, God. Please. I’ll go back to church. I’ll focus more on charity work. I’ll give up anything if you just give him back.
I’ll forgive him.
I bit back the panic that clawed at my insides, telling me what logic dictated—that any normal man couldn’t survive under the snow.
But Landon wasn’t a normal man. He’d grown up on a board and spent every spare second riding big mountains. He knew how to handle this—how to form an air pocket. I just had to find him.
The helicopter arrived as we were halfway through the field, bringing Leah, Bobby, and one of the cameramen. As more searchers fanned out, we hit a signal.
“I’ve got one!” I yelled.
Please be Landon.
My heart leaped, pulsing in time with the flashing light that pointed me in the direction of one of the beacons. I held the little device steady, keeping my eyes locked on that light as I made my way higher up the field. The ridgeline loomed above me, and though we’d traveled up a good distance, it was nothing compared to the thousands of feet of sheer spine that Landon had tumbled down.
“Got one!” Alex called out.
With both beacons found, the team split, and I found myself surrounded by Little John, Leah, and Bobby while Pax headed to help Alex with the cameraman.
The beeps grew closer together, and the distance shortened on the beacon until we hit the single digits.
“Hit the snow,” Little John ordered, and I hunched as we walked slowly, looking for the smallest number on the beacon.
“Seven,” Leah read.
“Six,” I said next. We were so close.
“Five. Four. Three,” Little John said, my throat too clogged to speak. We were going to find him. It was the only possibility.
“Four. Five…” Leah said.
“Back up, slowly,” I told them, and we inched our way back until we hit the three-feet mark. “Dig!”
Little John took out a long pole and gently pushed it through the snow until he found resistance. “Got something.”
Someone.
Pulling out small, collapsible shovels, we started to dig. My chest heaved, tight and burning, and my vision started to haze the harder we labored.
“Miss, can you give me that?” one of the Sherpas asked, reaching for the shovel. I handed it over and stumbled backward as another did the same with Leah. I told my inner feminist to shut the hell up. They were acclimatized, stronger, more capable, and there were men’s lives at stake.
When had the helicopter brought another load of searchers?
I looked over to see the bird parked on the snowfield, waiting to airlift the boarders.
“I’ve got him!” Little John said from inside the pit they’d dug.
Leah’s arms surrounded me. Please be alive.
“He’s breathing! It’s faint, but he’s alive!”
“Thank you, God,” I said, sagging in relief as my face pointed heavenward.
“Gabe is alive!” Little John called louder to Pax across the field.
Gabe. Not Landon. It was Gabe.
Which means… My head swung in Wilder’s direction, and I broke from Leah’s hug to run across the avalanche field where Wilder was digging in the same kind of pit.
My legs dragged like lead, unwilling to move as fast as my mind begged them to. It might have only been fifty yards, but it felt like fifty miles. The altitude was draining me of every last ounce of energy.
We hadn’t acclimatized nearly long enough.
“Wilder?” I asked in a desperate cry as I made it to the small huddle.
“Less than a foot,” he called up to me, now digging with his hands.
I heard a gut-wrenching sob, the sound so miserable that it ripped my soul, the pain excruciating.
“It’ll be okay,” Leah promised as she caught up, looping her arm around me.
I heard the sound again and realized I was the one making it.
“Here!” Wilder yelled, and I saw the tip of Landon’s Jones hat before he was surrounded by guys digging just as furiously.
“Wilder?” I begged, ready to crawl out of my skin. Had it been a half hour? Had he exhausted an air pocket if he’d managed to make one? Were we too late?
“Wilder?” I called again as they dug. It took everything I had not to shove my way through the sea of men and dig him out myself, not to get my hands down there and do something. Anything.
“Just a sec…” He grunted.
“Paxton!” I shouted, unable to take another second of not knowing. God, if he wasn’t breathing, if I’d lost my only chance—
“He’s alive,” Wilder said.
The Sherpas split, and as Landon’s face came into view, I hit my knees.
