My eyelids agreed. “It didn’t mean anything,” I said, my words heavy and slow as my breathing evened out. “The kiss,” I added, in case he didn’t understand what I was saying.
“Maybe to you,” he said quietly, pressing a kiss into my hair as his arm wrapped around my waist.
“To you?” I asked as the world darkened and I slipped into sleep.
“Everything,” he said in my dreams.
Chapter Fifteen
Landon
Himalayas
“You’re a lucky SOB,” Pax said as he eyeballed the ridgeline. We stood side by side in full gear, my snowboard strapped to my back. But I had crampons for ice climbing clipped on my boots, and Pax definitely did not.
“In what way?” I asked, my thoughts trailing to how Rachel had looked this morning, curled into me like she was meant to be. I’d kissed her, and for those rare, precious moments, she’d let me—and kissed me back.
God, she’d tasted like summer days in the middle of January, like hope, and home, and everything I’d been searching for since the last time I’d kissed her. But then she’d pulled back, and I couldn’t blame her.
I wouldn’t trust me, either.
“In the you-have-one-good-day-of-weather-and-a-new-foot-of-powder-up-there way,” Pax clarified.
“Yeah, that,” I said, nodding.
“Don’t do that,” he lectured, crossing his arms over his chest in a crinkle of cold-weather gear.
“Do what?”
“Get distracted. Not today. I’m well aware of where you spent last night, and I get it. Leah drove me out of my damned mind. But you and Rachel…” He shook his head.
“I’m fine.”
“She wasn’t the curse. You know that, right?” he asked.
I looked over to where Rachel stood with Leah, the short black strands of her hair peeking out from her Jones snowboarding cap. “I was,” I answered quietly.
“You were,” he agreed. “I brought her here, and hell, I’m glad you survived a night next to her without claw marks of the nonsexual variety. But you cannot be distracted, not today. Not with twenty-one thousand feet trying to kill you. Understand?”
I clapped him on the back in understanding. “I love you, too, brother. I’ve trained for this, I’m as acclimatized as I’m going to get, and I wish you were headed up with me. I’ve got this.”
He took a deep breath, exhaling in a burst of steam. “Okay, then fire up the helicopter and get up that ridgeline. Today is the only day you get.”
“Then today is my day.”
We made the last preparations while the pilot preflighted the chopper. It was eleven a.m. and the sky was crystal blue, but I knew tomorrow wouldn’t be the same story.
And if we stayed any longer, we’d miss the ship’s departure, so today was my only opportunity. Bobby checked out the GoPros, clumsy with heavily gloved fingers, and told us to make sure we didn’t go until the small biplane they’d rented was passing the ridge.
“You know the chopper can’t hold that altitude, so get the hell off it the moment it touches the ridgeline,” Bobby warned us.
“We got it,” I assured him when I saw the same fear Pax wore flicker across his face. It seemed like everyone was on edge except Gabe, Alex, and me. But maybe my adrenaline was masking it.
The human body was spectacular.
As we started to make our way toward the helicopter, Rachel called my name. “Go ahead,” I told the guys, and they continued to the chopper.
“What’s up?” I asked her once she was close enough to kiss.
She tugged her lower lip between her teeth momentarily. “The powder actually makes it more dangerous. Easier for traction than ice, of course, but—”
“More prone to avalanche,” I finished.
“Right. Just watch your lines, make sure you’re keeping an eye on the slough. That one line on the left looks to be the safest, but I know you’ll shoot for its big brother on the right.”
“I could kiss you right now,” I said, my smile so wide I nearly cracked my lips where the altitude had already ravaged them. The slough—the loose snow that I’d bring with me on the ride down—was always a concern, but more so after a snowstorm piled powder onto an icy spine like that ridge.
“What? You will not.”
“I didn’t say I would, I said I could.” It took every ounce of willpower in my body to leave my hands hanging at my sides and not reach for her.
“That kiss didn’t mean anything.” She lifted up her sunglasses, like the way her eyebrows arched could convince me that she meant it.
“Okay,” I teased.
“Landon,” she warned.
“Hey, at least if I die it will be with your kiss on my lips.”
Her eyes widened, and she sputtered. “That’s…that’s not funny!”
I laughed. “Relax, Rachel. Nothing’s going to happen, not when I’ve got this to look forward to.”
“Hey, Casanova, you want to hop this bird or what?” Alex called into my radio.
Her eyes hardened, and I could have kicked that asshole for reminding her what I’d turned into. “You’d better go, Nova,” she said quietly.
“Do me a favor and man the radio? I know Little John came back this morning, but you always were the best at picking out a clean line.”
She blinked, her defenses softening the tiniest bit, but I’d take it.
“Okay.”
“See you in a few, Rach.”
As I turned to walk to where the chopper threw up a small snowstorm, she called out, “It didn’t mean anything!”
“Who you trying to convince? Me or you?” I yelled back over the hum of the rotors.
I wore a smile as we lifted off a few moments later, launching into the sky despite the thin air. We’d hired the only company in Nepal stupid enough to risk a flight for fun at this altitude, but even they wouldn’t take us to the summit of the ridge.
The world below fell away as the ridgeline came closer, and my adrenaline cranked a notch. There was no room for fear up here, only precision, instinct, and guts. Fear and indecision got you killed.
“Right there,” the pilot said in heavily accented English as we approached the landing spot at the highest point on the ridgeline he could manage. “You must exit quickly. I cannot maintain a hover at this altitude.”
“Roger,” I said.
We opened the doors and unbuckled, readying ourselves.
“Now,” he instructed.
We bailed out.
The jump was only a couple of feet, and I dug my boots in as I caught my balance. Within seconds the chopper headed down the opposite side of the ridgeline to thicker air.
“Everyone okay?” I asked as the guys stood.
“Here,” Alex answered.
“Yup.” Gabe nodded, then looked down at the same time I did at the perfect forty-five-degree angle that sloped both sides. One misstep and we weren’t boarding this ridge. We’d be tumbling.
“Well, looks like there’s only one way down now,” Alex joked.
“Second thoughts?” I asked, pulling down my goggles to keep the wind from attacking my eyes. We’d only climbed an additional three thousand feet in the helicopter, but I felt it in the burn of my lungs.
“Nawh. Wouldn’t matter anyway,” he joked. “Kind of committed here.”