Not far from the bridge, Mother Nature had provided her own barricade in the form of a fallen tree. This was as close to real photojournalism as I had ever come—encountering obstacles, flinging myself into the unknown. I was going to say as much to Quattro, but he was lost in his own thoughts. We barely exchanged any words on our rapid walk other than instructions: Watch out for that rock, careful over that slime. He needed solitude; I understood that. It wasn’t every day that you laid your mother’s ashes to rest.
For the next few minutes, I had to concentrate on my footing. We’d decided earlier that the trail through the jungle was the fastest way up to Machu Picchu, but littered as it was with wind-torn branches, our progress was slow. Quattro sighed, frustrated.
“We’ll get there,” I assured him.
His only answer was to push a low-hanging branch out of my way. I wished I had my old camera to zoom in on Quattro, staring at the trail ahead of us, ready to tackle any challenge handed to him: tough and resourceful, protective and well meaning. And irritating. Very irritating. He glanced at me after I clicked the shutter of his point-and-shoot. Even before I lowered the camera, I knew that I had captured something special.
“You want to turn back?” Quattro asked me, his first real words in half an hour, as he leaned his hand against a mossy tree trunk.
“Do you?” I asked.
He vaulted over another log that lay across the trail.
“Show-off,” I said as I hoisted myself up on the fallen tree and swung both legs over. Not graceful, but it would do the trick.
“What does that make you?” he asked.
A hundred responses formulated in my head, few of them G-rated. While I might not have said a word, I couldn’t quite conceal the curve of my smile: challenging with just a hint of suggestiveness. I couldn’t help it, really. As Quattro held my gaze, he shook his head at me with an expression I was still deciphering when he said in a low voice, “I give up.”
He gave up? On me? On this mission? I frowned, confused.
“You’re impossible to forget,” he said. His tone was almost accusatory, but he stepped closer to me.
Ohhhhh. I breathed out. My lips softened into a smile. “That makes two of us.”
Before my toes could even graze the trail, he caught me in his arms, held me so tight our bodies were imprinted on each other, and kissed me as if every bit of pent-up passion was unleashed in that moment. He pressed me back against the tree, his hands protecting me from the rough bark, and deepened the kiss. And then just as suddenly, he lifted his lips, both of us breathing hard, as we stared at each other.
“What happened to starting college without any ties?” I asked. I had to know.
“Ancient history.”
“Prehistoric?”
“Mesozoic.”
I smiled, pleased. He grinned, even more pleased.
The rushing in my head when he kissed me a second time, then a third, had little to do with altitude. Not that I would ever tell him. Boys, bravado, egos, and all that.
Our ascent to Machu Picchu was going to end up being much slower than the descent a few days before, and not just because we were plowing straight uphill. We kept stopping every couple of feet to kiss each other: the hollow at my throat, the side of his neck, our lips. Our lips. Our lips.
When we reached the first intersection between the trail and the road, we found the asphalt was even more treacherous, covered with mossy slime.
“You okay?” Quattro asked, reaching over for my hand to lead us across the road.
“Never better,” I said softly. Even so, I gripped his hand tighter for the sheer pleasure of it.
“You know, most people wouldn’t do this.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Definitely not.” The sexy look he shot me could fill an entire bookshelf of romance novels.
A few minutes later, the evidence of another small mudslide lay before us once we’d crossed to the other side. More ragged branches torn from trees jutted out of a thick layer of mud. More ankle-twisting rocks. How many more slides were up ahead? How many more were waiting to unleash from these precarious slopes? What if we got trapped?
I shivered at the memory of our flattened tent. We would have been buried alive. I wondered what my parents were thinking this very moment, wondered about myself always plunging into things without full consideration.…
Far below us, the sound of the river had eased from enraged roar to warning growl. I ventured forward, fighting my fear, hiding my trembling by hugging my arms around myself. I refused to let Quattro know just how scared I was.
We started to hike, the mocking river filling the grooves of our silence. My foot slipped. The echo of my surprised cry reverberated around us.
I fell.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Even Quattro with his lightning-fast reflexes couldn’t arrest me as I skidded along the muddy asphalt. I slid fast. The sky became a blur of eye-poking branches and cheek-scratching bramble. I knew what waited for me below: a ravine with a straight shot down the steep slope. Drop over the cliff and some jungle plant would probably spear me. Adrenaline spiked as I grasped anything, clawed at everything to stop my flight. My torso torqued one way, my right leg the other. A painful jolt traveled the length of my left leg. Quattro grabbed my shoulders, jerking me to a stop before I sailed feetfirst over the ledge.
Sharp pain. Everywhere.
I was too afraid to open my eyes, too afraid to assess the damage, too afraid to feel the pain.
“You’re okay,” Quattro said reassuringly, his hands gentle on my shoulders now, his legs around me. He must have flung himself downhill to rescue me. More firmly, willing it to be true, he repeated, “You’re okay.”
My eyes dared to crack open. He wasn’t on the other side of the river, abandoning me. He was hovering right over me, here, now.
“What hurts?” he asked, steady gaze fixed on me.
