by JA Huss
No, of course he’s not. Because then he’d have to admit Rook is not completely his. She is half mine.
She has always been half mine.
And maybe Ronin is content with the arrangement. I huff a little air at this. Why wouldn’t he be? He gets to sleep with her every night. He gets to share dinners with her and take her on vacation. He gets to watch her brush her hair in the morning, and mope about their apartment in her sweats, perfectly comfortable and sighing with contentment as they watch TV, or plan their fucking grocery list. Because even if a part of her belongs to me, he knows. He knows I’d never steal her. I would never do that.
“That’s all that’s going on here, Ford?”
“Of course,” I say. “Listen, it’s starting to snow pretty hard now, I’ll give you guys a call the next time I’m in town.” I end the call, turn the phone off and throw it on the seat next to me as I cross over I-25, pass the stadium and leave downtown. And I just drive.
I have no idea what I’m doing.
I just drive.
I could go home. Not my condo, but my mother’s house in Park Hill. She’s having a party like she does every year. I never go, but I could. I should. I should just go home and pass the night with her in all those familiar rooms, with all those familiar faces.
But then I’d just be reminded of the other person I lost. And I can’t do that tonight. Not tonight.
I’ll turn around at the next light, I tell myself. And then the next one.
But I keep going and the next thing I know, I’m getting on the I-70 in Golden, heading up towards Lookout Mountain.
But I blow past that exit too, the Bronco straining with the steep ascent that will take me up into the Rocky Mountains. It’s a long climb. Denver might be a mile up, but the altitude in these mountains is a whole other level of high.
The transmission whines at me, reminding me that it’s old and vulnerable.
But I do not care.
Where are you going, Ford?
I don’t answer the voice. Partly because I have no idea and partly because it’s not good to encourage the internal monologue. My flight out of DIA tomorrow is too far away. Tomorrow is just way too far away. I’m not going to survive the night if I stay here in Denver. I need to get out of this state right the fuck now.
The snow builds with each vertical mile, the sky nothing but white everywhere I look. No stars above and just dark forest on either side. There aren’t even many cars on the road. Hardly any coming towards me from the west, and only slightly more traveling from the east like me. Locals know when to stay off the mountain passes and not many tourists are driving on New Year’s Eve.
The snow grows thicker as I finally make it to Genesee. The perfect curtain to keep my thoughts at bay. Because they are filled with longing and aching. With self-loathing and hatred for what I am. For what I can’t be. For letting her get away. For letting Ronin take her. For wanting something I can’t have.
For caring.
And I vow to myself as I push the accelerator to the floor to make the steep grade that will pluck me from civilization and pour me out into the wilds where I can be alone with myself, I swear, I will never—ever—care for another woman for as long as I live.
I will never allow myself to be weak like this again. I will never learn their names or buy them presents or plot out a way to help them reach their full potential.
Never.
Chapter Two
The drive is more and more tedious as I move west. The climb seems endless, with a few reprieves every now and then as I reach a flat stretch of road on a summit, then plunge a little, only to be reminded there is nothing for hundreds of miles but these mountains, and begin the ascent all over again.
It’s a stupid idea to drive the Bronco up here. I’ve had this truck since high school—worked my ass off at the Science and Nature Museum for three years saving for it. I started working there—unofficially, of course—when I was twelve. My childhood neighborhood is across Colorado Boulevard from City Park, and the museum was right there all growing up. I spent so much time there I started giving tours. Except they were unauthorized and there’s just something a little intimidating about a pre-teen leading a group of tourists through the exhibits that tends to piss off the higher-ups. But they couldn’t stop me. I had a clipboard and a sign-up sheet out in back of the museum near the kids’ fountain.
It’s a public park. I was a member of the public. My prices were cheap. Five dollars a person, a family of four for fifteen dollars. It was a niche waiting to be filled, so I filled it.
And the day I turned sixteen my dad took me to buy the Bronco. Of course, we’re filthy rich so I could’ve had any car I wanted. Our house is the largest in Park Hill. It’s an old foursquare, has seven bedrooms, a brick wall, and a gated driveway. No small feat in such a congested neighborhood. But I wanted to earn my first vehicle, to make it worth something to me. I wanted to be invested in it and I didn’t want it to be perfect. I wanted it to be flawed. I wanted it to be a work in progress. I wanted to rescue it.