“Rachel,” Wilder said softly, taking a second to look up at me. “He’s alive. He’s breathing.”
Thank you. Thank you. Thank—
The snow was red along his upper body as they dug farther.
“Where is he bleeding from?” I asked, my fists clenching and unclenching with the need to act.
“I can’t tell yet,” Wilder answered. “Ready?” he asked Bobby.
“Let’s get him.”
As they struggled, Leah and I unfolded and snapped into place the stretcher that Little John handed to us.
“Gabe is loaded,” he said quietly. “Need a hand?” he asked louder, toward Wilder.
“We’re in position,” Wilder said.
It took a few of them, but they lifted Landon to the surface and laid him flat on the stretcher.
“His arm,” I whispered, seeing the blood seep from the fabric of his coat.
“We’ve got to move!” Wilder yelled.
I got one heart-stopping look at Landon’s pale face before they carried him off. A flood of adrenaline swept through me, bringing me the energy to run after them—terror beating back exhaustion.
“There’s only room for two more,” the pilot said. “One up front with me, and there’s a very small space between them back there.”
“I’m going,” I told Wilder, daring him to challenge me.
His eyes flickered toward Leah, and I saw the battle rage there.
“I’m fine,” she said, putting her hand on his chest. “Pax, go. You’ve got to get help for them.”
“I can’t leave you on this mountain,” he said, grimacing.
She cupped his face. “You can and you will. Landon needs you. Gabe needs you. Rachel needs you. I’ll take the next flight out.”
His face contorted, but he nodded. “Get another chopper up here,” he ordered the pilot.
“It’ll be another ten grand,” the pilot said.
“I don’t give a fuck, just get it done.” He kissed Leah quickly and turned to me, but there was no anger or judgment that I’d just taken Leah’s seat. “You’ll have to take care of them until we can get down.”
I nodded.
Leah hugged me. “Go.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, squeezing her tight. “I just took your seat.”
“No. If Pax were hurt, that would be different. Landon is hurt and that is your seat. I would have done the same. Now go.”
I hugged her again, then let go to climb into the helicopter, careful as I scrambled over Gabe to sit between the two stretchers.
Wilder passed me the medic bag and headphones, and we were airborne before I could question what the hell I’d just gotten myself into.
After slipping the headphones over my ears so I could hear him on comms, I opened the bag and then looked down at my two patients. “Get pressure on Landon’s arm,” Wilder ordered.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and silently begged Landon to forgive me as I cut off the right arm of his favorite boarding jacket. The cut was long and jagged down the inside of his arm, but it wasn’t pulsing in time with his heartbeat, so it wasn’t arterial. I put the dressing against the wound and pressed.
I kept my eyes far away from his face. The moment I let myself actually realize that this was Landon, that we’d come a hairsbreadth from losing him and still might, I knew I’d be useless.
“Good,” Wilder said, turning around to watch me. “Little John says most of the bones are broken in Gabe’s legs, and at least one in his arm. Not sure about his ribs.”
“Can you reach?” I gestured to Landon.
He contorted his position, twisting to keep pressure on Landon’s arm as I looked Gabe over.
“He’s a mess.”
“Check his stomach.”
I removed the solar blanket, unzipped his jacket, and then lifted his shirt over his belly. Then I spread my hands and lightly pushed. “He’s warm, but it’s a little hard, Wilder,” I said softly.
“Fuck,” he swore. “Okay. There’s nothing we can do from here. We just have to pray he makes it to Kathmandu.”
I turned back to Landon and took over compression on his arm. Finally, my eyes drifted over the material of his jacket to the stubble on his face, to his closed eyes.
My fingers traced the line of his jaw, and then I laid my hand flat against his face, trying to absorb some of his chill. I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his stubbled cheek. “Just live through this, and I’ll think about us, okay? I’m not guaranteeing anything, but I’ll…I’ll think. But I can’t do anything if you don’t live.”
“He loves you,” Wilder said, looking down over us. “I don’t think he ever stopped.”
