THE CLIMB: A Romance Novel Read online

  THE

  CLIMB

  A

  Romance

  Novel

  By:

  Daya Daniels

  K2.

  The second highest peak in the world.

  Steep. Cold. Barren.

  A mountain that will challenge your technical climbing skills, your sanity,

  and your fortitude.

  A place where only a few succeed at making it to the top and many die

  trying.

  Kai and Annika—complete strangers—find themselves ascending a mountain

  they've both considered to be their nemesis for most of their lives. Kai

  intends to make it to the summit. Only a few things will force him to turn

  back, but unfavorable weather and exhaustion aren't among them. Annika

  plans to make her mark on the peak in one way or another.

  They climb.

  They challenge one another more than the mountain tests them.

  And soon they both realize that their true intentions for being on K2 are far

  more complicated than either will ever understand.

  This is a mountaineering story. This is a love story. This is a story you will

  never forget.

  WARNING: This novel contains strong language and strong sexual

  content. Intended for 18+ years and above.

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Playlist

  Quote

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Copyright@ 2018 by Daya Daniels

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any way,

  including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or any other

  means without the explicit written permission of the author, except for brief

  quotations of the book when writing a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and even facts

  are the product of the author’s imagination. Wait a minute... especially facts.

  Any resemblance to actual people—alive, dead, or someplace in between—is

  completely by chance and likely in your head.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of

  various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used

  without permission. Holy hell, this is important. The publication/use of these

  trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark

  owners.

  Let’s not forget! All song titles in this book are the property of the sole

  copyright owners.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you first and foremost to all the readers. You are my tribe. Without

  you, my stories would have no audience.

  To my wonderful husband, I love you. Your support is priceless.

  Thank you to Emily A. Lawrence for editing this novel and CMB and J.

  Zweifel for proofreading.

  I’m so very grateful for you!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Readers,

  I was already a mountaineering-obsessed teenager when Conrad Anker

  discovered George Mallory’s body in 1999 on the unforgiving north face of

  Mount Everest.

  Mallory had disappeared more than seventy-five years before along with his

  climbing partner Andrew “Sandy” Irvine when they attempted to make the

  first ascent in history of the world’s highest peak.

  I knew the story and the mystery that shrouded it, and just like everyone else,

  I wanted to know what had happened to Mallory and Irvine after they’d last

  been spotted climbing the First Step at around 7,925 meters—26,000 feet—

  on June 8, 1924.

  Whether the pair made it to the summit has always been under speculation,

  even until today. Along with that unanswered question, Sandy Irvine’s body

  was never found along with the Kodak camera it was rumored that he had

  always carried with him.

  George Mallory’s sun-bleached torso was found almost perfectly preserved

  wearing old clothing and still with a brass altimeter, knife, and snow-goggles

  in his pocket, and hobnailed boots on his feet. His muscular arms were

  extended above his head. His fingers, which held on to the mountainside for

  dear life, were dug into the gravel. His legs were stretched out. One was

  broken. The other crossed over it. Rope still encircled his waist where his

  body held evidence of a severe rope-jerk injury because he and Irvine were

  likely roped together when one of them slipped.

  It was believed Mallory survived the fall, but while he was descending in a

  glissade with his ice axe in the snow it must’ve hit a rock, bounced off, and

  hit him in the head, leaving a fatal wound the size of a golf ball.

  Shit luck, right? To have made it that far and have perished.

  I remember thinking then that these two men had died doing what they loved.

  They set out to make history. And even if they hadn’t succeeded, they dared

  to do what most of us only wish we were brave enough to attempt.

  This only solidified my fascination with mountaineering.

  So, for the folks who dare to take on these peaks, you have my utmost respect and admiration.

  While I have tried to keep this story as realistic as possible, some parts may

  seem a tad idealistic. I take complete ownership of that (smiles). After all, this is fiction. It is ultimately a love story and a survival story in the truest of ways. And, of course, I had the most fabulous time writing it.

  I do hope you fall in love with Kai and Annika as much as I have.

  Yours truly,

  Daya

  #climb#mountainmadness#loveconquersall

  PLAYLIST

  Click SPOTIFY to listen to songs inspired by this story

  “A Sky Full of Stars” — Coldplay

  “High Hopes” — Pink Floyd

  “We Stand a Chance” —Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

  “Purple Haze” — Jimi Hendrix

  “Wish You Were Here” — Pink Floyd

  “Stairway to Heaven” — Led Zeppelin

  “Danger” — Migos & Marshmello

  “I Forget Where We Were” — Ben Howard

  “Solitude Is Bliss” — Tame Impala

  “Misguided Ghosts” — Paramore

  “God’s Plan” — Drake

  “Under Pressure” — David Bowie featuring Freddie Mercury

  “Winter” — Daughter

  “Comfortably Numb” — Pink Floyd

  “K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice, and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it.”

