“How long have you known Andy?” she asked. I rolled my eyes at the way she used that nickname again. She did it to irritate me, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction to see it bothered me.
“Feels like my whole life,” I said honestly.
A yearning unwrapped in my aching heart. Andrew and I had been together just shy of two weeks, but I was sure he was my soulmate. I could no longer deny that I was in love with him. I had to tell him that. And I had to tell him I would move to the South Pole as long as we could be together.
“You can stop your pretense that you’re married. You aren’t even engaged to him.”
I haltered but then kept going. How did she know it?
“Why would you think that?” I said, cautiously navigating a new turn. By now, the paths ran parallel, a six-foot, dark, deep gap splitting them.
“Andy said he would propose with his grandmama’s engagement ring. It’s some old Victorian junk.”
My stomach hardened with jealousy that Andrew had spoken to her about engagement. I also couldn’t believe she called it junk. Then a swell of tenderness expanded in my chest. I was sure it was beautiful, and I wouldn’t expect anything less of Andrew. He’d ask for marriage with a ring that was special to him.
“Why would you even pretend?” Brie said. “It’s so stupid.”
“What does it matter to you?” What I wanted to ask was why he’d even told her. Had he been thinking of marrying her?
“Just curious. Are you engaged to someone else?”
“No.” I am not a cheater like you. “This is my man repellent.”
The vertigo-inducing pathway narrowed to the point I wasn’t comfortable walking without my shoulder grazing the cliff. One misstep could plunge me into the cleft. I pressed my back against the cold stone and shuffled my feet sideways, my left-hand fingers clinging to every crevice and cranny.
“Does it work?”
“When a man is a pig, nothing can stop him.”
“That’s so true.”
Who would have guessed that we’d agree on something? It didn’t mean we were BFFs, but it gave me a boost to ask something that had bugged me for a while. “Why did you leave Andrew for Richard?” Out of all the men you had to pick from, I wanted to add.
Brie was silent for a while as we carefully navigated. Was she coming up with a great excuse? Or did she know there weren’t any.
“I was lonely,” she finally said. “His parents had died, and he was sad for months. Yes, it sucked, but I thought he’d get better after a while. And then Charlotte gave birth and he moved her and her daughter into his house. He also gave up his inheritance to some educational charity.” She sighed dramatically. “Do you know how much money that was?”
“I don’t care,” I said with a bitter tone. My leg ached to trip Brie and let the dark ravine swallow her.
“Well, it was a lot. I was already getting tired of his gallantry. Gifting that money was the last straw for me. I was angry with him and went to a pub. Richard was there. And one thing led to another.”
Regret for asking stabbed in my gut because I hated this woman more than I did five minutes ago. And I was afraid I would find a way to hurt her.
I made another turn and haltered to a stop. “Shit.”
A treacherous wooden walkway haphazardly pieced together out of planks replaced our granite path for several feet. There was no way to cross it in one move.
“What is it?” Brie asked, most likely afraid to lean in and look around me. I didn’t blame her.
“It’s a bridge. About six feet long.”
“What?”
Could it hold us?
Pressing my body hard into the stone, I bent my shaky knees and slid down into a squat. I probed the planks with the hard edge of my flashlight. It felt solid. My hands changed the hold of the torch and shook the bridge with my hand.
“Can we walk on it?”
