by Jordan Dane
“I’m afraid there’s nothing. This is all my doing. I’ve set something in motion and I’m not sure I can change it.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “And why are you dressed like this?”
Nate glanced down at his mountaineering gear with a puzzled look on his face before he shifted his gaze back to me. He looked stumped on what to say. After he took a deep breath, he pulled away from my arms and propped his back against a fallen tree near the fire pit. At first I thought he wanted distance between us, but after he reached for my hand, I moved close to him.
“Abbey, I’m losing control…something I’m not used to.” He couldn’t look me in the eye. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Losing control over what?”
“I never intended to hurt you, but I’m afraid that I will,” he said, ignoring my question.
He looked as if every word he uttered put a strain on him, but when I opened my mouth, he placed a finger to my lips.
“That day when I first met you here, I had to talk to you,” he went on. “I didn’t want you to be frightened when you saw me, but I’m afraid what I’ve done…it was a stupid thing. Maybe it’s too late to make things right.”
“I wasn’t afraid that day. Confused maybe, but not scared.” I let my fingers trail through his mussed hair. We were so close, I felt his sweet breath on my face. “But I have to admit that you scared me when you talked about my mother. Why did you do that, Nate?”
“Because I know…I mean, I sense how much she means to you…even still. I wanted you to trust me…to confide in me.”
With effort, he raised shaky fingers to my face. I grabbed his hand and kissed it.
“But you pushed too hard and trust takes time. It’s been hard for me to talk to…anyone, especially about my mom.”
“You’re right. I rushed you. That’s my fault, but now we’ve…run out of time, something I didn’t…expect.”
I ached with regret when he talked about running out of time. For some strange reason, I had felt an urgency between us, too, like a clock ticked down whenever we were together. I held on to him as if I could keep him with me forever.
“Run out of time…why? Are you leaving Healy?”
A sad smile nudged his lips. “Yes, guess you could say I’m leaving.”
“But I’ll see you in Palmer, right?”
With a faint smile, he tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear. “I know I haven’t been fair, but I had to know what it would be like…”
“For what?”
“Kiss me, Abbey.” The tenderness in his eyes almost made me cry. “Kiss me and make it last forever.”
I knew what Nate meant about forever. His kiss had marked me, too. We shared something hard to deny, even if I didn’t understand it. I wanted to kiss him as badly as he needed me to.
This time I didn’t close my eyes.
When my lips touched his, I breathed him in and let the sweet tang of his skin fill me up. His chill made my face and fingertips tingle, but after my shyness faded, I felt a soothing heat as I nuzzled into his chest and kissed him harder. Loving the feel of his arms around me, I closed my eyes and let go. It felt as if I had fallen, but I wasn’t afraid, not with Nate. I’d become a soft white feather adrift in a warm breeze, not wanting the sensation to end.
When his tongue touched mine, it felt natural. And with my hand cupped to his face, the ice of his skin melted and I imagined the quiet pulse of our hearts in my ear. In my mind, I drifted into a warm summer day with clouds dappling a beautiful pale blue sky, the way I had always pictured the perfect day would be.
Nate made me feel all of that.
Being with him felt like we were two stories, one leading into the next, picking up where the other left off. The story began with me, but ended with him. The hard part to accept was that our story went on without me whenever we were apart. That’s how I imagined love to be. It was that sweet torture of needing him so much that I only felt whole when I was with him, that the joys in my life wouldn’t be the same without him to share them.
For the first time, I thought I understood how crushing and wonderful love could be with a special boy. I never wanted that feeling to end, but when Nate pulled from me, I snapped out of my euphoria and the world came rushing back to separate us. His soft gasps melded into my own and with his forehead pressed against mine, he spoke in a low breathless voice meant for only me.
“I want you to know…that being here with you…has meant everything to me. You’ve given me a gift, one that I will…always treasure.”
His words carried a familiar ache. I opened my eyes and kissed his cheek. “You act like you’re saying goodbye.”
“In my zeal to embrace life, I have underestimated the human spirit to do the same. I find that quite ironic.” He breathed in deep as if he savored something amazing. “Because I have a newfound conscience, I know now that what I’m doing is…wrong.”
“What are you doing that’s so bad, Nate? Tell me.” I laid my hand to his chest.
“I can’t.” He couldn’t look me in the eye. “If I tell you everything now, I don’t think I could take it if you chose sides. That would hurt too much.”
“You think I’d go against you?” I shook my head and didn’t wait for his answer. “What’s going on? Why are you talking like this?”
I pressed him for answers I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.
“Because even if you don’t understand what I’m telling you now, I want you to really listen and remember what I said, without filtering my words through…your anger. Believe me when I say that I thought I’d have a choice to make—to do the right thing—but I’m afraid it’s not up to me anymore.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand anything of this.”
“I know. And for that, I’m truly sorry.” He laced his fingers in mine. “But I’m afraid if you understood everything, you’d hate me. And that would break…this heart I’ve stolen.”
