: Chapter 22

Lia

On shaking legs, I clambered over the rock then heaved myself onto a ledge. Ahead of me, Effie had already ascended, and she raised both hands in the air and howled at the valley below us.

Out of breath, I completed the climb and sprawled out on my back, breathing hard.

For two hours, we’d driven then hiked in the warm spring morning. Effie was hilarious, excitable, and about a thousand times fitter than me.

“Can we eat now?” I begged.

“Yep. Picnic time. Ye did good.”

I rolled up then joined her. On a flat rock, Effie opened a side panel of her enormous backpack and brought out foil-wrapped sandwiches. She’d long ago stripped her shirt and hiked in a cropped tank top over a sports bra, the straps criss-crossing her back.

The slogan on her tank top read Bite me (no, seriously).

With china-blue tattoos inked on her arms and her black hair in a high, swinging ponytail, the woman was effortlessly hot. At twenty-two, she was a little older than me but more experienced in every way.

On our walk, she told me about her job running her brother’s old business of Longstaff Speed Flying as her own. She trained wannabe daredevils in a variety of extreme sports and was working on making a name for herself in a male-dominated industry. She leapt out of planes, off cliffs, and climbed tall buildings to perform illegal jumps in cities. She’d run from the police multiple times and gotten away with it.

I had such a girl crush on her.

But then she’d asked me about my life and, outside of Evie, I had nothing. Not an ideal job, no exciting experiences of any kind. Not of my making.

It was humbling to consider how she’d made a life and career all for herself the whole time I’d been relying on others for everything.

I sat beside her and found my own lunch, checking my phone, too. Earlier, Max had sent me a picture of him and Evie that had melted my heart. I’d sent one back, but now, all that haunted my screen was a stern message from Felix.

Early this morning, Dad had sent a long email, the contents of which had hurt and outraged me. I hadn’t even finished reading it, so cut up was I by his words. Instead, I’d focused on giving Evie her breakfast and not showing my distress when Max arrived.

I dismissed Felix’s demands, placed my belongings on the ground, then moved to the front of the ledge.

Then I yelled into the mountain air, just as Effie had done.

I returned to our picnic site to find her snickering at me.

“Feel better?”

I blew a stray blonde curl out of my eyes. “Not really, but that was fun.”

“I had a feeling something was on your mind. Want to talk?”

Unwrapping my sandwich, I took a healthy bite and chewed for a moment, thinking. “Remember when we took the kids out, I told you how Max and I had lost touch and only just rediscovered each other. There’s more to that story.”

Effie flicked her focus to the steep valley side opposite. “Figured so.”

“Someone on my side took it upon themselves to keep us apart.” I gave the short version of the fake relative contact and how I’d been sick. “Dad then offered money to Max to buy him out of Evie’s life. He called it a test, claiming Evie was better off without a man who would’ve taken the cash. But obviously that didn’t work, and I’m here now repairing the damage to Max and Evie.”

“To ye, too,” my new friend replied softly. “Sounds like all of ye were injured by this. Was it your dad who orchestrated everything?”

Discomfort churned inside me. “I wish it wasn’t, but I think it must have been. He didn’t like me coming here, though he didn’t try to stop me. But now I’ve extended my stay, he’s sent me a shitty email.”

“He did not. What did it say?”

I picked up my phone again and navigated to Dad’s message, then read aloud. “Think about what you’re doing. Not only are you disrupting your own well-made plans for the future, but you’re doing the same to Evie. It is frivolous and childish. Where is Lincoln in all this? How can I guarantee your safety?”

Effie furrowed her brow. “Who’s Lincoln? And what plans are ye breaking?”

“Linc is our nanny. He’s in the States with his boyfriend who’s in hospital. I’m supposed to be going to university in Boston while Linc looks after Evie, educating her and managing her in a way Dad thinks best. These are plans we’ve been talking about for ages, so Dad’s right. I’m disrupting them.”

“Which only tells me ye have very good reasons.”

