Page 37 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
She smiled, a thing of such sweetness and such light that I had to catch my breath. “I didn’t need that in order to know, though. Of course I didn’t. When you say you aren’t a man a woman can count on—when haven’t you been that for me? When haven’t you tried?”
“Well, not so much at the beginning, maybe.”
“Maybe not so much then, but you’re trying now.”
She stroked me some more, her fingers running lightly over the cool greenstone of my pendant, the adze that stood for strength and courage and determination. All the hard things, all the things I’d always thought mattered most. She traced up the braided cord and down again, over my skin, over my heart. And because she didn’t ask, I told her. “It wasn’t good. She said some things to try to hurt me, and I said things to hurt her. Like old times, eh.”
“Mm.” She was still drawing that soft hand over me, and it soothed me and calmed me in exactly the same way as water flowing over rock, just as I’d imagined earlier. The rain beat down outside, drumming out its liquid message of connection, of going away and coming back again, of the endless web that was life and death, past and present and future. Of the world and all the creatures that moved in it, and the people, too: those who’d been, those who were, and those yet to come. Of the world to a Maori.
And inside, in the warmth, in the night, Hope untwisted my heart and made me whole.
I put my hand over hers, felt the smoothness of her skin and the solid edges of my ring on her finger, and said, “I love you.”
She held my hand, kissed the spot on my chest where my heart beat, and said, “I know.”
Hope
Something changed between Hemi and me after that night. Some twisted place in him had loosened, and he laughed more easily, smiled more broadly, and, I could have sworn, loved more deeply. I knew I did. I loved him more, even though I wouldn’t have said that was possible. Or maybe the answer was, I loved him better.
To truly love, we have to see, don’t we? And the more Hemi let me see him, the more I saw to love, even when what I saw wasn’t entirely lovable.
That makes no sense? It felt true anyway. But then, I was pretty new to love, and loving Hemi wasn’t exactly wading in the kiddie pool. I’d been in the deep end from the start.
Too bad we couldn’t take all that love and get married with it. Instead, we made our leisurely way down New Zealand and ended up in Queenstown, the adventure resort in the lower part of the South Island, where an enormous lake glowed as richly as the sapphires in my bracelet beneath a ring of snow-covered peaks and an ice-blue winter sky. And in the mountains, Karen learned to snowboard, and I found out that I hated skiing. Which was awkward.
Hemi loved to ski, naturally. And even more naturally, he was good at it. At least he seemed like he was to me, although what did I know. As for Karen—something about the medical crisis she’d been through had made her fearless. She said after her first morning’s lesson, when I commented on it, “I already kind of died, you know? Now I’ve got all thislife,and I just want to do itall.”And I looked at Hemi, he looked at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.I’m going to be vetting every guy who turns up, no worries, and he’s going to notice me doing it.
I was probably overprotective. Hemidefinitelywas.
But—skiing. Karen didn’t mind falling. It made her laugh. Not me, though. It made me tense up, and after about the ninth or tenth time, it just made me want to cry.
“Get your poles under you,” the instructor, an impossibly fit young brunette with a sparkling smile, coached me on Day Two as a very tiny child in a jumpsuit—and probably diapers—rocketed down the bunny slope next to where I lay sprawled. Well, it looked like rocketing to me. “Push up,” Ms. Skiing’s-Dead-Easy said, “and away you go.”
I struggled, felt snow going down my waistband, up my pant legs, and down my neck, swallowed past the tightness in my throat, blinked the tears back, and thought,How about not.After which I thanked the instructor very much, saw her taking her mental impression of American toughness down another notch, decided that Karen was going to have to carry the flag for both of us, and snowplowed my way down to the lodge—hey, at least I didn’t slide down on my butt—drank a hot chocolate, and told Hemi and Karen, when they showed up for lunch, “I’ve discovered there’s this thing called snowshoeing. I’m doing that.”
“You’re kidding,” Karen said. “Hope.Lame.What are you, an old lady?”
“I am somebody,” I said, doing my best to maintain my dignity, “who enjoys the gentler pursuits.”
“But you wouldn’t even get to go fast!” she said. “You’d be going exactly the same pace uphill and downhill, slogging along, and it’d behardinstead of fun.What’s the point?”
“Thatisthe point.” I looked at Hemi. “Thank you for giving me the chance to discover skiing. And if you don’t pressure me to keep doing it, I’ll thank you even more. Consider that a clue.”
His eyes were warm, but he didn’t smile. “Don’t enjoy the thrills, eh.”
“Not this kind,” I said. “And life’s too short to do something you hate just because other people like it.”
Anika was probably an expert skier. And afterwards, she probably threw her head back and uttered a musical laugh in between posing in her skintight jumpsuit, tossing back flaming shots, and talking about double black diamond runs and how much better they were at some other resort.
As you can see, I’d spent a few non-skiing hours sitting around in the lodge over the past couple days, waiting for the others and people-watching. I was also grumpy.
Karen sighed, but Hemi said, “Right, then. Snowshoeing. Let’s find you a tour,” and smiled at me for real, and I thought,I love you, you know?
So I did snowshoe, and all right, it wasn’t the most exciting adventure a person could ever have. On the other hand, I got solitude and space unimaginable to a girl from Brooklyn, some amazing views over snow-capped mountains, dreaming white-dusted hills, the green valley, and the blue jewel of the lake, and much less snow down my back.
Hemi didn’t hear from his lawyer until the day before we were due to fly back to New York, when we were at breakfast with Karen.
When his phone rang as he was working his way through a massive plate of eggs on toast with sausage, bacon, and sautéed mushrooms,and tomatoes, he glanced at the screen, answered, listened for a minute, and then said, “I’ll ring you back in fifteen minutes.”
