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He’d had a breakdown. A catastrophic one by the sounds of it. And she’d had no idea.
Whatever she’d expected him to tell her, this wasn’t it. She thought she’d been prepared, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. Because it felt like losing him all over again.
She gripped her elbows, pulled her arms into her chest to stop the chill branching out through her whole body, and bringing with it the miserable feelings of inadequacy and futility that had haunted her at the time.
‘Let’s set up camp and I’ll get a fire going,’ he said, running his fingers through his hair and sending it into damp furrows. ‘I don’t know about you, but my balls feel like they’ve frozen to the size of walnuts.’ The light tone was in direct contrast to the strained expression on his face.
‘Mine, too.’ She sent him a weak smile, grateful not to have to talk about his revelation. There were so many things she wanted to say, so much more she could ask but wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Like a typical guy he’d given her an entirely literal answer. The exact details of why he hadn’t made it home that day, why he hadn’t contacted her for two weeks. But he hadn’t told her why he’d felt so trapped. What he had been so terrified of.
But could she bear to hear the truth? Her chest already hurt at the thought of him, as he had been then, so smart and witty and full of himself, curled up in a ball of misery on the platform at the Gare du Nord, unable to function.
He dragged their gear out of the kayak hatch and they took turns to change into dry clothing. She gathered firewood, placing the broken branches into the firepit. He set about putting up the first of their two-man tents.
She glanced over at his muffled cursing as he wrestled with the guidelines and hammered the tent’s pins into the hard-packed earth.
How could he seem so tough, so invulnerable, so confident now? And yet have been so broken then? Surely it must have been her, and Lizzie—what else could it have been? But how could she not have understood how unhappy he was? And if she had, would she have been able to make it better?
He came over, crouching to light the fire, and she forced the confusing, treacherous thoughts to the back of her mind, keen to encourage the silence. She’d stopped blaming herself years ago and she refused to drop back into that sinkhole
of recriminations all over again.
He stood and stretched out his spine. She heard his vertebrae popping, noticed the pebbled skin on muscular forearms, the wisps of sun-bleached hair standing on end. And had the strangest yearning to be close to him tonight. If only to reassure herself he was OK now.
‘You want to eat?’ he asked as the dry kindling crackled and caught. ‘Before I put up the other tent?’
‘Sure,’ she said, although she’d never felt less hungry in her life.
Had she totally mucked this up? Trying to rewrite the past? Perhaps Luke was right, and all they needed to put all their old demons to rest was a good hard shag.
‘Why don’t we just share the one tent?’ she suggested, her jaw stretching in a huge yawn. ‘Save you having to put up the other one and break any more of your fingers.’
He glanced at her. ‘You sure? It’s going to be pretty snug.’
‘Don’t take that as an invitation,’ she qualified quickly, just in case he’d read her mind. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’
While her spirit might be insane enough to risk doing the wild thing with Luke again, and her mind might be exhausted enough to be able to argue her into it, her body certainly wasn’t.
Weeping thigh muscles never lie.
‘Don’t worry, I know that,’ he said, his expression as weary as hers.
‘So, the much more burning question is …’ She rummaged around in the box of supplies and pulled out two sachets of freeze-dried entrées. ‘Do you fancy rehydrogenated chilli mac or rehydrogenated chicken gumbo to go with your sides of beef jerky and trail mix?’
Prepare to be tortured tonight.
Luke glanced in Halle’s direction, stuffing their leftovers and the remaining food into a heavy-duty disposal sack. Her bottom stuck out of the tent, jiggling enticingly in fleecy pyjamas as she struggled to get the sleeping bags into the confined space.
He tied the disposal sack to the cable suspended between a couple of trees at the back of the campsite and hiked it up to the required fifteen feet above ground level that Chad had stipulated.
Chad had given him a long lecture about ‘responsible camping behaviour’ and ‘the black bear safety rules’. Although Chad insisted that incidences had been rare in the past couple of years due to ‘bear programming’, Luke had listened carefully to the instructions, not wanting to get bitten on the arse by a six-foot black bear in his sleep because he’d failed to wash out their cooking gear properly or store the leftover foodstuffs in a secure location.
However, a clandestine visit from Yogi the Man-eating Bear was not his primary concern at present. Bedding down in a confined space with Halle was. And yet he’d elected not to put up the other tent after her suggestion. Even though he should have, because the odd smashed knuckle would be a lot less painful than a night spent with blue balls.
She’d made him tell her about his breakdown. And then looked at him with that combination of disbelief and shock and pity. Shooting his tidy game plan—of repairing their relationship as Lizzie’s parents without raking up all the shit from their past—right out of the water.
She hadn’t commented on his revelations, hadn’t probed further. But rehashing that time in his life, when everything had basically collapsed into a pit of self-loathing and despair, had left him feeling tense. And exposed.