My eyes squeezed shut against the emotions that assaulted me at those words. The hope, the sweet feeling of home, all of it that I couldn’t let in, couldn’t remember how good they felt, because it would be so much harder when he left me again.
“All the girls—” Wilder started.
I locked gazes with the only man I’d ever cheated on. “Don’t.”
“They were substitutes. You have to know that. I knew it. He knew it, and I think every single one of those girls knew it. He never got over you, Rachel. Never. He never stopped loving you.”
“Love was never our problem.”
“Love is the best place to start.”
“Listen to you. You spend three months with my best friend and already you’re an expert on love and how to make it work.”
He flinched. “You spent three months with my best friend and it’s lasted years without being near each other. Why the fuck do you think I went to all this trouble to bring you out here?”
“Can we just not do this?” I asked.
“Hell no. I have you trapped for another half hour, and he’s out cold. I’m taking full advantage of this.”
I snorted. “If she didn’t love you so much…”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, but I saw the nervousness in his eyes, the set of his jaw as he looked over our friends. “I’m just saying that everything happens for a reason, Rachel. You’re here. He’s here. Life is showing you what it could be like with him”—his gaze flickered to Landon—“or without him.”
I didn’t want to think about that—a life without Landon. Not that I wanted him in my life, wrecking what peace I’d managed to attain, but I couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t exist.
I checked over both of them as the flight continued. Landon’s pulse was strong, the warmth returning to his face, but Gabe’s was weakening.
Through the comms, I heard the pilot making arrangements in Nepali and assumed it was with the hospital. As we approached the small landing pad, I knew I had to have been right.
“They are expecting us,” he said.
My nerves fired back to life as we touched down on the pad, and the doors were opened by medical personnel waiting with gurneys. They took Gabe out first.
“Do you speak English?” Wilder yelled over the noise of the rotor blades to one of the doctors.
“Yes!” he shouted back.
“Avalanche. Broken bones, we think internal bleeding, and his pulse is thready. His name is Gabe Darro.”
They nodded and sped away.
I tossed my headphones on the seat and climbed out after the medics took Landon on the gurney. God, they were going to take him. What if he never woke up? They didn’t have his medical records here; they knew nothing of him.
He was just another tourist to them, another idiot who’d nearly gotten himself killed because he couldn’t respect the mountains they knew to fear.
We followed them into the hospital.
“You speak English?” I asked one of the doctors.
“I do,” he answered.
“His name is Landon Rhodes. He’s twenty-two years old. It was an avalanche, and he has a two-inch laceration inside his upper right arm. His pulse is strong, but he hasn’t woken up yet.”
We reached the swinging doors that had a universal sign for no entrance.
“Okay, we have him from here. You can stay in the waiting room down that hall,” the doctor said, pointing toward the well-lit hallway.
“No, I’m not done,” I nearly shouted, my chest tightening. That damn lump was in my throat again.
“Rachel…” Wilder warned.
“He’s O positive for blood. If you need to transfuse him, come get me. I’m the same. He had his ACL repaired when he was sixteen. Tonsils out when he was seven, and he’s allergic to penicillin.”
The doctor’s eyes softened. “Thank you.”
I nodded, my teeth slicing into my bottom lip as they wheeled him away. The doors swung shut, and as if they closed on my adrenaline, too, my body crashed, exhaustion and fear overwhelming me.
“Rachel,” Wilder whispered and gathered me into his arms as I started to sob. The cries were loud and ugly, giving voice to the wild emotions that had been penned up inside me.
If it hadn’t been for the avalanche, for Landon, for the blood, for the thought of almost losing him, I wouldn’t have been so weak. I would have stood on my own, walked away with my head high.
But that ridgeline had taken more than just my breath.
For the first time in years, I let the man I’d betrayed hold me.
Because he was in love with my best friend…and I wasn’t sure I’d ever stopped loving his.
I watched the seconds tick by on the face of the clock in the waiting room. They’d had him back there a half hour.
