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)
“Better or worse?”
“Better. Clearer.” I set my fork down. “What happened today?”
He leans back, long legs sprawled, eyes darting away. “I fought some demons. Didn’t win. Didn’t lose. Just stopped letting them own the place.” He taps his temple.
Silence settles, magnifying the clink of cutlery. It’s not uncomfortable. Just heavy.
When the plates are mostly empty, he slips into the living room and returns with the books from this morning.
“You wrote your story?” I wipe my hands on a napkin.
“A lot of it. And I left a lot out.” He sets the books on the table. “But I need you to hear it all. Maybe not tonight. Probably not in order. I figure we can read it together, Frankie’s story and mine, and I’ll fill in the blanks as we go.”
“Okay.” I stroke his hand, humbled by his bravery.
“But if you’re too tired—”
“I’m not.”
He studies me, making sure. Then his lips tip in a crooked smile.
We clean the dishes side by side, fingers brushing as we pass plates.
“You always this domestic?” I ask.
“Only when I’m trying to trick someone into liking me.”
“It’s working.” I rinse a glass and set it in the dishwasher. “Barely.”
He flicks water at me. I shove his elbow with my shoulder. It’s silly and so normal my chest hurts with it.
When the counters are clean and the stove is wiped, he turns off the overhead and leads me to the couch.
As we settle in, he sets the books between us. I tuck my legs under me, heart heavy, readying myself for the pieces of hell he’s willing to hand me.
He rests his splayed fingers on the cover of his book, one last pause. His arctic blue eyes lift to mine, brighter than I’ve ever seen them.
Then he opens the past, and we step off the ledge together.
Sixteen months ago
The Fall
The hills of shivers and shadows recede until nothing remains but the edge and the ache.
And Frankie’s shout.
“Wolf!” She races toward me like a flare in the dark. Too loud. Too bright.
“Stop screaming.” My voice is flat. Final. It doesn’t belong to me. “The entire Arctic can hear you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Already told you.”
“No.” She scans the polar night, searching for me in the shadows. “You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”
“We have all these talks, but you haven’t heard a thing.”
But she does hear me. The problem is she can’t hear the dead parts inside me.
“You’re standing on the edge of the cliff for the same reason I stood there two months ago.” She moves closer. “Leo talked me down that day, and I’m so fucking grateful.”
Sure, she is. She’s also terrified, freezing, starving, and facing a looming, excruciating death.
“The idiot should’ve let you jump.” The lie is easier to swallow than the thing breaking the bones in my chest.
“You don’t mean that.”
“We’re murderers.”
Oh, she hates that truth and comes at me with her flapping, frantic kindness, throwing words like lifelines, trying to talk me off the ledge. Begging, bargaining, and making promises about bright futures.
She says all the right things and nails every line that used to latch onto me, but the hooks don’t catch anymore. I’m done talking. Done hurting. Done feeling. I’m just done.
“I want to die.” Like a coward, I aim the pistol at the space between her ribs. “In my heart, I’m already dead. I need you with me. We can finally be together.”
Her eyes dart to my finger on the trigger. “Wait! Please, I don’t want to die. Not like this.”
I would never hurt her. She knows that.
“I love you.” It’s small, true, and entirely useless. It’s the last honest thing I have to give.
Training the gun away from her, I pull the trigger. The shot cracks, and white-hot pain detonates up my arm. Kody’s voice cuts through the shocking, blinding agony, and I look down at the arrow sticking out of my bicep.
He shot me. He actually fucking shot me.
Leo emerges from the dark with a rifle as Kody reloads another bolt.
It all arranges into neat geometry—Frankie in front, them at angles of protection, me the loose thing in the middle.
“You’re choosing her over your own brother?” I spit at them, dizzy with blood loss and shame.
“No, they’re not,” Frankie cries as Kody shouts, “Yes,” and that one word, that final truth, makes me instantly, violently sick.
Sick with envy. Sick with wrath. Sick with all the deadly sins.
I drop the gun, spread my arms like Christ on the cross, and step back. I’m hellborn and hell-raised, and so I let hell pull me back in.
The fall is a slow burn of moments I want to forget. A collapse of memory and regrets. The wind strips breath from my mouth. My stomach climbs into my throat. My whole life becomes a long, mournful note on the saxophone.
Will they miss me? The thought is lame and painfully human. But the answer is omnipotent.