by Jenna Mills
Josh winced. “I know I was out of line—I’d take it back if I could. I walked in and saw you with him and—”
I didn’t let him finish, didn’t want to hear. “It doesn’t matter.”
But he rolled right on. “I was out of my mind. I lost it. I saw you with him, the way he was looking at you, and it was like my worst nightmare…”
Something inside me twisted. No—everything. Everything inside me twisted. “They’re not your nightmares anymore, Josh.”
Not his anything.
“You need to leave me alone,” I said more firmly. I just wanted him gone, out of my life. “It’s over. You can’t keep stalking me—”
“Stalking?” The word exploded out of him. “Is that what you think I’m doing?
“What else do you want me to call it?” I asked, “when you keep randomly showing up where I am and leaving flowers on my car?”
He stood in sunlight, but something dark fell over him. “Flowers? What are you talking about?”
“The ones you keep leaving me! You need to stop—”
“I haven’t left you any flowers.”
Maybe it was his voice, how strained it was. Or maybe it was the way he looked at me, as if I’d kicked him in the gut, but for a frozen second, everything wobbled.
“Don’t—” I said, but again, the word came out more like a breath. “Don’t pretend it’s not you—”
He moved fast, eliminating the last foot between us and taking my arms in his hands. “Someone’s leaving you flowers?”
My breath caught. I stared up at him, at the raw violence in his eyes, and felt everything inside me start to bleed.
Josh. I’d known him for as long as I could remember, loved him since I was a little girl. He’d been the one. He’d been the only one.
“Where?” he wanted to know. “When?”
The one I turned to, leaned on, trusted.
Loved.
I ripped away, ripped away because I had to, because I couldn’t stand there with his hands on my body, in the burn of his gaze, not one second longer.
Because he was also the one to whom I’d given the invisible knife…the one that sliced everything I’d ever believed into irreparable shreds.
Lying, I told myself. He was lying. It was all an act.
But my throat closed up anyway, my chest squeezed tight, four little words whispering like vultures through me: What if he wasn’t?
“Forget I said anything, okay?” I said, twisting away. Twisting hard. Desperately. “Just go—”
“And leave you here?” he said. “Alone?”
“That’s why I came,” I reminded. Why I dreamed of Santa Fe. “No one else knows I’m here.” Everything was spinning, spinning so fast, the truth and the lies and that murky ground in between, what I believed and what he said. “No one except you.”
A rough sound broke from his throat. “The hospital,” he said quietly. “I brought you flowers in the hospital.”
For a second I could see them, the single vase without a card. “What kind?”
“White lilies.”
My favorite.
“Like always,” he added.
And like now, somewhere inside of me pointed out, but the way he was looking at me, the raw, unguarded confusion in his eyes, the dark glitter of concern, scraped against the wall I’d built around me, the one of anger and hurt and betrayal.
“If someone’s messing with you—” he started, but I didn’t let him finish.
Didn’t want him to finish.
Didn’t want to see the glitter in his eyes one second longer.
“No one’s tried to hurt me.” I was two hours from home, at my family’s mountain retreat. “No one else even knows about this place.”
Only him.
He let out a rough breath, finally looking away from me, turning to stare at the small wooden cabin behind him.
“I listened,” I said, holding the whispers at bay, the whispers that kept trying to scream over the confusion. “And now I’d like you to leave.”
He turned back toward me. “That’s really what you want.”
The wind whipped at me, but I stood motionless. “Yes.”
His eyes met mine, met and held, for a long, long moment. But he said nothing, not in that moment, nor in the one in which he turned and walked away.
I stood there watching, watching him slide into his Jeep, watching it back up, vanish down the road. Only then, when the sound of the birds replaced that of the engine, did I cross to the small porch and let myself in, close the door behind me and lock the deadbolt.
The sun slipped behind the mountain range, leaving wispy grey clouds afloat against a lavender glow. Color faded. Shadows lengthened. Stillness deepened. Even the birds quieted.
After one last lingering look, I turned from the view, crossed to the big curved sofa, and sank down. The cabin wasn’t as large as our house in Boulder, but it wasn’t primitive either, with one spacious living area, a kitchen, and three bedrooms. A stone fireplace dominated the main room, where a cathedral ceiling arched up, a fuzzy rug lay against distressed hardwood flooring, and sliding glass doors opened onto a redwood deck. No TV. No computer. Not even Internet service.
It was where my parents came to escape.
I had no desire to leave, no desire to make the drive back to Boulder. Here, finally, I could breathe. Here, finally I could let go. The craziness of the past forty-eight hours fell away, and exhaustion took over. I could feel the heaviness, first against my eyes, then sweep like a slow, thick tide through every cell of my body. I felt myself start to drift, to sink through layer after layer of nothingness, until finally the icy chill began to fade. There, finally, I floated.