  -Ed Viesturs, K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous

  Mountain

  To all those climbers who have lost their lives on K2.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Base Camp

  5,000 meters |
16,404 feet

  Kai

  BLUE.

  I have complicated feelings about the color.

  It’s the hue of the candles that were on my birthday cake when I was

  ten years old. It’s the color of the Blue Grotto off Capri I’ve swum in once as

  a boy. It’s the deep shade of the beautiful sapphire in the diamond ring my

  mother, Catherine, never takes off her middle finger.

  It’s also the same shade of the poison dart frog I’ve once come across

  as a teenager in the Amazon jungle, which with one brush of its toxic skin

  against yours would stop your heart dead in your chest. It’s the color that my

  father, Alfred’s, angry, dry lips were the last time I saw him. It’s also the

  same shade of the murderous ice that sank the Titanic.

  And I’ve been told since I was a boy, many times over, that it’s

  undoubtedly the color of the blood that flows through my veins.

  It’s 07:00.

  Inhaling the freshly brewed coffee floating around in the thermos in my

  hands, I crane my neck up to the June sky of stratus clouds and the patch of

  cerulean that comes into view. My spirit deflates a little when nothing but

  endless gray suddenly swallows up the tiny window of light.

  A huff leaves me as I survey the gray expanse that surrounds me.

  More blue.

  It’s the color of the close to fifty tents that litter this base camp on the

  moraine of the Godwin-Austen Glacier just behind me where I stand in

  northern Pakistan on the western edge of the Himalayas. It’s the hue of the

  insulated pants I’m wearing. It’s the color of the Korean rope stacked high

  near the mess tent where a few climbers are huddled together tasting the

  selection of breakfast on offer.

  I absorb the spectacular beauty of the Baltoro Glacier—one of the

  longest glaciers outside of the polar region—which is ahead, snow-capped and white, edged by the mass of gray and black rock. Then to my distant

  right, just behind the massive Concordia Glacier, in all their haughty glory,

  stand Gasherbrum, Broad Peak, and Hidden Peak.

  I’ve scaled them all but none without mishaps to other team members

  along with a few deaths. Luckily, each time, I managed to walk away

  unharmed and with all my fingers, my toes, and my sanity.

  In fact, in my forty years of life, I’ve made it to the top of all Seven

  Summits: Mount Everest four times, Aconcagua, Denali three times,

  Kilimanjaro, Mount Elbrus twice, Mount Vinson twice, Puncak Jaya and

  Mount Kosciuszko twice.

  There’s only one left, which I regard as a true challenge...

  A smile dances across my lips. No, it’s more like an annoyed smirk.

  I kick a rock with my boot, examining the sharp edges of it, and inhale.

  The mean temperature around here during the day has been a

  comfortable thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Bearable. But still frigid with a slight

  windchill factor. So technically, right now, in the middle of July, I’m

  standing in the coldest place in Pakistan.

  I’ve been in this godforsaken country for three weeks now.

  After spending a week in the very hot and dusty capital of Islamabad, I

  hopped the first flight from there and to Skardu.

  I’ve done all this shit before, many times...

  The trip here is always the same.

  The people you meet along the way are super friendly. They offer you

  way too much green tea and porridge. Often a few of them pray for you—for

  good reason. They decorate you with blue ribbons and necklaces made of

  pistachios and mutter things like, “May God be with you on your journey.”

  Blah, blah, blah.

  After leaving Skardu, there was a four-plus hour rocky ride in a yellow

  bus that was driven by a funny-looking man named Inskar who talked

  entirely too much and who tried to convince me to meet one of his sisters the

  whole trip. I could barely sit upright in that cramped vehicle that was full of

  cackling chickens, let alone really pay attention to Inskar’s attempts to play

  matchmaker. And the last thing I need anyhow is another woman.

  I’m not built for the creatures.

  “Not domesticated enough,” Catherine had once said about me.

  And she was right then, just as she is now.

  It’s why I’m still single and technically of no fixed abode.

  Everything I own either resides in a safety deposit box in a Barclay’s

  Bank back in London, or it fits in the fifty-five-pound rucksack in the tent

  just behind me.

