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Brookes keeps walking, his shoulders stiff. “That’s my concern, not yours.”
I follow along behind him, trying to gather my thoughts. There isn’t much that either of us wants to say about that night. Butterflies beat their wings against the inside of my stomach as I stare at Brookes.
With the way he’s been behaving, I didn’t think he remembered much about that night. I was sure that he had pushed the time we spent together out of his mind. I thought I was just another woman he was using to fill his time.
Maybe I’ve misjudged him.
The snow falls harder as we walk in silence. We weave through the trees together, avoiding as many fallen logs as possible. It’s getting harder to see the roots sticking out of the ground as the snow falls harder.
Fear surges through me as the sky grows even darker. Snow falls in thicker sheets as the wind howls. I feel sick just thinking about the potential of getting stuck out here.
“Jessie, you look like you’re going to throw up.” Brookes stops to take a sip of water before holding out the bottle to me.
I take the bottle and sip at the water slowly. “Being out here is a lot for me. I know I’ve said that to you already, but there’s more to it than it just being a lot.”
He nods, a sympathetic look on his face. “I’m here if you want to talk about it. I think it might be good for us to get whatever this is out in the open, since we’re going to be working together and it’s only going to snow more. I’m going to need to know that you can be alright being out here.”
I bite my bottom lip, taking a deep breath. There’s no easy way to talk about what happened years ago. “I have a lot of problems with the winter. My dad died when I was younger, and it’s a lot to deal with, even to this day.”
Brookes nods. “You don’t have to tell me more than that.”
My heart skips a beat. “No. I do have to tell you more than that. If we’re going to spend weeks out in the snow together, you should probably know everything. I can’t promise that I’m going to be okay out here all the time.”
“Okay,” he says softly, falling into step beside me as he puts his water bottle away. “Tell me what’s going on. As much as you’re comfortable with telling me, at least.”
“You give me whiplash sometimes,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I don’t know what to think about you. One minute, you’re an asshole and I want to wring your neck. The next, you do shit like this.”
He chuckles and shrugs. “I’m a complicated man. Stop stalling and tell me whatever it is you have to tell me.”
I roll my shoulders back, trying to stop the nauseous feeling flooding through me. I’ve done a lot of therapy to try and get to this point, but it still feels like I’m drowning.
“My dad died, and it was my fault.”
“I doubt that it was your fault,” Brookes says, though he doesn’t know the story. As he slides his gloved hand into mine, I start to feel a bit better. He squeezes my hand, holding it tight.
“It was my fault.” I take a shuddering breath and bite back the tears as we keep walking. “I should have known better. Dad thought it would be a bad idea to go skiing that day, but I really wanted to go out.”
“He’s a grown man, he could have stopped you both from going if he wanted to.”
I give him a sad smile. “It’s not that easy. If it was, he wouldn’t have died.”
“People die for all sorts of reasons. You know that as well as I do.” Brookes squeezes my hand again, lacing his fingers through mine. “You can’t blame yourself for his death forever.”
“I can though. I was a senior in high school. I was living in Minnesota with my family at the time. I was off for Christmas break, and I wanted to go skiing with my dad the day before Christmas Eve. It was a nice day out, at first. He didn’t think we should go, but I pleaded with him until he agreed. I used to love cross-country skiing back then.”
“You don’t do it anymore?”
“No,” I say, my voice choked. “It’s too hard. Dad fell through a pond that wasn’t quite frozen. I was able to get him out, but he was too cold and stiff to move. We were close to town at that point, so I went back to the clinic. It was the middle of a snowstorm and I got turned around a couple times. By the time the doctor and I got back to him, he was gone.”
Tears roll down my cheeks as the snow flies around us. Brookes stops in his tracks and pulls me into a tight hug. I sob into his chest, the dam bursting.
In that moment, Brookes is the only lifeline I have. I hold on to him as tight as I can, trying not to drown in the sorrow that washes over me in waves.
He’s definitely not who I thought he was. Not even close.
8
BROOKES
