Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
I return to her journal, consumed by the memories and her surgical details. My eyes burn, and my neck aches from holding the same position for hours.
The pages keep turning.
At some point, the sentences shift, and her map begins to point at me. My detachment. My depression. She pins it down with the same brutal precision she uses on the worst of the Arctic.
The sky is turning the wrong shade.
The cold is so vicious it hates human skin.
Wolf grows withdrawn and distant.
When I reach the part I dreaded, her account of that day doesn’t deviate from my memories.
Frankie asleep by the fire, my brothers dealing with Denver’s body, the snowdrifts pushing against the walls of the cabin… I threatened to kill her on the cliff, and she knew I wouldn’t. But I still hurt her irreparably.
I left them to mourn and ration and freeze because my head told me the only clean escape was death. I told myself that leaving this world would save them from having to watch me fall apart.
What I did, as her journal shows without pity, was leave them to carry too much heartache and suffering alone.
I reread one sentence in particular, one she scribbled in a cramped, furious hand.
Every day, we count our breaths and keep one for Wolf.
Fuck, that hurts.
They never gave up on me. They looked for me. They waited for me. They hoped.
If survival is a story, Frankie’s just handed me the part where the martyr finds out he was a selfish cunt.
My face goes numb, and the tears come without ceremony. One, then another, followed by a steady drizzle that smears the pages. I let it. I let myself feel the thing I keep tucked away, the knowledge that I left my family to a frozen fate I knew they couldn’t survive.
I fucking left them.
If I could rewind, I wouldn’t jump. I’d stay. I’d be the brother shivering beside them in the dark, bitching about the last can of beans, and cracking sick jokes to distract their stomachs from twisting inside out. I would man up and choose to be there because love is harder than death.
I read the rest with an achy throat, and despite what I told her, I skip the sex stuff. That belongs to them, not me. I stick to the parts that hurt. The bear attack, the icy lake that swallows her, the SOS signal, every harrowing effort they make to survive. I inhale it all, knowing where I was during those ten months.
Was being tortured by Dr. Rhett Howell worse than the hell they suffered? I don’t know.
Physical pain aside, they weren’t alone. Through it all, they had one another.
And they had one more thing.
Hope.
Turns out that was the map out of hell. Who would’ve thought?
My tears dry, leaving tracks on my face, as the book finishes beneath my thumb. I close the cover, hollow and heavy in the space where regret sleeps.
Setting the journal on the coffee table, I stare at the other book.
My book.
Write your story.
“Okay, Frankie. You mouthy little gangster. Here’s mine.”
Dropping my head back on the couch, I close my eyes.
I’m in a guest house on an island in Sitka. I don’t know if I’m straight or gay or maybe I’m stepsexual. Is that a thing? Because apparently I can’t have one stepsibling without the other.
The woman I want is a badass mechanic. Hard, honest work. The woman who gave birth to me was a rapist, and I killed her.
The man I want is a criminal stalker. Dangerous, dishonest work. The man who raised me is a pedophile, and Frankie killed him.
My real father? He’s one of the good guys. He loves like a man who refuses smallness. Too much love for a broken son like me. Too much grace. But I’m so fucking grateful for him.
I’m not where I was. I’m safe. My family is safe. I’m free to shop for clothes and feed my girl and lose my virginity.
I have a job that sparks joy and have more money than any man needs. I’m in a story where the narrator is unreliable, unhinged, and broken beyond repair. But I’m finally brave enough to put the nightmare into words.
Should I start at the beginning? That’s normal. Expected. But I’m not normal. I’m not expected. I’m not a book that follows rules or order.
If I’m going to open a vein, let it be honest. Let it be the aftermath, the scars, the hand job, and yesterday’s breakdown. I need to start with the now, today, and work my way backward, tracing the steps that made my damage unavoidable.
Might be braver. Might be lazier. Or crazier. Either way, it’s honest.
I flip to the last page.
“Let’s ruin the sheets.”
I light a cigarette.
I pick up a sharpie.
In the rise of ink and smoke, something inside me unclenches.