I’m not sure what made me open my eyes, only that the shadows had merged into complete darkness. Silence throbbed, crackled—
Facing the back of the sofa, I rolled against the snug cocoon of the blanket, toward the stone fireplace across the room—and the red flames licking against the hearth.
My heart kicked hard—I had not built a fire.
And from one breath to the next I was fully awake, surveying the room for any sign of movement.
Only stillness.
My keys. They lay across the room, on a table near the front door. I stood and rounded the sofa, just as the knob turned—and a figure emerged from the darkness.
Chapter 10
FOR THE SECOND time that day, I froze. Josh stepped inside and kicked the door shut, took two long steps before he realized I no longer lay sleeping on the sofa. He stopped and swung around to where I stood, his eyes immediately finding mine. “I didn’t mean to wake you—”
So much hit me at once, the casual tone of his voice, the soft glow of his eyes—the firewood in his arms.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed with a quick glance toward the table to his right, where my key chain remained. I’d believed him.
I’d believed him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as calmly as I could.
The corners of his mouth tilted. “Building a fire?” But then everything changed, the glow in his eyes hardening into something dark and unrecognizable.
“I didn’t know how to leave you here,” he said, quieter this time. “Not after what you told me.”
Breathe in, breathe out. Slow. Steady. Think. “I told you no one else knew about this place.”
Slowly, eyes on mine, he edged toward the side table.
My heart kicked again.
“I tried. I got half way down the mountain,” he said. “And I couldn’t keep going, not with you here by yourself.”
I watched him, watched him pick up my keys…watched him toss them to me.
I caught them, my fingers automatically curving around the cool metal canister.
There was an air of isolation to him that hadn’t been there before, of being lost even in the most familiar of places. It was all there in his eyes, the quiet defeat and blistering agony. And for a blurry, dangerous second, I wanted t
o cross to him and touch him, like I’d done so many times before, promise him everything would be okay.
But those days had come and gone, I reminded myself, and things wouldn’t be okay, not between us, not ever again. There were too many broken pieces. They could never go back together again.
“You still think it’s me, don’t you?” he asked quietly. “That I left those flowers.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I thought. I had thought it was him. I’d been so sure. I’d seen the flowers and assumed a threat. But…maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe that was just my imagination racing down a dark and dangerous path.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
His boyish shrug was one I’d seen so many times. “The key,” he said. “The one buried by the tire swing.”
The one my dad had placed there years ago, after accidentally locking the rest of us out, while we were hiking and he headed back to Boulder a day early.
The one I’d showed Josh.
The one we’d used the summer before, when we’d come up here without telling anyone, so we could be alone before he left for college…
When we still thought goodbye was only a word.
“I saw you were asleep,” he said, making no effort to move, just standing by the door with a stack of firewood cradled in his arms. “I was waiting outside for you to wake up, but I know how cold it gets in here at night—and how much you like fires.”
So he’d let himself in, and built one.
Just like before.
Like always.
I wanted to be angry at him for that. I should have been angry. And yet…
I glanced toward flames licking against the darkness, as the familiar scent of smoke washed through me.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
My heart thrummed hard and deep. I turned back toward him, the truth cutting me to the bone: if he’d truly wanted to hurt me, he’d had plenty of opportunity.
Instead, he’d pulled a blanket around me, and started a fire.
“Maybe you should put that down,” I said, and, with the hair falling against his face, he crossed the room to the hearth.
I watched him, watched him kneel, watched him add one pine log, then another. Maybe I should have tensed when he picked up the heavy iron poker—but I didn’t. Didn’t even think about it. Because this was Josh—Josh—and we’d lived this moment before. This moment, and so many others.
Flames shot higher, crackling against the stillness of the night.
I have no idea how much time passed, how long I stood like that, watching him stoke the fire, but finally he pushed to his feet and turned.
“Thirsty?” he asked, heading for the kitchen. “I found the hot chocolate—”
I have no idea what flashed across my face, only the swift twist that went through me, the memory of Josh and hot chocolate and the last time we were here.
“You’ve got it all over your face.”
“Is that a problem?”
“I was more thinking an invitation.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. “—but I understand if you don’t want me to get anything for you,” he said, and I realized I was still holding the can of pepper spray between us, as if I was afraid. As if I feared him.
As if I thought he meant to hurt me.
Wordlessly, I let the canister fall to the fuzzy rug at my feet.
Because in that moment I realized that whatever the lilies were about, it wasn’t Josh trying to hurt me.
“I am a little thirsty,” I said, but didn’t move from my side of the sofa. I couldn’t. As long as I stood there, I knew where I was. But one step, I knew, had a way of leading to another, and all too soon you found yourself somewhere you never meant to be.
His eyes met mine. Something silent slipped between us, and then he was moving again, toward the kitchen—
The memory slammed in hard, yanking me even though I never moved, from one moment and carrying me back to another, Josh, the kitchen, the box of graham crackers and bag of giant marshmallows, him turning to look at me, grinning—
I watched him, watched him pour water into the old copper kettle and set it onto the stove, watched him turn on the gas burner then reach for two packets of hot cocoa. Watched him tear them open and pour the powder into mugs. Watched him look up and grin—the boyish one, eyes gleaming and mouth tilting crookedly. “Marshmallows?”