“Okay, now you’re really scaring me. Why are you telling me this? I need you to spell it out for me, ’cause I’m not getting it.”
“I came today because I didn’t want to break my promise to you, when I said that I’d be here, but I can’t stay.” Nate kissed my cheek and got up. He stood on unsteady legs and looked down at me. “There’s something very important I must do…and I pray that I’m not too late.”
Nate didn’t wait for me to say anything. He turned his back and headed for a stand of trees higher up the mountain. There was nothing up there. Strange that he didn’t use the trail that led down toward the lake and the main road.
Where was he going?
“Will I see you…after?” I called to him, but Nate didn’t turn around.
By the time I jumped to my feet, he had already become nothing more than a hazy shadow under the dense canopy of trees. I thought about chasing after him, but something made me stay—like I didn’t belong with him—not now. In a strange way, I sensed him all around me even though I couldn’t see him.
You may not want to see me again…but if you do, I will be here.
His voice faded to a low whisper by my ear, as if he was still with me. I shut my eyes and listened with my heart.
If you come to me, I will be here, Abbey.
I opened my eyes wide and cried out, “Please don’t do this, Nate.”
I didn’t know what I was asking of him or why I thought he could hear me. I just knew that I didn’t want things to change, but Nate wasn’t giving me that choice. He didn’t want me to choose sides. Thinking back over what he’d told me, I hadn’t understood much, but his pain over what he’d done had been plain to see. He felt plagued by something terrible—something he knew was wrong.
“Oh, Nate,” I whispered. “What did you do?”
&nbs
p; Even though I lost sight of him, I ran into the forest after Nate, fighting my instincts to let him be. I wanted to see him, but I sensed that this time he wouldn’t let me. Stumbling over the snow, I ran through the trees, gasping for air. In the morning cold, my lungs burned and my breaths had become vapor as tears chilled my face. I felt him and yet there was an eerie stillness that I’d never experienced before. The birds had stopped chattering and even though I still saw the wind stirring the trees, I couldn’t hear the sound of the leaves rustling.
Nate had gone, leaving me empty and numb. I had a bad feeling that if I saw him again, it would be for the last time.
Palmer, Alaska
Jackie Holden hadn’t gotten much sleep since her husband and son had left for Denali, but last night had been the worst. Zoey came to her room, telling her that she had a bad dream, without any other explanation. Normally her daughter told her everything, but it took effort to calm her down and get her back to sleep. With just the two of them in the house, Jackie drew comfort from hearing her daughter’s quiet breaths in the dark. Even if the reason Zoey came to her bedroom had been a nightmare too scary to talk about, Jackie needed to feel the weight and the warmth of her youngest child in her arms.
Now this.
She broke the bad news about Nate to her daughter and waited for the girl’s reaction. Although Zoey’s eyes welled with tears, she hadn’t said anything. She looked visibly shaken, but Jackie knew something else was wrong. She’d expected more from a child so attached to her older brother.
It was as if Zoey already knew.
“Is Nate dead, Mommy?”
“No…no, why would you…?” Jackie was surprised at how fast she answered Zoey, telling her “No.” She had no idea if what she’d said was a lie or not. She only knew that she was unwilling to accept the alternative. Yet with childlike innocence, Zoey asked the question and made it all too real, like Nate was beyond help.
Hearing Zoey say it felt like getting hit in the stomach.
“He’s missing, Zoey. That’s all we know right now. Daddy is looking for him. Lots of people are.”
Jackie pulled her daughter into her arms and rocked her with eyes shut tight, desperately clinging to the hope that her son was still alive.
“I think I saw him,” her daughter whispered, “last night.”
“Saw who?” Jackie grimaced and pulled away from Zoey, gripping the girl by the shoulders. “Who did you see?”
“I saw Nate, Mommy.”
“That’s not possible, honey. You know that. Your brother is on Denali…with Daddy.”
“I know. That’s what I thought, too. But I saw him, Mommy.”
Jackie stared at Zoey, trying to figure out what to do. Clearly her daughter had been more traumatized by the bad news about Nate than she’d let on. She had to be careful and not make things worse for her daughter....if that was even possible.
“Did you see him in a dream?” She forced a weak smile. “Dreams aren’t real. You know that, right?”
“But I wasn’t sleeping.” A tear rolled down her daughter’s cheek. The sight of it broke Jackie’s heart. “I heard a bird outside my window. It made a loud noise…at nighttime, so I got up and looked out. It was a big black one.”
She’d been ready to dismiss her daughter’s story and chalk it up to the worry the girl had for her brother’s safety, but when Jackie heard about the big black bird, a gasp caught in her throat. Zoey could have seen a raven, like the one outside Nate’s window on the night before he left for Denali. Holding her daughter by her thin arms, Jackie let out a deep breath.
“Is that why you came to my room last night? You said you had a bad dream, Zoey.” Jackie didn’t know what to believe, but one thing was certain. Her daughter was hurting. “Tell me everything, honey. What did you see?”
