Chapter One
Nine days after Miles ended their four-year relationship, Sabine Rourke landed in Iceland without him. She was furious with Miles for waiting until the suitcases were open on their bedroom floor, furious with her brother Gideon for getting trapped in Chicago by a client emergency and most of all furious that she had arrived exactly as planned. Every reservation still expected four people. At Keflavík Airport, there were only two.
She tightened her grip on her suitcase and moved through a crowd of travelers who all seemed to know whom they were meeting. The terminal was pale wood and gray morning, its windows streaked with rain. Her phone showed two messages. Gideon had sent another apology and a promise to catch the next available flight. His wife, Camille, had never been part of the trip because she could not get away from work, but she had added a warning that she would hide Gideon’s passport if he missed a second flight. Bram’s message was shorter.
I’m beside the rental desk. Blue jacket. More objectionable beard than you remember.
The last time she had seen him had been Christmas, when the beard was shorter and Miles still occupied the chair beside her at her parents’ table. Bram had opened the wine, fixed the loose hinge on a kitchen cabinet without being asked and kept meeting Sabine’s eyes whenever Miles interrupted her. Nothing had happened. Nothing ever happened with Bram. Their history was built from things that had not.
She found him leaning against a concrete pillar with his arms folded. He had named the wrong distinguishing feature. The beard was fine. It was the copper in his hair that caught the cold airport light and the pale eyes that settled on her as if the hundreds of people between them had dissolved. His gaze moved over her face, paused for one dangerous second at her mouth and returned to her eyes.
“You came,” he said.
“That was generally the idea.”
“After what happened, I wasn’t sure.”
“What happened is that Miles made a decision. He didn’t acquire custody of Iceland in the settlement.”
Bram’s mouth shifted, but he was too careful to smile. At thirty-eight, he looked less polished than he had when they were younger and better for it. The slight bend in his nose made the rest of his face more interesting. His beard had begun to show two narrow streaks of silver near his chin. Sabine resented noticing either detail before breakfast.
He reached for her suitcase. She kept hold of it.
“I can manage my luggage.”
“I know.” His fingers remained around the opposite side of the handle. “I’m still offering.”
She released it because making a point at the rental counter would only prove that she was making a point. Bram took the larger suitcase without triumph, which was one of the aggravating things about him. He had spent most of her life knowing when victory should be quiet.
The vehicle Gideon had reserved was a dark green SUV with room for four adults, their luggage and the food they had planned to buy in Reykjavík. The empty fourth seat felt indecently conspicuous. Miles had been included in every version of the itinerary: Miles at the waterfalls, Miles in the hot springs, Miles driving when Gideon and Bram wanted beer with dinner. Sabine shoved her backpack onto the seat where he would have sat.
“Gideon thinks he can fly tomorrow night,” Bram said after they joined the road toward Reykjavík. “We can wait in the city if you want.”
“The cabin near Vík is prepaid.”
“It’s money. We can lose it.”
“You and my brother can lose your share. I’m sleeping in that cabin.”
Rain freckled the windshield. Beyond it, the land stretched low and strange, black rock covered in thick green moss beneath a sky that seemed close enough to touch. There were no trees to interrupt the distance. Steam lifted from somewhere beyond the road, white against the iron-colored clouds.
Bram drove with both hands on the wheel. “Then we start the trip.”
His easy agreement made her turn toward him. “That’s it?”
“Were you hoping for a fight?”
“Everyone has an opinion about what I should be doing. My mother thinks I should be home. Gideon thinks I should spend two weeks in a spa. My friends think I should download three dating apps and make Miles jealous. You’re the first person who hasn’t prescribed a recovery plan.”
“You’ve never responded well to prescriptions.”
“I respond to antibiotics.”
“Under protest.”
The laugh got out before she could stop it. Bram glanced over, and something in his expression warmed too quickly. Sabine turned toward the window before either of them had to account for it.
They stopped in Reykjavík for groceries and waterproof gloves. In the market, Bram followed the list Gideon had made with the diligence of a contractor checking materials. Sabine added chocolate, two bottles of wine and a bag of unfamiliar licorice without consultation. When Bram placed coffee in the cart, she removed it and chose a stronger roast.