It was not in bad shape when I bought it, but these older cars need constant work. And this transmission is not happy with me at the moment. If I was smart I’d get off on the next exit and turn around. Go back home to my mom’s, drink a shitload of Jack, and pass out until my flight takes off tomorrow.
But I’m wounded. And, I admit, sad. I see her face in everything. Even now, I wonder what she thinks of the mountains. Ronin has a penchant for gambling, so I know they go to Black Hawk and Central City, but did he take her to see the aspens when they changed color in the fall? Does he take her skiing? I’ve never heard them talk about skiing, but I haven’t been around them on the weekends in months.
Do they go to Grand Lake? Or Granby? Or Pikes Peak?
I want to know every thought in her head.
It’s a weakness I have, this longing to understand the thoughts of others. And I had limited coping abilities as a child, so I had to assign labels to wrap my head around people’s thoughts and actions. I came up with a system. The Leaver, that’s what I called Rook last fall. But she proved me wrong. Oh, she left all right. But she didn’t leave. She put her life on the line to save Ronin. And then Spencer and I put our lives on the line to save her.
And then we all came back and things moved forward. It was stressful at first, watching Rook be publicly massacred by all sorts of people who judged her to be a fraud, a liar, a whore, any number of terrible things that just made me want to tuck her under my arm and never let her out of my sight.
But she’s not mine to protect.
What is she thinking now? I pick up the phone and turn it on. Seven messages. I press voice mail and her messages start.
“Ford? Please, call me back, OK?”
“Ford?”
“Ford, come on. Don’t do this to me. To us,” she corrects. And I want to correct her. Because there is no us. There is only them. Her and Ronin. “Ford.” She lowers her voice to a whisper for this part. “Please, come back. I need you.”
“I need you too,” I say softly to the snowy mountain highway. “I need you so bad.” I’d give anything to have her alone, free of Ronin’s claim, so I could tell her all the things I’ve been holding in since the day I met her. So I could get her honest answer without her guilt of wanting two men at the same time getting in the way.
So I could get the truth out of her.
She almost said it, back in the CSU stadium when I crossed her line and let her know I saw through her walls. She admitted to having feelings for me. But then she said I’d ruin her.
That’s what she thinks. That I’d suffocate her, take away all the parts I love. All the parts that make her so desirable. Because she sees me as some sick and twisted fuck who gets off on submissive woman and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I like the power, yes, because I need the control, because I cannot stand to be touched by anyone. I like to be the one who does the touching during sex, so I bind them. Hands off only.
I take them from behind, I blindfold them so they can’t look at me.
But I do this because it’s the only way I know how to cope with the intimacy I want, but cannot allow myself to accept.
And Rook missed the point I was trying to make last summer. I’m not interested in a submissive woman. They’re interested in me because I require this control. Why deny them? I like what they offer, but only as a diversion. Why does she think I never get their names? Because I could give a fuck about those women.
I want a strong one.
I want one who will keep up, challenge me, help me reach my full potential.
And yes, I’d like to tie her up and slap her ass during sex, make her beg for me, have her submit herself fully—let me own her in private.
But Rook misunderstood me completely. Because I want a woman to touch me. So very, very badly. And she is the only one I’ve ever considered giving that privilege to. Ever.
The highway dips again and then gets twisty as I pass by Idaho Springs. They have a good pizza place there. Whenever we’d come home from skiing in Vail when I was a kid my dad would pull the car over in Idaho Springs and we’d get a mountain pie from Beau Jo’s before heading down the mountain.
It brings back memories of being tired from a weekend of strenuous activity, sore muscles, and an overwhelming feeling of being well-loved by my family, even though I was the epitome of a parent’s nightmare.
My childhood couldn’t be more different than Rook’s. Yes, I’m odd. I’ve got a lot of emotional issues that I’ve been working on my entire life. I refused to communicate with my parents in anything other than sign language until I was four. Then I started speaking Russian instead of English and that threw them for a while. But my dad—I have to stop and smile at his memory. Well, let’s just say I got my intellect from him. He caught onto me and learned Russian to spite me.
We sparred in four other languages before I settled on English at age six.
And by seven they had a diagnosis. Asperger’s syndrome with some savant tendencies. Mostly numbers and math, but spatial things as well because of my photographic memory.
I rebelled against that label—defective, the books said. Defective in communication and emotion. I read everything I could find on it in my dad’s psychiatry books in his office, but the information was sadly inadequate. So I started secretly taking the bus to the public library when I was eight to do research.