I squinted at Effie for a long moment, a series of realisations hitting me. “When I was eighteen, I met Max and fell head over heels for him. I don’t think I ever fell out of love with him, but it was all buried under hurt when he didn’t want me back. Dad persuaded me that my feelings were false. I can’t believe I was so weak.”

“Oh, honey, no. Ye weren’t weak. Ye made decisions with input from trusted people but with gaps in your information. Don’t blame yourself for that.”

I abandoned my sandwich and hugged my knees. “I do, though. I wish I could do it all over again. But with the right outcomes. I wish I had confidence like yours.”

Effie choked on a laugh. “Seriously? What makes ye think I have it all together?”

“You run your own business. You’re so stylish. I bet you never hesitate on what to do.”

Raising a hand, Effie counted off on her fingers. “Never pay my rent on time. Get so angry at sexist arseholes that I lose myself business. Nearly broke my neck on a reckless base jump. Slept with the wrong guy too many times that he now thinks he’s my boyfriend. Impulsively kissed a man I liked but who now will barely speak to me.”

She waggled her head in mock triumph.

“Oh my God. Do you mean Gabe with the kissing thing? I only just met him but I wondered why he stared at you so much.”

Effie sighed. “Yep. We met at Christmas. I was staying with my brother and his family, and Gabe did first footing at the castle. Ye know at midnight on Hogmanay? Gabe was the dark-haired stranger at the door. There’s an old tradition about him claiming a kiss from a single woman and, in front of the whole great hall full of McRaes, I volunteered as tribute.”

“That’s really romantic.”

“Uh-huh, except he turned me down.”

I drew in a shocked breath, loving the distraction of Effie’s fun life. “He did not.”

“Truth, except he sought me out later to apologise in case he’d embarrassed me. I mean, I do a pretty good job of that myself regularly, so I let him off the hook. Then we were just standing there in the crisp, cold night air. And he was looking at me in a way that made me think hell yes. So I leaned in and took my shot.” She thumbed at herself. “Middle name should be impulsive, right?”

“What did he do?”

Effie put the back of her hand to her forehead. “Kissed me back. I don’t mean a polite peck. This was a full red-blooded devouring. One hand to the back of my head, the other to my arse so I was pressed entirely against him. I have never experienced anything like that. So passionate, so much raw need poured into it. The way he touched me, I knew in a heartbeat that we’d be dynamite together. You’ve seen the guy. That handsome, dark glower. Those arms.” She mimicked beefy biceps.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured them together. Effie was taller than me, at about five nine, but Gabe was similar to Max and well over six foot. Both were dark-haired and with tanned skin. And though Effie was super fit, she still had curves for days, like Gabe had a muscular frame. “The two of you would make beautiful babies.”

This earned me an amused but resigned chuckle. “Here comes the clincher. After nearly killing me with his talented mouth, he cut me off and staggered away a step, muttering some apology along the lines of it never should’ve happened. I couldn’t summon enough brain cells to reply, so after a beat, he wished me a happy New Year then vanished. The next time I saw him was down by the loch. Now he thinks I have kids.” Horror crossed her expression. “Oh jeez, what if he thinks I’m a cheat? Pretty hard to have babies without a significant other.”

I waved. “Been there, worn out that T-shirt.”

Effie barked out a laugh. “Shite, sorry.”

But I was laughing, too. “Wait, then who’s the guy you’re seeing now who thinks you’re his girlfriend?”

“Ugh, no one special. He’s on the extreme sports circuit. I never should have screwed him. Total crusty worm vibes.”

I snorted and laughed louder at her choice of words.

“Ye know the type. All talk and no trousers. I had to do all the work,” she added.

Warmth spread to my cheeks, and Effie tilted her head.

“Sorry, am I being too much? I’m pretty open about sex and I kind of treat it like a sport. But ye know, I don’t think that’s really possible. Men get so dramatic.”

“I wouldn’t really know. I only ever slept with Max.” Then a darker thought crossed my mind. “No, one other person, too. But I don’t even like thinking about that.”

The words were out before I processed them. It had happened. Max’s brother. I hated the fact but couldn’t hide from it forever.