“He’s got to be waking up, right?” I asked Wilder as he handed me a steaming cup of coffee. “Thank you.”
“I know you’re a bigger tea fan, but I couldn’t find any.”
I blinked. “You remember that?”
He shrugged. “Leah said something about teapots.”
I smiled and sipped at the hot liquid, hoping that it would warm where my chest felt numb. “She’s amazing.”
“She is,” he agreed. “And…” He sighed. “And I know I have you to thank for that. After the accident, when she was hurt and her boyfriend died, I know you’re the one who pulled her through. Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” I said softly.
“I know.”
“You don’t. When Landon left…when he went back to you, she was all I had. If I pulled her through, it was only because she held me together, gave me something to do so I didn’t lose my mind.”
He unzipped his jacket and did a little juggling with his coffee to get it off. “Crazy how everything interweaves, right?”
“Yeah. If I’d never met Landon…never met you, I wouldn’t have been standing on that counter, trying to change a lightbulb in our brand-new apartment. I wouldn’t have fallen and broken my wrist and met Leah in the ortho office. Maybe we would have met at Dartmouth or not, but we were both so damaged that we kind of filled in each other’s cracks.”
His forehead puckered, and he tilted his head. “If you’d never met Landon…”
I sipped my coffee, cringing a little at the bitterness. “Right?”
“You said that first.”
I looked over at him and narrowed my eyes. “He never told you.”
“Told me…?” He shook his head.
I laughed softly. “I met Landon when I was seventeen. My dad was working on a Gremlin-sponsored event, he’d just taken over that division, and Landon was boarding—competing. I wasn’t good enough, of course, but I met him in Aspen over Christmas while we were on the slopes at a Gremlin competition.”
“But you met me in February at the skate park.”
I smiled. “Put it together, Wilder.”
His mouth dropped slightly. “You knew him first.”
I nodded. “Yes. I knew him first. We had that whole week together, but I wouldn’t give him my number. My dad was way against extreme athletes, given what he does, and Landon…”
“He’s the most extreme of us all.”
“Exactly.”
“And your dad is fucking scary,” he said.
“It’s that I-control-the-Gremlin-sponsorship-money thing.”
“It’s the I-know-how-to-use-a-gun-because-I-used-to-be-in-the-military thing.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. So I returned home, and I met you…”
“Landon was gone most of that spring for competitions,” he said, filling in the gaps to himself. “Even then he was dreaming about getting to the Himalayas.”
“And when he walked into your house when he got back and I saw him…well…the rest is history. We never meant for it to happen. I swear. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s the truth. We talked a lot about our feelings, your feelings…but…”
He rubbed his hand over his forehead. “I get it. I don’t want to get it, but I do. If Leah had been with someone else, nothing would have stopped me. That kind of need is a force of nature. Why didn’t he tell me that he knew you?”
“Then? Because you were happy. He thought if he told you, you’d see right through us…and that was before anything had happened yet. It’s exactly what you said, a need. Animal, primal, and something neither of us could ever ignore.”
“Why not after? Why would he carry that?”
“My guess is that he refused to lessen his burden. He broke you, broke the team, and then broke me. Landon’s always been good at torturing himself. I’m just… I’m so sorry about what we did to you. It wasn’t right, and we hurt everyone in the process.”
That sharp look in his eyes he’d had since the day we were found out faded. “It was nothing compared to what I did to you guys. Everything he’s become…it’s because of me, because I made him choose between you and our team. If I had to walk away from Leah, I’d be the same kind of hollow shell, but I’d never—” He paled.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’d never walk away from Leah. She’s good and honest and brings out the best in people. I’m not Leah, and Landon walked away. I think he always will.”
That’s what it came down to. Knowing that it didn’t matter what he’d done, my soul would always reach for his, my body would always crave what I knew only he could give me. I knew that all with the certainty that if he were forced to choose between the Renegades and me, he’d walk again.
“Rachel, that’s not—”
“Rachel Dawson?” a young nurse asked.
