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.
Chapter Thirteen
Rachel
Lukla, Nepal
“Switch with me?” Landon asked Little John after we’d gained our cruising altitude, which, when I thought about it, was going to be our normal altitude the day after tomorrow.
Little John shot me a look, and though I rolled my eyes, I nodded. The plane was only big enough for the ten of us, one on each side down the length, and with Pax and Leah at the front, all the way to Bobby and another cameraman at the back, we were full.
“Sure thing,” Little John answered, vacating the precious territory.
So much for peace.
Landon sat down and buckled in. I turned toward the window and looked over the scenery below. Nepal was heading into winter, but the fields at this altitude were still green, terraced in places and thick vegetation in others. Where we were headed, vegetation couldn’t survive.
Then again, humans weren’t meant to, either.
“Are you seriously going to try to ignore me?” he asked.
Exactly when was my heart going to stop stuttering in response to his voice? “Just taking in the view. You should, too. It’s not something you see every day.”
“Neither are you.”
Ugh. Like that response. The one where my chest tightened and those stupid, naive butterflies danced in my stomach. I tried to kill the butterflies and turned to Landon. “It’s Nepal. How often do you plan on coming back?”
He shrugged. “I can fly here any time, grab another flight, and watch the ground roll by underneath us. You…well, I have no control over where you are or when I get to see you. So I choose you.”
But you didn’t. I shut down the thought. It wasn’t going to do us any good to hash out the same stuff again and again.
“You know how impossible this is, right?” I asked him across the aisle.
“What? Me talking to you?”
I almost snorted. “No. You trying to ride this ridge. We have, what? A week?”
“Six days left,” he answered. His eyes looked blue against the gray beanie he wore, and there wasn’t a trace of worry to be found.
“Right. We lucked out that the visibility was good enough for us to make this flight. What are we going to do when we can’t get up to base camp the day after tomorrow?”
“Take another day to acclimate to altitude. Lukla is at nine thousand feet—the extra day won’t hurt.”
“Right, and what happens when the helicopters can’t make it to Pangboche? When they can’t make the flight to base camp? Then to advanced camp? What happens when we can’t see the ridge and the weather rolls in?”
“Rach, I can’t solve a problem that doesn’t exist yet.”
I shook my head. “You have too many variables, and on a trip like this, you can’t afford them.”
“I can’t afford not to try. We’re here. The timing coincided with the week the program gave us for optional excursions. What would you have rather I done?” He looked so relaxed, so at ease with the fact that he was putting his life on the line.
“Oh, I don’t know…maybe come back when you could have devoted all the time you needed to a trip like this, instead of working it in while we happen to be docked in India? This isn’t something to take lightly.”
Twenty-one thousand feet meant that one bad choice, one slip, one second would end him—and any chance, no matter how slim, of us healing the rift in our past. Twenty-one thousand feet meant help couldn’t come, and I couldn’t even deliver his body to his mother…if she so much as knew who I was.
He reached across the aisle and unfisted my hand, stroking his thumb across the line of indentations my fingernails had made in my palm. “This documentary we’re making—we’re each going after one thing. This is mine. I’ve planned for this, trained for this, and am prepared for this.”
“How can you possibly be prepared for this when you’ve been on a cruise for the last three months?”
“In the last year I’ve spent time in the Denali, the Tetons, and the Alps. I’m not a stranger to free riding. You of all people know that.”
My eyes dropped from his, and I pulled my hand away, remembering why he hadn’t been around when I’d initially met Wilder. So many things would have been different if he’d been there to begin with. But I wasn’t thinking about that, because if I couldn’t move on from the past, it was going to kill any chance I had at the present.
That’s what I’d told myself the last two years, and it had worked well.
“You’re in shape?” I asked.
“Would you like to see?” he teased, his eyes taking on that mischievous glint that I’d always loved. Liked. No love.
“I’ll pass, but thanks.”
“I’ll just have to keep offering.”
“Can you please take this seriously?” I asked.
“I take everything about you seriously.”
“Not what I meant. Alex? Gabe? They’re good enough to go with you? You found a pilot willing to get you that high?”
The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Be careful. You keep asking those questions and I’m going to start to think that you care.”
God help me, I do care.
He sighed. “Yes, yes, and yes. If there were an issue about any of this, I wouldn’t do it. I might be a little reckless, but I’m not stupid.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“God, I’ve missed you.” The yearning in his voice echoed the little voice in my soul that I couldn’t keep gagged.
The aisle between us was too much space and not enough.
We were told to prepare for landing, our quick, half hour flight at an end. I shifted my attention to the ground below. The mountains rose above us, beautiful and just as ominous as the tiny runway carved into the side of the rock.
“Holy shit, is that the runway?” I asked, seeing a small strip of pavement beneath us. It was the shortest one I’d ever seen.
“That thing is wicked!” Gabe yelled from the row ahead of us.
“Fuck me,” Paxton said.
“I totally forgot you weren’t a fan of flying,” I called up toward Wilder.
“It’s actually one of the most dangerous runways in the world,” Landon told Gabe. “It’s not just the altitude, but the runway runs right into the mountain if we don’t stop in time.”
“Not helping!” Leah barked at Landon.
He just laughed.
I looked forward and saw Leah taking Wilder’s hand. Landon offered his, and I rolled my eyes. “It takes more than a landing to scare me.”
He shook his head with a grin, and I clutched my armrests until we landed.
“Welcome to Lukla,” the captain said as we taxied to a stop.
“Nine thousand feet,” Landon said.
“Twelve more to go,” I answered.