  Women want you to settle down, buy a house, and have children.

  Often, they become obsessed and utter the word “love” to no end.

  No woman should love a man like me.

  It’s dangerous, risky, fucking hazardous.

  I think I’d rather accept a life sentence in one of the world’s toughest

  prisons than to subject myself to that type of life. It isn’t me. I need to be

  wild. Free. No promises. No demands. My life has always been this way. The

  only person I need to worry about is me and I wouldn’t want it any other

  way.

  Anyways, while I was thwarting all Inskar’s attempts to set me up with

  his non-English-speaking, virgin sister, the miniscule bus he was driving traveled through the Shigar Valley and the Braldu Gorge to stop in a tiny and

  very dusty town called Askole, which is located in one of the most remote

  regions around here.

  Askole is where most travelers stop first to rest and eat and enjoy the

  last comforts of the civilized world before they make their way here, where I

  am now, in the wilderness, at danger’s doorstep, like many times before...

  Once I’d stepped outside of the mini truck, I stretched and inhaled the

  fresh mountainous air. I absorbed the sight of the world’s largest

  concentration of peaks in the distance and it all made me keenly aware I’d

  made it to the Karakoram Range.

  My heart did a little leap in my chest when I slung my rucksack over

  my shoulder and set off for a small teahouse just across the street.

  Once inside and comfortable, it didn’t take long, never does honestly,

  for me to find a warm woman to bury myself in.

  A fellow climber...

  I think it’s my reputation on the peaks that immediately earns their

  interest. Never mind my surname, which sounds like uber cash in itself.

  When they hear the moniker spoken it always has them batting their lashes

  and begging for more after they part their sweet thighs.

  But nothing ever comes of it.

  Ever.

  Let’s get back to the woman I mentioned...

  She was in her twenties. Perky tits. Firm ass.

  And I know that because I fucked her from behind. I always fuck

  them from behind and no kissing ever. I offer not one iota of a connection.

  You’d think that would be a turn-off, but still, they never shoot me down.

  And I always use a condom before I take a dive. Especially since the

  incident...I like my cock, have no plans to lose it for a pretty face.

  I can’t recall the exact hue of them, but she had big eyes that made me

  feel worshipped each time she looked up at me through her long, fluttery

  lashes, while she had my cock deep down her throat. I savored that

  encounter. Especially since I knew it would be the only one of the s
ort I’d be

  getting for a while.

  I think her name was Haley.

  A tangle of voices in the distance yanks me back to the present.

  Slipping my fingers beneath the seam of my beanie, I pull it down

  over my forehead even more, blocking the chill from touching my ears.

  While sitting in a teahouse in Askole that was filled with every

  nationality, from the Serbs, to the Russians, the French, the Japanese, the

  Nords, along with the South Africans—the list goes on—the Americans had

  been the most outspoken.

  While most of the patrons inside the teahouse were sipping tea,

  winding down from traveling and preparing for what is to come over these

  next few weeks, one or two assholes were drinking beer. Bragging. Laughing.

  Talking about how summiting these peaks was going to be easy since they’d

  spent the last six months doing CrossFit, Pilates, and pumping lots of iron.

  Oh, and also because one, who we can call Shit for Brains, had spent

  some time in the last two months climbing Kilimanjaro.

  Well, first off, you don’t climb Kilimanjaro. It’s more like a fucking

  hike.

  And nothing prepares you for a mountain like this one. Not even

  Everest.

  The other, we’ll call him Madman for now, had spent the last thirty-six

  months free soloing peaks and scaling the north face—a.k.a “Murder Wall”

  —of the Eiger in the Alps, attempting to break the speed record currently

  owned by the “Swiss Machine,” Ueli Steck.

  He earned a little more credit from me along with the lift of a brow.

  And just a little bit, I questioned his sanity.

  It takes a certain number of loose marbles to tackle the face of a

  mountain, with only your gloved hands, two ice axes, and your crampons

  secured to your boots. Knowing that anything, a gust of wind, a brief lapse in

  judgment in the form of a careless slip could send you plummeting to your

  death.

  It’s the nature of the beast, I suppose.

  Now, I’ll share with you my carefully compiled list of adversaries at

  these altitudes.

  Enemy number ten up here: egos.

  Even when I think about that, still, I can only chuckle at the bravado of

  Madman and Shit for Brains.

  Boys.

  Fools.

  Men with no fear.

  Idiots who lack respect for these peaks.

  Souls who will likely die on them if they aren’t careful.