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I love this tortured man with a ferocity that scares me. He scares me. His misery runs deeper than a fear of cold and hunger. What haunts him is so tangled and twisted from years of abuse and emotional neglect. I’m grateful he lets me in as much as he does. I wish I could do more.
God knows I need therapy, too. For the self-loathing from those weeks I spent in Denver’s bed. For the blame I shoulder for Denver’s death. But I would rather those demons haunt me than him. It’s a lesser agony for him to hate me than to hate himself.
Maybe one day, when he’s away from here, when he’s in a better place, he’ll look back on these times through a healing lens.
I hope he doesn’t look back at all. I just want him alive and happy.
As I hug him closer, he hugs me back. Still in his suede coat, I’m surrounded by his earthy scents. Beneath the wet-rock aroma of coal and hoarfrost, I can smell a faint, long-forgotten hint of cigarettes.
Outside, the wind shrieks like a lost soul.
I dare not let my thoughts drift to Leo and Kody.
They’ll come back.
Sleep, when it finally claims me, is fitful and fleeting.
Upon waking, it feels as though mere minutes passed. But the fire gutters, barely a flame in the embers, and the space beside me lies cold and empty.
“Wolf?” I sit up, squinting in the dark, listening for movement in the bathroom.
I call out again, my breath clouding in the dismal silence.
Where is he?
My bloodstained coat is gone. His boots, also gone.
With a jolt, I’m off the mattress and darting from room to room in the lightless cabin. “Wolf! Wolf!”
He’s not here.
Pulse pounding, I don all my outerwear, grab my pack and the shotgun, and brave the inclement weather.
The roped pathway, now shoveled, guides me to the workshop, where the entrance is boarded up.
Leo and Kody have been busy.
Nails bolt the barricade in place from the outside. Wolf can’t be in there, but I check the window anyway, peering at the darkness within. Not a single candle aglow.
Where did he go?
I spin, scanning the monochrome landscape, my gaze falling on tracks in the snow.
Two trails. One marks the path Kody and Leo took to the hills. The other is fresher, a single pair of footprints, veering off in the direction of the cliff.
Why? There’s nothing there but ice and…
Death.
“Wolf!” Terror fuels my hike across the snow, my legs post-holing in the trenches he left behind.
He can’t be too far ahead.
Using the shotgun like a hiking staff, I dig my way closer to the roar of the river as I yell his name.
Closer. Closer. Almost there.
“Wolf!”
“Stop screaming.” His deep voice unfurls from the shadows along the cliff. “The entire Arctic can hear you.”
I collapse in relief, catching my breath. “What are you doing?”
“Already told you.”
“No.” I’m moving again, straining to see him against the backdrop of the northern lights. “You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”
“We have all these talks, but you haven’t heard a thing.”
A sickening drop pulls my stomach. I heard him. Over and over, I listened. I just refused to accept what he was saying.
“You’re standing on the edge of the cliff for the same reason I stood there two months ago.” I inch closer, my heart bleeding all over the tundra. “Leo talked me down that day, and I’m so fucking grateful.”
“The idiot should’ve let you jump.”
His words cut beneath my skin, clawing the anger out. “You don’t mean that.”
“We’re murderers.”
His silhouette comes into view, standing on an ice ledge in a bloodstained coat. One step backward, and he’ll plunge into the river several stories below.
“We have a graveyard of regrets between us.” I leave the shotgun and my pack in the snow and slowly approach. “Doesn’t mean we should bury ourselves in it. We don’t belong here, Wolf. We didn’t choose this. We were kidnapped, forced into a life where the only choices are surviving or dying.”
“Exactly.”
“No. Our story doesn’t end here. Life beyond this place is more. More choices. More of everything.”
“More starving and neglect and abuse. I remember what you said. Kids begging on the street in every city, homeless pets, poverty, and racism.”
“You’re cherry-picking. Overlooking all the positives I told you. Don’t believe me? Let me take you there. I’ll show you. Please.”
“You can’t, Frankie. You’re never leaving here.” He raises his arm and aims a pistol at my chest. No tremble in his voice. Just steady conviction. “There’s nothing left. This is the quickest way out. More merciful than the alternative. Come with me.”
“No.” I clench my jaw hard enough to crack my molars. “Please, don’t do this. Stay with me. I need you.”
“I want to die. In my heart, I’m already dead. I need you with me. We can finally be together.”