“It was dark, but I saw Nate. He was on our driveway, standing there.” When the tears came heavier, Zoey shrank into her arms.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this last night?” She held her daughter and cradled the back of her head in her hand. “We could have talked about it.”
“I didn’t want to make you sad.”
“Why would you seeing Nate make me sad, honey? You could have seen him because you miss your brother, that’s all.”
“Because I think…he was crying, Mommy. Nate was crying.”
Jackie clung to her little girl, fighting back her own tears. Although she didn’t want to believe that her daughter had actually seen anything, listening to Zoey tell her about Nate felt too much like a terrible omen. Her daughter wouldn’t have lied about seeing him and the detail of the black bird didn’t feel like a coincidence. That had been bad enough, but another frightening thought gripped her.
Nate could have already been missing—or dead—when Zoey had seen something on their driveway. No matter how hard Jackie wanted to shake the eerie feeling, one question took hold and wouldn’t let her go.
Had her only son come home one last time…to say goodbye?
Chapter 11
Palmer, Alaska Two hours later
“Tanner?” His mother called from downstairs, her voice muffled by the sound of the living-room television. “You should see this.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he yelled from his bedroom as he scrolled through another query on the internet.
“No, it’ll be over by then.”
Tanner grimaced at his mom’s persistence. All he heard was the doubt in her voice that he could make it downstairs in time. That sounded like a challenge. He wheeled his chair toward the hall, prepared to make record time using the mechanized lift that his father had installed in their house, one that got him and his wheels between floors. But before he got far, his mother’s voice took all the fun out of his race to prove her wrong.
“Turn on channel 9. It’s breaking news,” she insisted. “Hurry.”
Breaking news always got his mom’s attention. Even if the TV was on mute, she had a sixth sense about breaking news.
Oh, brother. What now?
With an eye roll, Tanner reached for the TV remote that he’d tossed on his bed. He hit the power button and flipped the channel to the local station, catching the tail end of a story about climbers missing on Denali. No names were given until next of kin could be notified, but the description of two missing locals had been enough for him to imagine the worst. After he heard the guys attended Palmer High, it didn’t take much for him to make a connection to Nate and Josh.
No, this can’t be happening.
Rolling his wheelchair toward his new radio setup, he hit the power switch and scanned the static for a solid signal. After he zeroed in on a channel, he listened for any updates on the missing climbers.
Damn it! He felt like such a loser.
He’d been so wrapped up in computer code and spending a few days out of pocket with Jason Cheevers in Anchorage that he’d totally forgotten about Nate Holden’s trip with his buddy Josh Poole. Tanner thought he’d been helping Abbey, but after she found out that he’d dropped the ball on keeping track of Holden by radio—and the guy went missing on his watch—she’d never forget that. Abbey hadn’t asked him to babysit Holden. Tanner just felt responsible, that’s all. Now anything he would tell her, about why he’d been distracted while she’d been gone, would sound like a pathetic excuse, especially if he couldn’t get word to her.
None of what he’d done about the cyber-bullies would matter now.
“Did you hear it?” His mother had come upstairs and now stood at his door. Her voice had nearly given him a heart attack, but he downplayed his reaction and acted like he’d meant for his hand to jump.
“Yeah, enough.”
“Well? Do you know them? That reporter said they go to your school. I figured you might know who they are.”
“You think they’d mention those names on that radio of yours?” she asked.
Barely looking over his shoulder, Tanner shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Aren’t you even curious? They could be someone you know, Tanner.”
She made him sound heartless, like he didn’t care, when nothing could be further from the truth. He’d kept the reason he wanted the radio a secret—for Abbey’s sake—but if his mom got even a hint that he knew something for real, she’d never let it go. She was like a pit bull on a bone when it came to getting the inside scoop on other people’s misery. At first, he didn’t understand how she got off on stuff like that, but after a while he figured she needed to feel the commiseration that someone else had a worse tragedy than coping with a paralyzed kid. He couldn’t fault her for that.
“I’m still helping Jason with his computer, but if I hear something, I’ll let you know.”
His mother didn’t say anything for a long time. Her silence almost made him look up, but eventually she backed off.
“Well…okay.” She sighed and headed back downstairs, muttering, “I bet those boys’ parents are going through hell, poor things.”
Tanner hated not telling her everything, but letting his mom in on what he knew felt like a betrayal to Abbey. He didn’t want to talk about it with anyone but her. His mom had a skill for prying. If he even gave her an opening, she’d zero in on Abbey’s reason for taking an interest in Holden. She might also take a guess at why he wanted to track the climb with his new radio. His mom always pressed him for girls he liked and Abbey had become top of her hit parade. If his mother knew about Abbey’s crush on Holden, that would make him look like a pathetic loser. After listening to the radio and not hearing anything new, he grabbed his cell phone off his charger and tried Abbey one more time.
“Come on, Abbs,” he said under his breath. “Pick up, please.”