“I was busy,” Kelsey protested. “I didn’t have time for guys.”
“You make yourself busy so you can avoid having relationships.”
“It’s just because I’m traveling so much that—” Kelsey tried again.
“Forget it,” Marie interrupted. “I know you too well. And in case you’re wondering, I can see you doing it to Ross, too. I can see you pushing him away, and it’s breaking my heart because any idiot can tell that you’re in love with him. Now I know you don’t want to hear this but I’m going to say it anyway. No one’s forcing you to climb that damn mountain. It’s your decision and no one else can make it for you. Which means you’ve got to figure out if you’re ready to treat your life like it’s worth living, and go after this incredible guy who really seems to like you, or if you’re going to throw your life away like your dad is trying so hard to do.”
Kelsey froze.
Marie winced. She softened her voice, as if realizing she’d gone too far. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Kelsey spun around, unable to look Marie in the eye. “I should go.”
“No, wait, don’t go like that. Let me explain, I—”
Kelsey shook her head and walked back down the hall, forcing herself not to run.
Any idiot can see you’re in love with him…
The words rang in her mind, tolling like a bell, illuminating the one thing she wanted most to pretend wasn’t true.
In love with him…
Could she possibly have been so stupid? Could she really have let herself fall for the man most destined to break her heart?
Throw your life away like your dad…
Resolutely, she jerked open the door of the school, ignoring Marie’s voice calling her name. There was so much to block out, so many words to fear. Her arms and legs worked mechanically, turning the key in the ignition, taking her away from everything. She would not think about her father, or the way he stared at pictures of Annapurna, or the giant crack in the ice that had swallowed her mother, or Ross, or babies, or any of it.
She didn’t have time for second-guessing and questioning the decisions she’d made years ago. She had a job to do, and that job was saving her father’s life from whatever stupid, thoughtless mistake he was going to make on his way up the mountain. It wasn’t the life she would have picked for herself. Marie was right about that. But she’d known since she was thirteen that it was the life she was meant to live.
And that life didn’t include Ross Bencher.
Chapter Eighteen
He hadn’t gone to the rock climbing gym in the hopes of seeing her. At least, that’s what he told himself. He was there because Luke had been dying to show off his skills to his Uncle Brit and Aunt Tori, and Julia had jumped up and down in that adorable way that she had and proclaimed that the visit to the Slippery Rock was an excellent idea.
Ross didn’t know the first thing about climbing gyms. Still, the kids assured him that Hope had taken them last week and you didn’t have to know anything to be there. As they walked through the glass front door, Ross felt as if he was trespassing on another world. Loud music assaulted them first, and then the smell of mats, feet, and bodies.
And then he saw her. Dangling off the edge of a huge boulder that had been constructed out of particleboard and plaster.
Kelsey. Her lean body exposed in form-fitting pants and a tiny tank top cut to expose her shoulders, the narrow edge of her waist, and the curve of her spine.
Damn it, why had he come?
Tori, in her usual Tori way, swore in amazement. “What the hell is that? Is that even a human being? Is she really hanging upside down by her fingers?”
She did look eerily superhuman, poised as she was on the under-hanging side of the boulder, moving gracefully from hold to hold as the muscles in her back rippled. She wasn’t terribly high off the ground—maybe fifteen feet or so—but the angle of her body was positioned in a way that it was difficult to look at her and not shake your head in amazement.
“That’s Kelsey!” Julia cried out. “Kelsey, Kelsey!”
She did not turn to look, and Luke punched his sister in the arm. “Shut up. You’ll break her concentration. That’s a 5.13 climb, dummy.”
“What does that mean?” Brit asked, gaping at Kelsey as she rounded the edge of the rock and moved farther up the wall.
“It means if you keep looking at her like that I’m going to make that nose of yours even more crooked than it already is,” Tori replied, matter-of-factly.
“They rate climbs with numbers,” Luke said, “ and 5.14 is the hardest. Only a few people in the world can do 5.14s. Kelsey’s one of them.”