“Gideon said that one was good,” he said.
“Gideon drinks coffee that tastes like a polite suggestion.”
“You haven’t changed much.”
The words could have been affectionate. The way he looked at her made them something else. Six years earlier, at Gideon’s wedding, they had sat outside the reception after everyone else had gone in to dance. Bram’s divorce had been final for three months. Sabine had been twenty-seven and newly aware that he possessed an interior life separate from her brother. They had talked until the staff began stacking chairs around them. When she shivered, he had draped his jacket over her shoulders, and the air had altered. He had felt it. She knew because he had gone very still before standing and suggesting they find Gideon.
After that, they became experts at avoiding solitude. Sabine set the coffee in the cart. “Neither have you.”
“That isn’t true.”
“The beard is not a personality transformation.”
“My objectionable beard and I are wounded.”
He moved toward the dairy case, ending the exchange. She watched the width of his shoulders beneath the blue jacket and hated Miles a little for depriving her of the convenient barrier his presence would have provided.
By the time they left the city, the rain had sharpened. They drove east through settlements that gave way quickly to fields, low mountains and horses standing with their backs to the weather. Bram did not fill the space with reassurance. He told her why Icelandic horses could never return once exported and admitted that he had packed three headlamps because Gideon could not be trusted to pack one. When Sabine found a radio station playing a mournful song in Icelandic, they listened without inventing a joke.
Her phone lit in the cup holder. Miles’s name appeared before the screen went dark.
Bram kept his attention on the road. “Do you need me to stop?”
“No.”
“All right.”
She picked up the phone, then held the power button until the screen disappeared entirely. Miles had spent their final conversation explaining that he loved her but could no longer see the version of their future they had planned. He wanted room. He wanted uncertainty. He had said those things in her apartment while the two new suitcases for Iceland stood open on the bedroom floor.
“He said he’d been thinking about it for months,” she said. “Apparently, I was the only person in my relationship who didn’t know it was ending.”
Bram’s hands tightened once on the wheel. “That was cowardly.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn him into a villain because you think it will help me. He should have told me sooner. He’s also allowed to stop loving me.”
“Those are two separate facts.”
She studied his profile. “You sound certain.”
“I stayed married almost a year after I knew we were finished. I told myself silence was kindness because I didn’t want to be responsible for hurting her. It only made the eventual hurt larger.” He took a breath, and the muscles along his jaw loosened. “Miles was allowed to leave. You were entitled to the truth while it could still change your choices.”
It was the most Bram had ever said to her about his marriage. Gideon had supplied only the facts at the time, and Sabine had not asked for details that did not belong to her. She looked outside again, but the landscape had blurred behind rain.
“Thank you,” she said.
They reached Seljalandsfoss in the late afternoon. The waterfall spilled from the cliff in a long white ribbon, and the wind flung its spray across the path before they had crossed the parking area. Sabine pulled up her hood. Bram opened the rear door to retrieve the waterproof pants she had mocked him for packing.
“Not a word,” she warned.
“I’m thinking several.”
“Keep thinking them.”
They walked behind the falls with water thundering hard enough to erase conversation. The path was slick and narrow. Sabine placed one hand against the wet rock and edged forward until her boot slid. Bram caught her around the waist before her knee struck the ground.
For an instant, her back was fitted to his chest. His arm crossed her stomach, firm beneath her raincoat, and his breath touched the side of her hood. The waterfall filled the space where either of them might have pretended the contact was ordinary. Sabine became conscious of the strength in his forearm, the heat of his body and the fact that his hand had spread instinctively across her abdomen.
He set her upright and removed it. “Careful,” he said.
She turned. Water ran from his hair into his beard, and his eyes were no longer pale. They had darkened to the color of the sky before snow.
“I’m not going to break, Bram.”
“That isn’t what I’m afraid of.”
He stepped around her and continued along the path. Sabine remained beneath the deafening water for another second, watching him leave and understanding that she had not imagined the past six years. Whatever Bram feared had followed them to Iceland.
