Page 47 of Luke

It was a question she'd asked him before—ten years ago. It was a question his family had asked, his sponsors, thousands of reporters around the globe.

Why do you do it? What drives you? Do you have a death wish? What are you trying to prove?

He'd never come up with a good answer.

"Luke," she pressed, her gaze inquisitive. "I really want to know. I asked you before, and you could never tell me."

"Why do you think I can tell you now?"

"Because you've had ten years to think about it."

He tipped his head. "Good point."

"But still no answer?"

"I guess…" His voice trailed away as he looked off to the distant peaks of El Capitan and Half Dome. "I need to push myself. I need to feel…alive. There's always been this feeling that I have to chase, only I never quite catch it."

Her gaze clung to his. "I think that's the most honest you've ever been with me."

"I never lied to you, Lizzie. Maybe I'm just more self-aware now."

"Maybe you are."

He looked into her serious and searching blue eyes and felt like she was stripping him bare and not in the way he wanted. She was getting into his head. She was seeing past his defenses, and why not? He'd just opened himself up in a big way.

"Do you think you'll ever catch the feeling?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "Who knows? It could be I'm just addicted to the adrenaline rush. I'm always looking for the next one."

"Only the next one doesn't satisfy you any more than the one before," she said.

"I wouldn't say that," he hedged.

"You want to know what I think?"

"Probably not," he said warily.

"I don't think you're chasing a feeling…I think you're chasing yourself. You're afraid to be still, afraid you won't be enough if you're not moving, not achieving something, but you are enough, and you don't need to climb a mountain to realize that."

It was probably the most insightful thing anyone had ever said to him, but it also made him feel defensive. "Being still doesn't get you anywhere. Sometimes it's not enough to sit in a quiet room and plan out your life. You have to go look for it. You have to grab it with both hands and hang on tight."

She stared back at him. "There have to be quiet times. You can't live your life on a dead run."

"Who says you can't? You? Would you have taken this break if Kelly hadn't died? Wouldn't you be walking the fast streets of New York, looking for your next gig, your next moment to be in the spotlight?"

A frown entered her eyes. "I don't know. Perhaps—for a while longer anyway."

"That's where I am. I like my life. I like what I do. Why should I change it?"

"I guess you shouldn't." She let out a breath and looked away from him. "Brad is waving us over. Are you ready to go back?"

He was more than ready to end this conversation, that was for sure. Lizzie had rattled him with her comments, and he'd obviously shaken her up, too. That was the thing. They were both really good at cutting through each other's bullshit. At one point that had seemed like a positive; now…he didn't know.

* * *

She'd been having fun until she'd remembered that Luke's life was thousands of miles away from here, and he had no intention of changing it. Which meant that he was no doubt going to destroy her life by selling the resort to some corporation that would install their own staff. Or even if they kept her on for a while, it would probably be temporary.

Worry and annoyance made her walk faster on the way back to the lodge. She could feel Luke's presence behind her, but she didn't look around or speak to him again, and he seemed just as uninterested in talking to her.

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