Effie’s expression dropped, and she stilled. “Shite. Do ye mean—”

“No, no. Nothing really bad. Just a mistake of huge proportions.”

“Oh, well, I’ve made a few of those.”

Suddenly, I needed her bad sex stories. My father had never spoken to me about sex, yet disapproval had rolled off him when I’d talked about Max. I’d never even tried to own my sexuality, only living under shame of my teenage pregnancy. I wanted a glimpse at the world where women could treat sex not as a dirty thing but in some different way.

“Tell me about them?” I asked.

Turning to face me, Effie dusted off her hands. In her light and fun way, she listed out her between-the-sheets exploits. Starting with losing her virginity to a local boy who was so big, they couldn’t get it to work without lube. As neither of them wanted to face the chemist or had their own online account for ordering it, Effie had to ask her sister-in-law. But then the boy got embarrassed and dumped her midway through the act. Then she told me of a guy she met on holiday who flirted with her all evening at a bar then, when finally in bed in her hotel room, he laid out naked and pointed down his body and told her to have at it. Then fell asleep.

“There was this one guy who got nasty, too, when I told him I didn’t want a second date.” She finished her lunch and stowed the wrappers. “I seem to attract weirdos and repel the good guys. This one threatened to come to find me after hours at work so he could explain to me, in person and out loud, what a bitch and a slut I was. It was kind of scary.”

“God, what did you do?”

“Told him I’d call the police if he came anywhere near me. He hung up, and I didn’t ever see him again.” She fiddled with the strap of her backpack. “This guy I’ve been seeing recently, I have the feeling he’ll turn out to be someone like that. The vile type.”

“If you need backup when you talk to him, I’ll go with you.” My blood pumped faster. How dare these guys be so awful to her.

“That’s sweet of ye, but I’ve got it. I’ll just do it in public so he can’t go off.”

“Can I ask one more thing?” She didn’t know, but her breezy way of thinking about her past conquests had me reconsidering my own past. “Do you regret any of them?”

“Interesting question. Spending time on past mistakes doesn’t feel like a good use of energy. I’d rather learn from it and move on to better things. Or better dicks.”

She cracked up laughing, and I did, too.

Effie recovered and leapt to her feet. “Come on. Story time’s over. Let’s blow these cobwebs away and head home.”

I groaned, eyeing the steep slope we had to descend. “This is going to be way harder going down, isn’t it?”

But my friend was pulling something from her backpack. “Nope. Now comes the fun part.”

The item she’d carried up the hill looked suspiciously like a parachute, a couple of harnesses alongside it. Panic rippled through me.

Effie caught my horrified stare. “Ye said to me that you’ve never done anything for yourself. Nothing wild. That changes now.”

“Oh my God. The hike out here covered it, believe me.”

But the blue-tattooed thrill-seeker wasn’t having it. In efficient moves, she strapped me into a harness.

“This is a tandem jump. All ye have to do is run when I tell ye to run, then pick your legs up and land when we need to land.”

My stomach bottomed out. “Wait, what if the wind catches us? What if we hit rocks? What if we land badly?”

Effie shook her head in amusement. “Hence why I picked Glen Durie. There’s a wee river at the base, and the slopes are thick with springy heather. Ye have next to no chance of breaking anything here. Trust me, I’ve landed in all kinds of landscapes and weather and not smashed anything yet.”

Yet my heart still raced. “Wasn’t one of your disaster points about nearly killing yourself?”

She gave a happy shrug, the brightness in her eyes compelling.

The choice was mine. Do the wild thing I never got to do, or… Not.

In many ways, this reflected my life’s decisions to this point. Everything I was doing with Max felt crazy. All the grief I was getting from Dad represented the playing-it-safe version.

But playing it safe had lost me two years with Max. It had left Evie without a father. No matter how I looked at it, whether Dad had meddled in my life or not, I was to blame for the first failure of not following my heart.

Effie had set up in position, the sail spread out behind her. She finished checking the strings and waited on me.

I quelled my nerves, took a deep breath, and stepped up to join her.