“That’s me!” I said, standing up and sloshing coffee on the floor. “Shit,” I mumbled.
“Go, I got it,” Wilder said.
“You’ll be okay?”
“I’m fine. Leah should be here soon.”
We locked eyes for a second, and it was easy to see why I’d been with Wilder in the first place. It was such a weird dynamic between us all with our history. But even as beautiful as Wilder was, he had nothing on Landon’s hazel eyes, the way he turned me on with just a raised eyebrow, or how he’d set my body on fire with a touch. It wasn’t just Landon’s body or face that made him spectacular—it was the effect he had on me. I’d liked Wilder, but I’d loved Landon.
Because Wilder wasn’t meant to be mine, and I was never really his. But Landon…
“Go,” he said softly, like he could read my mind. “Go to Landon.”
I gave him a smile and then followed the nurse, nearly running to get to Landon. She led me down a series of hallways.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Awake,” she answered with kind eyes. “Your other friend is in surgery.”
Relief sang through me, letting precious air fill my lungs fully for the first time since I watched the mountain consume him.
“He is here,” the nurse said, opening the door for me.
“Landon?” I asked, coming into the sterile hospital room. The dying afternoon light was soft on his face.
“Hey, Rach,” he said, holding out his unbandaged arm.
I flew around the other side of his bed and hugged him tight, burying my nose in his neck.
“I’m okay,” he promised as I started to shake. “Rach…baby, don’t,” he whispered, but I couldn’t stop the tremors.
It felt like every ounce of adrenaline, bravery, whatever had kept me going all simply drained away, leaving my body unable to cope.
His hand swept down my back until he got a good grip on my ass, and before I could lecture him, he lifted me onto the bed, tucking me in next to him.
“Landon, you’ll hurt yourself,” I protested.
“Shut up and let me hold you.”
I did.
He lazily traced patterns on my arm, my back, my waist as I lay there, my head on his chest, listening to the utter perfection of his heartbeat. The shaking stopped, and a wave of sheer exhaustion swept over me.
“Gabe is in surgery,” I told him. “He had some internal bleeding.”
He nodded. “They told me.”
“But you’re okay?”
“Cut on my arm was pretty nasty, and I have a lovely concussion, but that’s it.” He tensed. “My board?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t with you.”
His arm tightened around me. “Okay. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get another one sent to the next port.”
“I’m sorry you lost your ridge.”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah. Me, too. We can’t make it now, can we?”
I shook my head. “We have to leave first thing in the morning to get back to port or we’ll miss the ship.” Gently pushing off him, I raised to see his face. “You okay?”
He stared up at the ceiling. “As long as Gabe is, then yeah.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know. I never imagined I would train all this time, work my ass off in planning, and then have that happen. I know it happens, I’m well aware of the statistics, but I never imagined it would happen to me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, resting my chin on the scratchy material of his hospital gown. He brushed my hair back from my face, and I scrunched my nose. “I’m in desperate need of a shower.”
He huffed a small laugh, but it was big enough to tell me he’d really be all right. “You are beautiful, always have been. And you have nothing to be sorry for.”
Didn’t I? I was turning out to be the curse Penna had named me.
“I feel like there are things to say,” I whispered.
“Do you want to say them?”
Every ounce of self-preservation in my body told me to shut the hell up. But I’d never gotten far in my life by taking the safe road. “I promised God that if you lived, I’d think about us.”
His eyes widened. “And?”
“And I’m thinking.”
A slow, incredibly sexy smile spread across his face. “Okay.”
“Are you thinking?” I asked.
“Nawh. I already know.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Know what?”
“I know that I want you to stay with me tonight. The rest we can figure out tomorrow.”
I should have said no. He needed rest—well, what rest he’d get being woken up every few hours by the nurses. But the idea of leaving him so close to almost losing him was unthinkable.
“Okay. I’ll stay. Just tonight. But no kissing. Don’t even think about it.”
He grinned. “That’s a start.”
Maybe it was.
