‘Tomorrow?’ My brow furrows as I crouch down, meeting her gaze.
Shantal sets her lighter to the side, and her fingers gently graze my cheek, a touch that’s there one moment and gone the very next. My heart threatens to implode, full of so much sadness that I don’t think I can take it any longer.
‘I’d hate myself for ever if I forgot a single thing about you,’ she says, voice quivering. ‘I just want to remember everything, everything I can see, everything I can feel, everything about you. And the longer I stay here, now that you know what my future holds, the more it will hurt you.’
‘Shanni, no one’s to say you’re leaving—’
Her finger moves to my lips in a gesture of silence as she shakes her head. ‘Don’t,’ she mouths, brushing a tear from hercheek. ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll have to go home. I can’t leave my family waiting for me like that. I just, I don’t want to think about the fact that … that I don’t know what’ll happen. I don’t want to think about it.’
‘Well … I guess we gotta think about it. This is our reality, Shanni.’
‘Since when have we lived in reality, you and me?’
This is all too true. I live in a world where I can imagine I’m just a normal guy – freed from the pressure of recovery and racing – when I’m with Shantal, and she can imagine she has no reason to return home and leave her dreams behind. So where does that leave us if we aren’t together?
Maybe Ishouldput my foot down and tell her we can’t keep dreaming for ever; that she needs to go home and help her family heal by doing what she needs to do. But I don’t. Ican’t. Damn, I’ll do whatever it takes, but I’m not going to go anywhere.
I take Shantal’s hand in both of mine.
Easy to love, hard to hold on.
Her eyes glow in the light of the candles. ‘When I was younger, my mum would tell me we’re created with half a heart, destined to find the person with the other half …’ She shakes her head. ‘This isn’t fair, Darien.’
My thumb pushes a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘It never is.’
I close my own eyes, and I still see dancing flames even where there aren’t any, even when I kiss her in the midst of almost a hundred candles that refuse to die out when a dry wind comes our way.
The salt of her tears travels with me, doesn’t let up even when I let my lips wander down her neck until her breath catches. Her fingers undo the buttons on my shirt, one by one, her foreheadpressed to mine as I push it aside. I memorize the feel of her hands as they trace my arms, my chest.
‘Don’t leave,’ I whisper into the crook of her neck as my own hands find her waist.
She just shakes her head, her lips brushing mine just before she says the words I’m so afraid to hear. ‘You know that’s not possible.’
‘Then what is?’
‘You staying with me.’ Shanni’s eyes are relentlessly pleading when they meet mine. ‘One more night.’
And when I lie with her in bed, wide awake as I listen to her gentle breathing, her head on my chest, I think that it might not just be those dumb candles burning, despite every force of nature that wants them put out.
I lie awake all night. I keep asking myself what in the world I’m supposed to do when I realize that the woman in my arms right now, the woman who is going to be gone from here this time tomorrow, holds the other half of my heart.
Chapter Fifty-One
Shantal
It’s the day before Darien is due to fly out for the short break in Rio, and we stand in the airport.
We’ve beaten the rest of the team here, sneaked out of the hotel early in the morning so I can catch my flight. I’ll be on the next plane to London.
I struggle to meet Darien’s eye when we reach the security checkpoint. I take in every bit of these surroundings, of this humid airport in Vegas that will be the last place I see him. I take in Darien, his big brown eyes holding back tears, his strong arms, the tattoos peeking out from beneath his sleeves and the collar of his T-shirt, stories to which new chapters, new lines will be added. It strikes me suddenly that if this visit home goes the way I think it’s going to go, I might never see those new stories. This is the end of the line, and I am nowhere near ready to part ways.
‘Be strong, Shanni,’ he whispers, brushing a hair from my face.
A sob leaves my mouth before I can control it, but Darien presses his lips to mine, his eyes squeezed tight, and I close mine in the same way. I want to live in this moment for ever, fabricate a reality where we stay like this, together.
‘You’re going to thrive, no matter what happens.’ He is an inch from me, and his words float quietly on shallow breaths that kiss my cheeks. ‘You’ll thrive, you’ll be strong, you’ll figure things out. And … and if you don’t,’ he takes a deep breath, ‘… if you don’t come back, don’t worry. It’s okay because you’re gonna have a kick-ass job at the very top of the pyramid, a happy family, maybe a kid as mean as you, as awesome as you are, and maybe I’ll finally have that WDC title or something, and I’ll see you again then. Maybe a lot of stuff will have changed, Shanni. We’re gonna be old and tired and all of that, we’re gonna be grown-up, but what won’t change a bit is how proud I will be of you. I’m gonna beso proudof you and I’m still going to think of you. All my life, Shanni, all my life.’
I’m a sobbing mess, but I nod through it, trying to convince myself of what he seems so certain. That our stories are bound together, that we were meant to collide that day at the Lapa Arches, with my fake map and his fake name. He brushes all the tears away, takes my hands, and squeezes them tight as he presses his forehead to mine.
