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Chapter Fifty

Darien

I glare at my trophy as I drag it through the door of my dark room, setting it on the island in the small kitchen with a thump . Even though it’s first place, it’s nothing but a consolation prize. One that makes no difference to me after everything I’ve heard this afternoon. Partying, dancing, all of it felt like an obligation that I couldn’t take a shred of delight in, not when my days with Shantal could be numbered, and I still don’t know quite who to be upset with about it.

The anger falls away as I see a flicker of something just past the sitting room, beyond the door to the master bedroom and the terrace it leads out to.

The open terrace provides a rush of hot air that isn’t combatted by any air-conditioning system, just the chill of seeing her out there on the balcony.

Shantal lights candles just like she did back in Jaipur, tens upon tens of them, maybe a hundred in total. Her eyes glisten with the glow of the lights and something else. She tucks her knees up to her chin, the hem of her flared white pants dancing around her feet as she rests her cheek against her arm and lights yet another candle.

I take a tentative step forward, past the dresser and onto the terrace. It smells of vanilla and cherry blossoms – the candles. Shantal’s hair is wet, freshly washed; I can tell from the shadow of damp fabric it has left on the back of her T-shirt.

‘Shanni?’ I almost whisper.

She turns just slightly, just enough that her eyes can catch mine and hold on.

‘You don’t need to light this many.’ I search her face for any semblance of the happiness I’ve been so privileged to bring back to her, and all at once, I’m enraged at the fact that someone has been able to snatch that from her in one fell swoop.

‘I do.’ She cups her hand around the candle she’s just lit as it flickers. ‘I don’t ever want them to go out.’ When she looks up at me, the tears in her eyes spill over. ‘I’ve got to go tomorrow.’

‘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 her cheek. ‘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 I should put 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. I can’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 forehead pressed 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.