was alive. She’d had months to prepare herself for this confrontation, to script every word and every motion in her head, compose the best emasculating zingers and lists of all the ways she would never, and had never, missed him. But with the starting gun ready to sound, the idea of actually saying any of those things left her cold. Colder than the balmy ten below that she’d walked through from the bus to the station. No one who went halfway around the world to find another person could honestly say she hadn’t missed him. Hadn’t worried. But it felt better to pretend. Lies could comfort.
She made a sharp right bend in the hallway and kept walking. Halfway to the end, her vision had cleared enough to see a tall, broad man with a black knit hat and an equally black beard standing outside the last two doors, keys in hand, staring in her direction.
In another couple of meters, her stomach did that dropping thing again and this time when her limb control faltered, the only thing that saved her from further humiliation was the meager stability offered by the suitcase rolling beside her.
West.
It was West.
Her polished, ever-immaculate fiancé. Former fiancé. But far scruffier.
Her whole world slowed down, and the remaining length of the hallway grew longer than the thousands of kilometers she’d traveled to reach this hallway with this man.
Instead of a tirade, her mind filled with all the times she’d walked toward him. Right back to that first time they’d met in a London hospital, when a newly minted general surgeon had required an assist and been told to pull one of the not-busy neurosurgical fellows. Her. And the way he’d watched her approaching after having her paged, down the hallway to where he loitered at the nurses’ station, his eyes broadcasting bold, open interest until he’d heard her name. How she’d pretended not to notice the looks, how she’d managed to ignore her own attraction for three whole days before she’d asked him out.
London Lia did those things. London Lia was fearless. At least on the outside. Because it was what everyone expected of her.
Lifting her chin, Lia held his gaze now, struggling to ignore the burst of other memories. All the church aisles they’d tried on looking for the perfect church for their wedding. When he’d looked at her with the promise of a long future dancing in his eyes, the future he delighted in planning and dreaming into existence with her.
Time sped back up. Her heart squeezed hard once, then began stomping a chula around her sternum, fast enough she’d have been silencing alarms on her fitness monitor if the battery hadn’t died on the trip down. And her stomach, which had been lurching and freefalling for the duration of the trip, went hollow, and cold. Then the nausea hit.
He didn’t speak or look away, just stared. There was an intensity in his gaze, but nothing loving. She’d call it a glare were it not for the pallor she could see when she got closer.
Was this it? The burning in her eyes said so. All happening before she’d even dropped off her luggage?
She wasn’t ready.
What could she say? What had she even practiced? She was supposed to say something. She’d come all this way to say things. Learn things. Remove the weight of betrayal and loss that glittered on her left ring finger.
The ring that symbolized that future they’d planned weighted her finger and something like relief weighted her tongue. Relief. Regret. Betrayal.
If she’d slept at all on the way there, she would’ve been able to think. She’d be able to look away from his eyes, and her ears wouldn’t be ringing in a way that made her worry about a stroke. She’d hear something other than her own loud, labored breathing in the dead space in her chest.
The Lia he knew would say the words. Slap him, maybe. Shake answers out of him. Something. But whoever she was now didn’t have that in her.
As the seconds stretched out his shock turned to something else, something harder, and she gave up the mental scramble for words to wait him out, watching anger flare in his eyes, bitterness turn the mouth she’d lived to kiss into a slash amid the facial hair she’d never before seen him wear.
But he didn’t say anything, either. No words from either of them. The only acknowledgment that she had any more meaning to him than a stranger came in the form of gritted teeth.
As if he had any right to be angry with her. She hadn’t left him practically at the altar.
She opened her mouth, but before she’d even mustered a word, he stepped past her and silently stormed down the hallway, rigid and straight. Angry. So angry, with her.
He was nearly to the bend, with his rigid posture and determination to yet again get away from her. She’d gone around the world to find him, but in that moment, she had no energy left to chase.
She closed her eyes and breathed slowly out.
In her memories, it seemed she was always walking toward him—down hallways, church aisles, even on staircases in the hospital where they’d meet for a quick kiss between patients or rounds. She didn’t have it in her to watch him walking away. That was the only kindness afforded her by the manner of his leaving—she hadn’t even seen it coming, let alone had to watch him going.
God, she was so stupid.
There were other Antarctic research stations she could’ve gone to. A whole world where no one knew her and she could sort herself out without pressure, get ready for the new life waiting for her outside of medicine. This wasn’t going to be productive enough to endure the pain that went with it.
Bending her head, she pinched her eyes harder shut, so the pressure swirled colors and shadow to light behind her eyelids, blocking out the mental replay of things she’d obviously never have again with him.
And none of this should surprise her. Of course he didn’t want to talk to her. She was the personification of the past, and West had always avoided talking about the past. Only the future. And she was no longer part of his future. Or she was only part of his immediate future, for the next ten days, until he could escape.
He would talk to her. She’d figure out what to say to him, what she really wanted to say, not just what her broken heart wanted to shout. They’d be working together, seeing each other every day. He’d talk, or he’d listen. After she’d gotten some sleep, she’d conjure the words.
That was the one good thing about becoming Lia again. She’d been Ophelia while at home in Portugal, and that had taken time to adjust to, too. She’d remember how to be Lia. Lia, who always had opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them. And maybe by the time she left Antarctica, she’d figure out who she really was, outside the judging eyes of people who had expectations of her.
Sleep would help. Being around her best friend again would help her remember Lia, the version of herself she preferred to the sober, sad child she’d been.
“Lia?”
She hadn’t heard anyone approach, but the sound of her name in her best friend’s voice pulled her eyes open again. Once again, she saw anger in the eyes of someone she loved, but this time, it wasn’t directed at her.
“What did he say?” Jordan demanded, grabbing her in a quick, hard hug that grounded her enough to banish church aisles and promises of forever from cluttering up her ability
