Riven

  RIVEN

  LISSA DEL

  First published by Lissa Del, 2017

  Copyright text © Lissa Del 2017

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover design by Apple Pie Graphics

  Edited by Catherine Eberle of WordWeavers

  For those who choose to rise when it would be so easy to fall.

  acknowledgements

  First and foremost, my family deserves a huge round of applause for putting up with me as I wrestled with the beast that is this book. Contemporary fiction does not come as naturally to me as speculative fiction and writing it saps a huge amount of my creative energy, which, in turn, leaves me emotionally exhausted. This kind of storytelling relies on the reader’s experience to be truly appreciated and I can only hope that I have done it justice.

  To my long-suffering editor, Catherine Eberle of WordWeavers, who has been with me since the beginning and has become more than just a faceless scrutiniser of words, thank you, for making me better and for encouraging me when you didn’t have to.

  To my cover designer and very dear friend, Wendy Bow of Apple Pie Graphics; there is nothing like artwork to make a story come alive and you nail it! Every. Single. Time.

  A story like this one requires the expertise of professionals and I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Morné Moolman for his infinite patience and sound advice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so interested in the plot of a romance novel!

  To Jane Long, for sharing her architectural expertise and explaining in such detail the process of the qualification to someone who literally had no idea; thank you for giving Sarah’s character the credibility it needed!

  My beta readers: Fiona McCarthy, neighbour, friend and red-pen professional! Thanks for being honest and for having no poker-face! Wendy Bow, for being blunt and tactless and wonderful – without you I would no doubt embarrass myself! And to Cara Pechey and Candice Fountain for picking up those pesky typos, thank you!

  To The Dragon Writers, my online writing support group, who provide a sanctuary and applaud every word from the side-lines. From craft to marketing, there is no better resource for a writer.

  And finally, to my readers, especially the Rainfall fans. If it wasn’t for you I would never have started, let alone finished this book. You are my inspiration and the reason I continue on this crazy journey.

  Table Of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Every beat of my heart brings me closer to the wide mahogany door. My legs are leaden, my mouth dry and bitter, and it takes everything in me to fight the urge to turn and run. My nails dig painfully into the palms of my hands as I place one foot in front of the other. The brass knocker is in the shape of a lion and the symbolism is not lost on me. It is a glimpse into a life I cannot possibly understand, that of a man I do not know and a history I played no part in.

  Three tentative raps later I hear a determined voice call, “It’s open.” I push at the heavy door and it opens slowly, as though the house itself would deny me entry. Standing in the hallway, unsure which way to turn, I feel the unease trickle down my spine. It’s too unfamiliar; the sweeping stairway to the right, the gilded-framed paintings adorning the walls. Even the cool air is unwelcoming.

  “You must be Sarah.” I recognise the same determined voice as before, the same voice on the phone. I turn to face her and my stuttering heart thuds to a halt in my chest. Clare Russell might not have turned heads if it wasn’t for the way she carried herself. As though someone had once told her she was extraordinarily beautiful and she had believed it ever since. Her colouring is pure autumn. With her russet hair and the pale silk scarf around her neck, she reminds me of the red foxes which used to hide in my mother’s berry bushes. The milky translucence of her skin is a perfect foil for the faintest smattering of freckles, and her eyes are neither blue nor green, but fall strikingly somewhere in between. She is a few years older than I am, as I knew she would be. I would guess she is not yet thirty, but she seems older, mature, in a way I have yet to experience.

  “Thank you for coming,” she says, but I detect a trace of staccato in her honeyed tone.

  “Of course.” I nod, as though this was never in question. As though I haven’t changed my mind a million times in the past hour alone. As though my mobile isn’t filled with desperate messages from her husband.

  “Let’s take a seat in the living room.” She doesn’t wait for a response. Instead, she walks away, moving down the hall to the right. Her soft leather moccasins make almost no sound on the polished hardwood floor.

  I follow, wondering if she is used to being obeyed or if it is simply that she cannot bear to look at me a moment longer, but I dismiss this second thought almost immediately. It strikes me that this is just how she is. Decisive, controlled, straight-backed and serious and, no doubt, utterly unthreatened by the silly, simple girl trailing after her. I could never know what Clare really saw when she looked at me. A nervous young woman who couldn’t quite hide the wonder she saw in the world. A girl who was the antithesis of herself. A girl she could all too easily imagine her husband falling in love with.

  We sit in the living room - a picture-perfect replica of the cover of every decorating magazine I’ve ever seen. Despite the opulent setting, I don’t like it here in this room which smells of orchids and money.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Clare asks, as I sink onto a sofa overflowing with cushions. She seems embarrassed to have forgotten her everyday etiquette and I want to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of it. Instead, I shake my head ‘No, thank you’ and then I fall silent. It feels as though I’m still sinking, the soft sofa cushions rising up to smother me, and I shift forward, trying to get both feet back on the ground.

