“What can I do?” I asked.
“You’ve done enough,” she said through a clenched jaw.
“Looks like we’re about to hit some turbulence, so tighten those seatbelts,” the pilot said.
“WHAT?” Ash shouted. “But wearein turbulence.”
“It won’t be for too long—we’re flying round a storm.”
“ASTORM!”
“Don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal.”
“Normal?” Her eyes widened, and she looked out the window in horror at the darkening clouds. The pilot banked the plane to the left without much warning, sending the already shaken Ash into my lap.
“Get off me!” She pushed herself up, only to fall back down as the plane continued its angular bank.
“I’m not on you. You’re on me!” I replied as she pushed herself up again.
“Well, I didn’t do it deliberately!” she protested.
“Oh, trust me, I know that.” I couldn’t help smiling at this, which I knew was the wrong thing to do, because it immediately elicited a scowl from her. But the scowl was quickly replaced by a look of sheer, panicked sickness as the turbulence got rougher still.
“Shit, shit!” Ash gripped the seat and the color in her face went from ash-white to a strange shade of sickly green.
I quickly opened the sick bag in her hands and maneuvered it to her mouth just as she . . .
I wished I could have reached out and pushed her hair out of her face. Rubbed her back even. But I just waited for it to be over. And when it was, I pulled some tissues out of my bag and passed them over. She wiped the corners of her mouth and color started returning to her cheeks.
“Feeling better?” I asked softly.
“Feeling embarrassed,” she whispered.
“Don’t be. I sort of did that to you once, so I guess you could say we’re even.”
Her head whipped round and she glared at me. Any sign of previous sickness was gone.
“Too soon to be joking about that?” I asked.
“Way, way too soon. If you knew what I’ve had to endure the last thirteen years, you would know that there isn’t a parallel universe out there where joking about that would ever be acceptable.” She said this so emphatically that it took my breath away. I stared at her, trying to figure out what the hell that meant.
“Ash, what do you mean by that?” I asked tentatively, but she looked away. She gave me a shoulder shrug, followed by a “nothing” that I knew was actually a “something”, but I didn’t press. I left it there, even though I had so, so many questions.
CHAPTER 15
Ash
The lodge and its surrounds were so breathtakingly gorgeous that I momentarily forgot how awful it had been getting here and with whom I’d come here. This is exactly what Sebastian had pictured in his treatment. I’d never seen a landscape like this before, never seen so many massive boulders rising up out of the ground. Some balanced on each other in shapes that were hard to imagine had been created naturally. It looked as if giants had once roamed this land and made these enormous granite boulder sculptures themselves. And their colors! Rust-colored boulders stood vertically out of green foliage made even greener by the contrasting colors. And as for the light!
The natural light was magnificent, the way it caught the boulders, highlighting slivers of them, as if someone had run a bright orange highlighter over parts of them. These rocks looked as if they had been standing here, presiding over this land, since the very dawn of time itself.
I rushed over to my bag and pulled my camera out. I looked at my watch. The sun was lower in the sky and the light was changing from cool, to warm. It drenched the fluffy tops of the wild grasses in a golden glow, shining through the branches of the iconic acacias, casting puddles of bronze and orange on the floor. I fiddled with the settings on my camera and Max/Logan/whoever was forgotten as I became swept up in all the things I loved most: light, shadows, and the interplay between them. The way in which when light falls across an object, it totally transforms it. The way it enhances drama, creates a sense of mystery, and the way it decides to show us things, sometimes whole things, and sometimes only tiny parts of things. It reveals to us what it wants to show. It is the great conductor of all we see and don’t see.
I took out my shot list and started working my way through it, taking notes as I went and filming the shots as I saw them playing out. Doing them from various angles and sides, trying to work out how best to tell this story using the light and camera moves. A lot of time must have passed while I’d been busy, because the light changed completely and soon it was twilight and I could no longer work. As I started walking back to the villa, reality crashed in again. I’d been able to keep it at bay with my work, but now it was back and I realized a few things: I was here in a remote place with my ex-boyfriend who had a different name and was rumored to be a sex god, and who had held a sick bag open for me—mortifying.I was desperate to tell my friends what had happened, but even more desperate to pee.
It felt as if the outside of the villa flowed effortlessly into the inside. Everything was a rich, rust color, like the boulders themselves. Natural woods and materials had been used in all the furnishings and decorating. Old tree branches were the banisters of the stairs and the chandeliers were made from untreated leather and grasses. In every corner, the outside had been brought in, feathers and small rocks in bowls on the table, interesting twigs in vases and woven baskets and rugs. The place was also huge and I realized I didn’t know where to go.
“Hi,” I said when I found someone.
