Page 63 of Stay this Christmas
Her irritated look told me she hadn’t missed how I’d avoided the question.
“But areyouin that company?”
I shook my head, even though it wasn’t the reassurance she’d been after. “Heights have never bothered me.”
Her mouth twisted into a little frown. “I never thought they bothered me, either, but I guess I’d never been high enough to know it. I’m strictly a sea-level kind of gal.”
I curled my fingers around her feet, working the arches. “There’s a lot of good stuff to see at sea-level, too.”
She squinted at me as if she didn’t agree. “How high have you climbed?”
Wasn’t sure if my answer would make her feel better or worse. “I’ve done some fourteen-thousand footers.”
“You said that like it was no big deal. That’s really impressive.”
“It’s not all lead climbing and belays. Most are just hikes with some handholds to get through the tricky parts.” Downplaying it a little, but it wasn’t all climbing straight up a mountain face on a rope, either.
“And you never get nervous? Never freak out a little bit?”
I squeezed one of her heels between my palms, rubbing in circles until I reached the top of her foot. Her soft little sound of satisfaction made my stomach dip, but I tried to focus. “Not on a mountain. I’ve had a panic attack, though. Pretty recently.”
“Will you tell me?” she asked gently.
I hadn’t talked much with anyone about what had really been behind my decision to come back to Magnolia Ridge. Partially out of respect for Ian, but also because I didn’t love how much it said about me. For all their prodding, not even Grandpa or Georgia knew what had finally driven me to come home.
But I needed to tell Harper. Not just to reassure her about her feelings on the climbing wall, but because at this point, I wasn’t sure there was much about my life I wouldn’t tell her. I wanted her to know it all. I wanted her to knowme.
“In Durango, I worked for a mountain guide company run by three brothers: Pierce, Steven, and Ian. They became my mentors in the business, especially Ian. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any climbing magazines, but he was pretty famous for what he does.”
“I think I let my climbing magazine subscription expire.”
I smiled at her dry delivery.
“I was a fan of his before I started there, I’ll put it that way. He’d built a career out of climbing and guiding, and had a pretty good amount of fame in that part of the world. The greatest guy, too, always quick with a joke, made everyone around him feel like a friend. But he knew his stuff. Skilled like you wouldn’t believe. Watching Ian Vaughn climb was like seeing a master at work. I can only hope to ever be that good.”
Pierce and Steven were skilled, too, but I’d spent most of my time with Ian, first shadowing him and later working side by side. We got along well, with our similar dispositions and mutual inability to sit still. He was only about ten years older than me, but that’s who I’d wanted to be when I finally got myself together and grew up.
Right until I saw just what a future as Ian Vaughn could be like.
“What happened?” she whispered.
She sounded like she expected me to whip out Ian’s obituary.
“It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound, just so you know. He’s okay. Kind of. But he had an accident in June.”
Her face contorted as though all kinds of grisly images swirled in her mind. “He fell on a climb?”
“Not climbing. He crashed his motorcycle.”
Her concern shifted gears. “Oh. Is he okay?”
“He lost a leg. I visited him in the rehabilitation center he was in about two months after the accident. I’ll never forget seeing the man I’d looked up to so broken. I knew right then I needed to make a change. I never wanted to be like that.”
She shifted, pulling her feet out of my hands. “Sam, losing his leg does not make him a different person or less capable. I’ve worked with tons of people who have lost limbs, and let me tell you, they’re not any less people just because they have prosthetics.”
She tucked her legs beneath her, punishing me for being so superficial.
“No, that’s not it,” I said, huffing a breath. “I’m not explaining this right. I don’t care about his leg. Ian wasn’t the same maninside. As far as he was concerned, he’d lost his career, and maybe he has, I don’t know. But when he needed people to rally around him, he pushed everyone away.”