  Clare straightens the magazines on the coffee table and, for a minute, only the gentle ticking of the clock above the recently swept fireplace fills the space between us. Then I hear her draw in a deep steadying breath and she begins.

  I listen to the words, strangely detached, as though I am hearing the story third-hand, as though it doesn’t pertain to me or to my life. I think my heart offers that protection from a truth that is so unbelievable that it belongs in the world of fiction. I focus on Clare’s lips as she speaks, listening, but not really hearing her words. I manage to keep up the barrier my subconscious has put in place far longer than I expect, until I glance up. I watch in mortified horror as her eyes pool suddenly, glittering for only a moment before a solitary tear spills over, gliding quickly down her cheek as if it has somewhere important to be. In the brief time it takes that tear to reach the curve of her chin, my heart breaks. Clare Russell is in
pain because of me and because of the extreme circumstances which have brought me here. I finally understand that I am the problem, not the solution.

  “I’ll help you,” I say simply when she is done. There is nothing else to say. It is time to set things right. Doing the right thing is never easy. It takes courage, selflessness and everything you have. It takes far more than I have to give, but I cannot deny her request, not after seeing her like this. I should never have come here. I should never have seen her. But I have, and I did. And the look on her face will haunt me forever.

  CHAPTER 2

  I met Leo Russell on what would later be recorded as the hottest day that year. It felt as though the devil himself had thrown open the gates and unleashed the furnace of hell’s fires upon the earth. Well, upon Manhattan’s Arts District, at least. The heat was inescapable and there was certainly no relief to be found in the tightly-packed lecture hall, filled with breath and sweat, to which I was confined for sixty minutes.

  “I’m melting,” my best friend, Jessica, whispers in my ear. Or at least I assume she is trying to whisper. Jessica is incapable of keeping her voice down. She makes my Aunt Fran, who is partially deaf in one ear and automatically assumes everyone else must be hard of hearing, sound almost dulcet by comparison. Today Jessica’s dark hair is tied in two messy bunches on the top of her head, keeping it off her neck and her signature black eyeliner is smudged.

  “You’re not the only one,” I reply, pursing my lips and blowing a rogue blonde curl which has escaped my bun off my forehead.

  Prepared as I was for the unexpected heatwave, courtesy of my brother Dylan, who watches both the weather and Sky News with the alacrity I reserve only for The Vampire Diaries and E! News, I am still sweating up a storm. My light, summer blouse clings uncomfortably to my body and perspiration beads the fine hairs of my upper lip. The black pants I had donned this morning in an effort to maintain an air of professionalism are doing me no favours either. I lick my lips, tasting the salty tang, and try instead to focus on the droning monotony of the lecturer’s monologue, which is difficult, given that I broke up with him two months ago because, quite frankly, he bored me to death. I had hoped that the summer break might have given Noah time to recover and move on to someone new, but, judging by the constant calls and the impromptu arrivals on my doorstep, that hadn’t happened.

  My first impression of Noah Allen’s boyish charm had been that it was very appealing and it ensured that, in a predominantly male-environment he had a small gaggle of women flocking annually to attend his classes. As fifth-years we attend few lectures, spending most of our time working on our theses and doing research, but there are still a few mandatory classes, one of which happens to be Technology, the subject that Noah teaches. He prides himself on having landed a 5th year educator’s post, but, in truth, Noah is the prime example of “those who can’t do, teach”. It’s no wonder that his course covers only the driest aspects of architecture – after all, there’s no changing the chemical composition of concrete. It is a subject to be learned, rather than one to be experienced or evolved.

  Glancing around, I notice that the few other women in the room are making a conscious effort to pay attention and hanging onto Noah’s every word. Beside me, Jessica shows no such compunction. She is texting frantically, in between her incessant checking of the clock hanging on the auditorium wall. Noah is about as enthralling as the subject he teaches. The problem is that he loves the sound of his own voice far more than the art of architecture. I know this, having dated him for six months. Suffice it to say I barely got a word in edgeways.

  Despite the cloying heat, it settles on me slowly that I am being watched. First, the prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck, and then the unnerving sensation of simply knowing - knowing that a set of eyes is boring into you. I shift uncomfortably in my chair, discreetly scanning the room, but I cannot find the source of my discomfort.

  “Sit still!” a female voice hisses from behind me and I resign myself to facing forward for the remaining period, not daring to distract Noah’s female fans.

  “Why don’t you go and eat something,” Jessica snaps back at the girl, coming to my defence.

  “You eat enough for the both of us, Atkins!”

