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As the snow drifts down around me, I take a deep breath. There isn’t a world in which I ever pictured telling Brookes about why I’m out here. Even when we spent that night together, it’s one of the few things I didn’t share with him.
Stabbing a knife into a wound that’s nearly healed isn’t something I want to do, but he’s right. I need a distraction. If I don’t have one, I know I’m going to start freaking out.
The tip of my nose is cold, and the wind only blows stronger. It whistles through the barren trees as leaves crunch beneath my feet. Fat snowflakes land on my jacket before melting away.
I hate everything about winter. I hate how cold it is and the snow that falls. Winter is the season that makes me feel the most alone in the world. It’s the season when my already estranged mother withdraws from me more than ever.
Winter is when my guilt threatens to consume me.
“Jessie, are you alright?” Brookes stops in front of me and turns to put his hands on my shoulders. “You’re acting like you’re on autopilot. If there’s something wrong that I should know about, you need to tell me. Are you sure you’re okay with what happened back there?”
“It has nothing to do with what happened back there.” I shrug out from under his hands and keep walking down the mountain. “I just have a lot of emotions tied up with this time of year.”
He makes a noise in the back of his throat before pulling out the map and looking at it again. We walk silently for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything.
The more we walk, the worse I feel. My heart pounds in my chest and my body feels like it’s on fire, even though it’s cold out. I take a deep breath before slowly exhaling. A small cloud of steam billows in front of my face.
The air grows colder as I swing my backpack around to the front of my body and pull out my gloves and hat. I pull them both on before hefting the backpack over my shoulder again.
“We should move faster,” I say as the sky starts to grow darker. The clouds have drowned out the sunlight as the snow falls. “It looks like a storm is on the way in. I don’t want to be out here when it hits.”
Brookes looks at the sky with a grim expression. His lips press into a thin line before he looks down at his watch. “It’s definitely going to storm, but based on how fast we’ve been going, I don’t think we’re going to make it back before it really gets going.”
“We have to get back,” I say, my voice tight as I hurry past him. “I can’t be out in the snow like this. It’s not safe.”
“We have all the gear we need to keep warm until we can make it back.” Brookes catches up to me, following along at the jog I maintain as I weave through the trees. “You need to stop jogging, Jessie. The snow is starting to cover the ground. You’re going to get your foot caught in a branch and fall. I can’t carry you and both our bags back to camp.”
I give him a flat look but slow to a fast walk. “Happy now?”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t understand where this is coming from. What about this snow is freaking you out so much?”
“It’s none of your business,” I say, my tone sharper than intended. I sigh and look over at him. His face is blank, no emotion on it at all as he stares straight ahead. “I’m sorry. Like I said, there’s a lot of emotions wrapped up in this, and it’s a lot to unpack. Especially with someone who doesn’t really give a shit about me.”
“What makes you think I don’t give a shit about you?” he asks.
My stomach ties itself into knots. I glance at him before looking away. He doesn’t care about me. I know that much. If he cared about me as a person at all, he wouldn’t have left me that night. He would have at least had the decency to say goodbye.
I need to get over this. I need to stop wasting time being angry with him. It isn’t worth it. Brookes showed me who he was early on. He showed me the only person he is capable of being that night, and I should thank him for that.
At least I’ll never form any unreasonable expectations of him.
“A lot of things make me think that.” I step over a fallen log and keep going, desperate to put some distance between us. “You’ve made it clear that the only person you care about is yourself. I know better than to expect anything different.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. Why the hell would I work in medicine if I didn’t give a shit about other people?” Anger is clear in his voice, but I don’t take it back. Even though I’m lashing out—and I know I’m lashing out—the words are still true.
I shrug, knowing that I’m only going to make things worse. It’s worth it to avoid having to talk about my dislike of winter. Getting into that is far too personal for whatever exists between me and Brookes.
“Jessie, I care about you. I care about people other than myself. You’re being cruel to try and get me to stop caring, but I know you. You’re not a cruel person.”
As I blink away the tears in my eyes, I try not to think about the past. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
He scoffs and grabs my wrist, pulling me back to him. My heart pounds against my ribs as he looks down at me with that piercing stare of his. It feels like he can see right through me. It’s like he’s stripping away all the layers I’ve built to keep myself safe.
“In what world do you think that I forgot about that night?” he asks, his voice raspy. “What makes you think that I could ever forget about everything you told me? I might be a shit person a lot of the time, Jessie, but don’t underestimate what happened between us, or how I feel about it.”
He smooths his thumb along the scratchy fabric of my mittens before letting me go. We’re standing too close to each other and it’s making it hard to think. Not that it’s ever been easy to think when I’m around Brookes.
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