Deep inside, in that place I’d walled off one stone at a time, something slipped. “Always,” I said without thinking, and the word, the word I’d quit believing in, scraped on the way out.
Then the shrill whistle destroyed the silence, and the moment broke.
A few minutes later he was carrying two steaming cups toward me.
Finally I moved, returning to the sofa and pulling the thick tartan blanket around my legs.
Josh handed me a mug, then sat, not next to me, but across from me on the edge of the big pine coffee table, among a sea of magazines and books and even a few candles. Behind him, the fire blazed.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said back.
He smiled.
I smiled back.
It all just kinda happened, happened because that’s the way it was with us, the way it had always been. Easy. Familiar. Comfortable.
Maybe that’s why I looked down so fast, to break the familiar. Or maybe because looking at him perched there on the old table, with his legs spread and his arms resting against his jean-clad thighs, his hand wrapped around the ivory mug and the glow of firelight in his eyes…made the invisible band around my chest pull so tight I couldn’t breathe.
Those hands. I knew them well. Capable of holding a baseball just so and hurling it like lightning at a batter, of strumming the strings of a guitar, or feathering along my body—
I broke that thought, too, knew better than to let any more memories form.
“It’s better hot,” he said.
It took a moment for me to realize he was talking about the cocoa. I stared at it, at the giant marshmallow melting against the chocolate.
He was right. It was better hot.
One slow sip, and there was no more cold.
Slowly I became aware of the way he was looking at me, his eyes heavy, but the blue—so, so blue it glimmered like the sliver of a summer afternoon cutting into a cold winter night.
“What?” I said automatically, and just as automatically I looked away.
“Don’t.”
Across the room and beyond the sliding glass doors, shadows swayed against the moonlight.
“Don’t go,” he said, and then he was reaching for me, his hand settling against me, fingertips drifting along my jaw as he urged me back toward him. “Not yet.”
My throat tightened.
“This is how I see you when I close my eyes.”
Words. That’s all they were. Quiet. Hoarse. But like a blowtorch to a frozen lake, they destroyed. His voice, I thought, that unnatural quiet to it, or maybe this place, or maybe the two combined.
“This is where I come in my dreams.”
I knew better than to look. I knew better than to lift my eyes to his.
But I didn’t know how to stop myself.
When I was thirteen my family spent Christmas here, in the mountains. There was snow predicted, but not the blizzard that hit. For what seemed like an eternity, hurricane-force winds ripped through the trees and rattled the cabin. It was like an explosion of white—
Until it stopped.
Until the fury settled into silence.
And we all stepped outside into a breathtaking stillness.
“Here,” Josh said with that same utter stillness, when the sunlight against the snow almost blinded. “In the firelight.”
Turn away, I told myself. Turn away.
But didn’t know how to do that, either.
There’d been so much anger between us. Hurt. Every conversation quickly brought us right back to the ugly, broken reality of our relationship. But
I sat there then, unable to do what I’d been wanting to do all along: turn away. It was like he held me, held me without touching.
Just like always.
“Your hair falling against your face,” he said. “Your eyes...”
Warning bells screamed through me. I tried to pull back, knew I needed to pull back. “Josh, don’t—”
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said, holding me there, with nothing but his eyes. “If I could rewind time and take it all back, I would.”
So would I. The words were there, right there, streaming through me. Screaming.
“To last summer,” he rolled on, as if I wasn’t even there. As if he was talking to himself. “Before I left for school. That’s where I’d go back, to the weekend we came up here—”
Alone.
When we believed distance didn’t matter, and temptation wouldn’t happen. That we could live separate lives, but still hold onto each other.
“But you can’t,” I said quietly. “And even if we could go back, we couldn’t stay there.”
Before the fraternity.
Before absence and miles and doubt distorted everything we’d ever shared.
Before we agreed to take a break.
“We’d have to go forward at some point, and I don’t want to live one second of that over again.”
The nights spent alone.
The pictures on social media.
His birthday, when I decided I could fix everything with a surprise visit.
“I’d change everything,” he said, no longer looking at me, but beyond me, to the darkness through the glass doors. “I’d hold you tighter. Longer. I’d come home more. I wouldn’t let things break.”
“But it doesn’t work that way.” Once something was broken, it could never the same. “I can hardly even look at you anymore, because every time I do—”
“What? Every time you do, what?”
“I hurt,” I whispered. So bad. “It all comes back. That night. Feeling it again. Feeling all the little pieces slashing around inside me.”
His eyes glowed in the firelight. “That’s not what I wanted. It’s always been you. Even when I didn’t want it to be.”
My laugh was sad. “I never wanted it to not be you, Josh. That’s the difference.”
