Page 89 of Thin Ice

Because I knew, sitting on that rock, that I'd just done the thing I always do. Someone tries to get close, and I find the reason to run. Alex tells me something hard and honest, and instead of hearing what he actually said, I hear the version that confirms the story I've been telling myself since I was ten years old. And then I leave. I leave before they can leave me, because at least that way I'm the one who chose it.

It was at that moment that I realized I was just doing what my dad did.

Fuck.

I shifted on the rock, and something pressed into my thigh. Hard, small, through the coat pocket. I reached in and my fingers closed around it. The heron. Glass, warm from my body even in the cold. I'd been carrying it since Christmas morning. Six days in my coat pocket, waiting for the right time to give it to him.

I pulled it out. Held it in my palm. Blue-gray glass, the S-curve of the neck, the one leg. My mom's favorite thing in the house. The thing she kept when she threw everything else away. The thing she said was ready to mean something new.

I was sitting on a frozen rock feeling sorry for myself with a gift in my pocket for the person I loved, and he was standing on a deck a quarter mile away waiting for me to come back, and I was doing my dad's trick. The leaving trick. The one I swore I'd never learn.

I closed my hand around the bird. The glass edges pressed into my palm.

He's not leaving you. You're leaving him. Right now. On this rock. You are the one who walked away.

I put my face in my hands. The heron still in my fist, pressing against my cheek, cold now from the air. The trees were quiet around me, and the lake was quiet in front of me, and somewhere behind me, through the pines, back at the cabin, Alex was standing on a deck waiting for me to come back.

The cold bit into my fingers. The trees were quiet around me, and the lake was quiet in front of me, and somewhere behind me, through the pines, back at the cabin, Alex was standing on a deck waiting for me to come back.

I didn't move. Not because I didn't want to. Because I needed another minute to sit with the thing I'd just realized. The thing I'd been running from for two years.

I wasn't afraid Alex would leave me.

I was afraid that I'd never believe he wouldn't.

And that was my problem. Not his.

Chapter 24: Alex

He walked into the trees, and I stood on the deck and watched him go.

His boots in the snow. His shoulders hunched. His hands in fists at his sides. He didn't look back. The trail bent into the pines and the pines took him and then he was gone and the yard was empty and the snow was falling again, soft and slow, and I was standing there with my arms at my sides and tears freezing on my face.

The cabin door opened behind me. I didn't turn around.

"Alex." Noah's voice. "What happened?"

I tried to talk. My mouth opened, and what came out was not words. It was the sound you make when you've been holding your breath for too long and your body takes over. A gasp. A sob. Something ugly and involuntary that I couldn't control.

"He's gone," I said. "He just. He left."

"Left where?" Noah was beside me now. His hand was on my arm. "Alex. Left where?"

"The trail. He went down the trail."

"Okay. Okay, that's just the lake loop. It goes along the shore and comes back. He's not. He didn't leave leave."

"Should we go after him?" Noah said. Not to me. To someone behind me.

"No." Remy's voice. Close. He was already on the deck. I didn't know when he'd come out. "Give him a minute."

"Remy, he's upset—"

"I know he's upset. Give him a minute."

Noah went quiet. I could feel him next to me, hovering, wanting to do something, the instinct in him that always wanted to fix the thing happening to the person he cared about. But he stayed. Because Remy said to stay.

I sat down on the deck steps. The wood was cold and wet, and I didn't care. My hands were shaking. I pressed them together between my knees and tried to breathe, and the breathing kept getting interrupted by the thing in my throat, the thing that kept coming up in waves.