What didn’t? Pain radiated from everywhere. Dull throbbing from landing hard on my tailbone. Sharp pangs at the back of my head from bouncing on the dirt. Knife stabs at my ankle.
“My pride,” I answered, and flushed, hearing myself echo Stesha after her fall.
“Can you stand up?”
“I think so.” But when Quattro placed his hands under my armpits, my ankle still gave out. Even with his arm wrapped around my waist, mine around his shoulders, I couldn’t place much weight on my left leg. I gasped. My eyes watered. He tightened his hold. “My parents are going to kill me.”
“Only after they’re through with me,” Quattro said, “and that might take them a while.”
As lightly as I laughed at that, the movement jarred my body. I winced. “I think I need to rest for a second.”
Leaning on Quattro, I hopped on my right foot, gingerly using my left big toe for balance. After a moment of that nonstarter, Quattro swept me up into his arms, glanced around briefly for a resting spot, and lowered me onto a boulder.
“We need to elevate your ankle,” he said, gently propping my leg on the rock. After dropping his backpack to the ground, Quattro crouched down to unzip it, rummaged inside, and pulled out a first aid kit, then handed me an Advil and a water bottle. As I swallowed the pill, he probed my ankle. As hard as I tried not to flinch, I failed.
“Sorry,” Quattro said, kneeling next to me. He met my eyes. “It’s starting to swell. We need to get a brace on this. It might hurt.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him.
Only then did he unroll an Ace bandage and begin loosening my hiking boot. Quickly, he wrapped my ankle, then replaced the boot. I winced as it slipped over my heel; he grimaced.
“I’m fine,” I told him again.
Without another word, Quattro stood with his back to me, head bowed, back hunched. He could have been mistaken for praying except his arms were crossed over his chest, and his fingers were clenched in punishing grips around his sleeves, as though he were the one in pain. I’d have traded ten times more pain
, a hundred times, to not be the one responsible for derailing his plans.
“You should go on,” I told him. “You have to go on. I’ll wait here for you.”
What was I saying? It wasn’t safe for him to set off alone. The trail was even darker up ahead. How was he going to see? Hadn’t I just reminded Quattro earlier about the cardinal rule of hiking: Honor the buddy system. His own father had nearly dwindled away after one loss. What would Christopher do if anything happened to Quattro? What would I do?
“I’m not leaving you,” Quattro said finally, turning back to me. His face was tired, defeated.
I teared up at that. “I’m so sorry.”
He fell silent and angled away from me. I didn’t blame him for that. What words could have exonerated me from this crushing guilt?
“God, I’m such an idiot,” I blathered, needing to fill the silence between us. Needing him to know how terrible I felt. Softly, I said, “I know how important this was for you.”
No response.
“I’m really sorry,” I whispered.
More silence. I had ruined everything for him. It was a long time before Quattro managed to eke out “It was an accident.” He shoved the backpack away and leaned against a rock across the narrow trail from me. Then he dropped his forehead on his knees.
In the private fantasyland in my head, I had pictured the two of us, the Bonnie and Clyde of World Heritage Sites, breaking and entering into Machu Picchu. I had constructed this whole image of us ducking under the turnstiles, hopping the fence, running into the sanctuary. But Quattro had lost so much more than an adventure; he’d lost his entire purpose in flying thousands of miles and trekking up narrow trails on rocky peaks.
“All I do is screw up, you know that?” he said, his eyes hot. “Why didn’t I just force Dad to do this when we were right up there at the Sun Gate? We just thought we’d have another chance. A better day and more time and fewer people…”
And still, Quattro had allowed me to join him in what was an intensely private moment. I sniffled at that thought.
“This,” I said, gesturing to my throbbing ankle, not that he could see, his head hanging low, “isn’t your fault.”
“I should have known this would fall apart. Everything does.”
This Eeyore attitude reminded me of my father, who had been the farthest thing from a pessimist until his diagnosis. I frowned. “How could you have known that the road would have been washed out like this? You had nothing to do with me falling. I was the idiot who couldn’t stay on my feet, not you. You just saved me from falling over the edge.”
“But why did you have to fall now?” Immediately, he shook his head, frowning. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“No, you’re right,” I said, pausing. “The timing sucks.”
Then it hit me, sitting here at the foot of Machu Picchu, which itself was a mystery. No one could tell Dad why he was suffering from a disease that typically struck men half his age. Or why I had to fall now. There was no explanation: It just happened.
After a moment of waffling, I scrambled for the camera in my jacket pocket, hesitating another second before pulling up the panoramic view of Machu Picchu on the morning we’d stepped through the Sun Gate.
“How’d the Incas make this?” I asked, leaning forward to hand him the camera. Huge rocks had been hauled up the mountain, then hand hewn into interlocking rectangles that fit so tightly against each other a knife blade couldn’t slide through the joints. “I mean, these people didn’t even have the wheel! If we can’t answer that, how can we possibly know the real purpose they had for Machu Picchu?” Quattro’s silence had grown icier with my every word, but I forged stubbornly ahead, wanting so badly for him to see the truth. “So maybe there’s a reason why you can’t leave your mom’s ashes here right now, and we just don’t know it yet.”