  I roll my eyes, recognising Samantha Simpson’s voice, but I am hyper-aware of Jess’s hackles rising beside me. My best friend is highly emotional and she yo-yos between startling euphoria and manic depression. She’s as likely to break into song as she is to burst into tears at any given moment. Sensing her steeling herself for a comeback, I place a restraining hand on her arm. “She’s not worth it, Jess.”

  Samantha has been Jessica’s nemesis since the first day of second year. A five-foot-nine student transfer, with a three-inch waist and a curtain of naturally-bottled honey-blonde hair that falls beguiling over one periwinkle-blue eye, Samantha is the yin to Jessica’s yang. When she celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday last month, Jessica finally abandoned all and any hope she might have harboured of losing her puppy fat. Jessica is not only buxom and curvy, but she errs on the side of being just too short to be taken seriously. Her redeeming features - huge, caramel-coloured eyes that dominate most of her face and a perfectly sculpted mouth, complete with cupid bow and fleshy bottom lip, are enhanced by an ironic sense of helplessness that men cannot resist responding to. Jessica epitomises the damsel in distress. Ironic, because she is neither ladylike nor helpless. In fact, her father is the chief-executive officer in a multi-national development company worth millions of dollars.

  Jessica is two years older than I am because she spent her first two years out of high school trying her hand at everything from fashion-design to flight-programming, determined to make her own way. As it happened, she made her way down to the bar on Fourth Street every night with a slew of unsuitable suitors until Mr Atkins put his foot down and recalled her Visa Card. Jessica is just as obstinate as her father so, when he failed to pay the rent on her loft apartment, she promptly called his bluff and landed herself a job at Hooters, waiting tables. Not to be outdone, Mr Atkins booked a table for two and proceeded to watch Jessica’s courage fail her as she served her seventy-four-year-old grandfather a plate of Hooterstizers.

  When Mr Atkins Senior clutched at his chest in the middle of dessert, both sides finally admitted defeat and Jessica and her father came to a compromise. Jessica would gain a degree in Architecture which would serve her well if she ever decided to join the Atkins Development Co. and, once she had attained it, her father would fund whatever lifestyle she preferred. Secretly, I think that Mr Atkins was hoping that Jessica would grow up in the five years it took for her to complete her degree. With less than a year left, he was fast losing faith. Jessica’s grandfather, to everyone’s astonishment, had lived to tell the tale. As it turned out he was not having a heart attack due to the spectacle of his granddaughter’s ample bosom in a tighty-whitey that afternoon at Hooters, but had simply developed a bad case of indigestion from the chilli. Either way, the deal had been struck and neither Jessica nor her father would concede defeat.

  I am still watching Jessica when she picks up a piece of paper, conspicuous by its lack of even a single note taken, and fans her face. “He’s definitely practicing for hell,” she whispers loudly, casting a snide look over her shoulder toward Samantha. Samantha’s envy of my relationship with Noah is common knowledge. She spent the better part of the last year trying to lure him away from me, without success. Neither Noah nor I had publicised our break-up, but by the snide remarks Samantha’s been throwing my way since the semester started, I know she’s been well-informed. Samantha eyes Noah with the same lascivious expression with which Jessica eyes a cheeseburger, but it doesn’t bother me. Further proof yet that I no longer feel anything for him. Truthfully, I doubt I ever really did.

  I grin at Jess, offering moral encouragement, but I’m distracted. I can still feel eyes on me, the feeling of being watched growing stronger by the second. I cast another furtive look around bu
t it’s hopeless. There are too many people in the room to single out anyone in particular without it being obvious.

  To my surprise it is Noah himself who tips me off to my watcher’s identity. Despite the interruption of Samantha and Jessica’s mini-confrontation, Noah hasn’t so much as paused for breath, but suddenly, mid-speech, I notice his eyes narrow at someone in the far corner of the lecture hall, someone who is sitting behind me, just out of my field of vision. Jessica doesn’t even notice the pause in Noah’s lecture, bored into a state of slack-jawed stupor as she is, but I do. And, drawn to the person who could prompt such an expression of ill-concealed irritation on Noah’s face, I swivel right around in my chair, my eyes scanning the room.

  I find him immediately; a tawny giant of a man with an enviably dishevelled head of hair that is neither brown nor blond, but a perfect coppery blend of the two. The moment my eyes meet his, he gives me a lazy, insolent smile which creases the corners of his arresting eyes. That particular shade of blue shouldn’t be an eye-colour. It should be reserved for paintings of crystal clear lakes and cloudless summer skies. He doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he is staring, and I am so flustered by his brazenness that I flush, the heat rising from my neck and up to my cheeks. I should look away, but I don’t. Instead, I glare at him, silently calling him out and daring him to look away first, which of course, he doesn’t. Instead, he holds up a piece of paper on which is written in an untidy scrawl: Only six more minutes.