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“You were dangling off the edge off the cliff and I realised that if you lost your grip, you would fall and you would die, and it’s all I could focus on. I thought I was going to vomit. I watched you hang there and it was as though time stood still, and I couldn’t believe anyone would take that kind of risk. Of all the selfish, stupid –,”
“Wait, wait, enough,” he held his hands up to silence her, confusion still apparent. “You’re ending things with me because of my hobby?”
“No,” she hissed, shaking her head. “I’m ending things with you because you have a death wish and I have no interest in getting any more involved with you than I already am.”
His eyes swept shut for a moment and a muscle in his jaw throbbed as he nodded. “I was in no danger at any point today.”
“No danger?” She expelled harshly. “How can you say that? I watched you hang there. I watched you scale those rocks with nothing but your hands to catch you. No harness. No rope, nothing.”
“Fine. You perceived a danger. Why does that mean we can’t keep sleeping together?”
She flinched involuntarily. “Because I don’t want to sleep with someone who has such a disregard for human life. I spend my life watching people die, Raf. That’s what I do. I watch people fight disease and have it wreck their bodies and slowly they have to loosen their grip on life and accept the inevitability of what’s coming – I refuse to watch someone flirt with death for fun.”
He moved closer to her, his face impossible to read, his eyes guarded. “I know you have a unique perspective on this, but believe me when I tell you: I don’t want to die, Lauren. I climb because I love the challenge. I climb because it makes me feel more alive than anything else.”
“That’s the rush of cheating death,” she said, more loudly than she’d intended. Then, with a frustrated shake of her head she stalked across his room and opened the French doors that led, as she’d guessed, into the wide lawn filled with rows and rows of lemon, orange and clementine trees. The fragrance of blossoms wrapped around her as she moved outside. He was right behind her.
“Don’t walk away from me again.”
“I’m not,” she hissed, her eyes scanning the villa. Lights glowed warm from various rooms. “I’m taking us somewhere we can talk without the risk of being overheard.”
There was a full moon and it cast the orchard in silver light. She moved deeper through the rows of trees, anger making her stride long. He kept pace with her easily.
Finally, deep in the rows of Clementines, where the moonlight struggled to permeate, she stopped walking. Words came to her without prior thought. “I watched someone I love die, Raf. I watched him die for years and it was the hardest and longest goodbye of my life.” Tears made her voice husky. “You aren’t sick. You’re young and fit and healthy with your whole life before you and to see you treat it with such cavalier disrespect makes me so angry I can barely breathe.”
“What are you saying?” He asked quietly. “That you’re in love with me?”
Her eyes flew wide, the denial fierce and instant. “Absolutely not; no way! You know that’s not…anywhere in this equation. This isn’t about you and me. It’s about – it’s the fact people are dying who would give anything to live and you’re treating your life as though it doesn’t matter.”
His expression tightened. “What I did today was perfectly safe.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I’m experienced. Because I do it all the time. Because I would never attempt something if I didn’t think I could handle the challenge.”
“That’s arrogant in the extreme.”
“Fine,” he dipped his head in a gesture of agreement. “There’s a risk, but Lauren, there’s risk in every little thing we do in this life. There’s risk in walking down the Goddamned street, risk in flying, risk in eating, risk in everything. There’s risk without activity – risk in going to bed each night that your heart might stop beating. You cannot live a life without risks; it’s just not possible.”
“But you can mitigate them where possible,” she responded stiffly.
“How can you be such an expert in death and yet know so little about life?” He demanded with a deep, rumbling tone of disbelief. The words pulled her up short.
“What?”
“You think I take too many risks, fine. That’s your opinion. But at least I’m grabbing life with two hands and living it to its fullest. You shuttle yourself from patient to patient, wrapping yourself in other people’s grief as an excuse to avoid living your own life.”
Her lips parted on a swell of indignation but there was another powerful emotion there too: acceptance. There was an element of truth in what he said. She dropped her head forward, unable to breathe, her eyes misting with stinging tears.
“You avoid meaningful relationships because there’s risk inherent to caring for another human being. Isn’t that why you’re doing this? Because you realised today that you’re starting to care about me?”
Another intake of breath and now her tears fell unchecked. He was too perceptive and he knew her too well. How had that happened?
“It’s okay, Lauren, it’s okay.” But it wasn’t okay. She was the one who was falling off the edge of the cliff.
“I can’t –,”
“Yes, you can,” he promised, bringing his body to hers, catching her face in his hands and lifting it, his thumbs wiping away her tears, his lips brushing hers. “You can because I’m right here and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. This is okay.”