“You don’t get it,” he said quietly, too quietly.
I gulped, wishing that I could reel back time. I had overstepped. And what did I know anyway?
“You know how my mom died?” he asked, his jaw jutting out.
“You said it was a car accident.”
His snort was derisive and self-punishing. He wrapped his arms around his bent legs, hands grasping each other so tightly his knuckles went white. I wanted to tell him to stop; he was hurting himself, but this time, I knew to be quiet. To listen.
“We had had an argument that morning. Door-slamming, I-hate-you kind of fight. You know, she had texted me. Apologized to me. Apologized. And I responded.” He lifted his head to look me in the eye as though I were the judge and executioner. “You know what I said?”
I shook my head.
“Fuck off.” His voice was pure anguish, but he forced himself to continue: “And she was answering my text when the truck slammed into her. She was telling me she loved me.…”
“Quattro.”
“I’m the reason she died.”
What words could possibly console him? Not any of mine. When I reached out for Quattro, his answer was to stand abruptly. In a voice gone flat, devoid of emotion, he told me, “We should head down if you’re ready.”
Anybody eavesdropping on us would have thought I was a stranger, not the woman he had kissed just minutes ago as if his future depended on me being in it.
I managed a fighting smile, gritted my teeth, and told him, “I’ll hop all the way back to town if I have to.”
“That’s my girl,” he said before his face stiffened at those inadvertent words, regretting them. And me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dad may have been going blind, but his hearing worked just fine. Then again, mountaineers on Everest, miles above sea level, could have heard Mom’s sharp cry when she spotted me hobbling toward the hotel’s bridge: “Shana!”
Fury thundered in Dad’s every step toward us. “Where the hell have you been?”
But Mom elbowed Dad aside; her angry frown had already transformed into an expression of fierce concern. She raced to me, inspecting me from head to toe first with her eyes, then with her hands.
“Mom!” I protested.
But did she back off? Still probing my scalp to determine whether I had sustained a head wound, Mom demanded, “What happened?”
“I just twisted my ankle. It’s nothing,” I said, pulling away as she lowered to a squat. Oh, dear Lord. Now what? I hopped back. She followed. “Mom. Mom. I’m okay.” I sighed as she went all Red Cross on me, now poking at the swollen skin that covered what used to be my bony ankle. “Ow.”
Satisfied, Mom said, “We should get some ice on this, but surprise, surprise, there isn’t any.” She sighed, frustrated. “Where were you? The helicopters have been flying all morning, and you weren’t here.”
An excuse! How had I totally and completely forgotten to craft the perfect, reasonable, and plausible excuse for sneaking out to Machu Picchu this morning? Quattro and I had had hours to coordinate our story, but our return trip couldn’t have been more awkward, me limping with his arm around my waist, both of us sweating, neither saying a single thing. I was too busy trying not to cry, apologize, wince, or groan to come up with anything.
It was Quattro’s father who answered for us: “They went to Machu Picchu.”
“You could have been killed!” Mom’s voice teetered on the fine line between anger and fear.
“What were you thinking?” Dad demanded before he turned to Quattro, his curt words damning: “You put her at risk.”
Quattro hung his head, ashamed.
“It was my fault,” I said, unable to stand his defeated expression, especially when I knew he already held himself responsible for my accident, and worse.
“No,” Quattro said, straightening as he looked at my parents. “You’re right. It was my fault.”
“I volunteered to go with him,” I said.
Dad held up his hand to stop any more words, studying me with disappointment. I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I lowered mine. “We don’t have time for excuses. We’ll be lu
cky if we get on the helicopter now.” As hard as his tone was, Dad placed his arm around me gently, taking over from Quattro as my human crutch.
“Quattro.” Christopher sighed, the lines around his mouth deepening. “This was a total breakdown in judgment. I’m not sure what you were thinking when I told you no, but—” There was a pause. “I understand.”
The barest sigh escaped Quattro. Maybe those two words were his own private Machu Picchu, which he had been trekking toward all this time. When I glanced over my shoulder back at Quattro, he had already disappeared, leaving his father alone on the bridge.
At least five hundred people were gathered in front of the flimsy gate at the makeshift helipad. No wonder my parents were so upset that I hadn’t been around earlier. My ears were filled with competing needs: “My son! I need to be with him!” and “I’ve got a heart condition!” And those were just the sentences I could pick out in English from the torrent of languages. However tough the few soldiers looked, outfitted in their uniforms and armed with their machine guns, they didn’t seem prepared for the animal panic that swept through the crowd.
A helicopter lifted from the ground, the wind from its twin blades blowing my hair loose from my ponytail. The sight of the departing helicopter caused people to jostle more vigorously. Mom nearly lost her balance. She grabbed Dad’s arm just as he tugged her tight. He glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure I was close. I was—but only because Christopher acted as my battering ram. Where Quattro was right now, I didn’t know, but I kept scanning the crowds for him. Nothing.