And finally, after months of reading, I decided I did not have this syndrome and I did everything I could to prove it to myself, and others, that I was normal.
I stopped doing well on my tests. It was too late, of course. My IQ was firmly established to be in the neighborhood of 190 by the time I started speaking English. But my parents, even though they knew I was a full-fledged freak, treated me like just another kid.
They used that phrase often whenever I started getting weird. ‘Ford,’ my mom would say in that mom voice when I was about to blow a blood vessel over the rule against reading under my covers past midnight. Or when I got a little older, researching any of the hundreds of obsessions I had as a teen on the internet. I only require a few hours of sleep a night, why should I have to go to bed at midnight? It never made sense. But she’d never give in. ‘Ford,’ she’d say. ‘You are just another kid. And kids have rules. So you will follow the kid rules, or else.’
‘Or else what?’ I’d ask with my chin tipped up in defiance.
‘Or else I’ll kiss you. And not only that, I’ll kiss you in public.’
I’d recoil every time at the horror. Because even though I love my parents, and they love me and I know they love me, they were not allowed to touch me. Not when I was a toddler, not now that I am a man. And I’m sure this is what ticked me off as a baby. The fact that they were constantly touching me. I suspect it’s the reason I refused to talk to them.
Ronin might have a penchant for gambling, but I have a penchant for holding grudges. Even as an infant, apparently.
I laugh at this. I know I’m odd. I do, I admit it. I understand this, I own it. What can I say. I was just born this way. But Rook never seemed to mind. She barely noticed—in fact, she said she didn’t believe that I was incapable of emotion. And I guess she was right. I love her. I had feelings for Mardee. I have strong attachments to Ronin and Spencer. Strong enough to stop me from pursuing the only woman I’ve ever wanted so bad I had to run away from her to control myself.
So I guess I was right after all. I’m not defective. I want to be touched. I’ve denied myself this most basic of human comforts my whole life and I’m ready to move on.
But the only woman I want to move on with is the only one I can’t have.
Chapter Three
The transmission whines as I climb up out of the canyon and hit the curve that takes me into Georgetown. The signs on the highway are flashing the winter storm warning and I only hope the Eisenhower Tunnel is open, or else all this driving will be fruitless. If they close the tunnel, and they do this often in the winter when there are accidents, then there’s nothing to do but go back. It’s pointless to spend the night up here in the mountains. Pointless, unless I can make a clean escape. Otherwise I might as well just go home and suck it up until my flight tomorrow.
The snow builds as I climb. I pass through Georgetown and then climb again until the tunnel warnings become common. There wasn’t too much traffic for the entire drive, but there is now. And that can only mean one thing. The tunnel is either closed or they are stopping everyone going forward to see what their destination is.
We slow to a crawl and all of a sudden I notice that the heater is no longer blowing hot air. I flip the switch to the off position and stew in my tuxedo.
“What the hell are you doing, Ford?”
This is not the internal monologue. This is me talking to myself.
Of course, I don’t answer. I know what I’m doing. I’m running the fuck away, just like Rook accused me of back in the garage.
My phone buzzes and it surprises me. I thought I turned it off.
I check the screen. Rook.
Ignoring it, I take my attention back to the traffic as the pace picks up. That’s good news from my point of view. It means the tunnel isn’t closed. At least, not for everyone. As I get closer to the entrance more and more trucks are on the side of the road. Some of them putting on chains, some of them just sitting there.
I wait my turn in the dark until finally the car in front of me is waved through the tunnel and I pull up to the state trooper and roll down my window. He eyes my suit, then smiles. “Where ya heading tonight?”
“Party in Frisco,” I lie. Frisco is in the valley just on the other side of the tunnel. It’s a safe destination. Close.
“Cutting it pretty close,” he says, squinting at me either in suspicion, or maybe just trying to keep the blowing snow out of his eyes.
I look down at the clock on the dash. Eleven thirty-two. “Yeah,” I huff. “Fucking hate parties. Girlfriends,” I say, sighing at him.
“Yeah,” he says back in a conspiratorial tone. “Totally. I got out of it this year.” He points to the sky. “Storm duty. OK, well, go on ahead, but be careful, we just got word that the other side of the Divide is getting it pretty bad. And”—he stops to sniff—“you should check your fluids before you head back down the mountain. Smells like antifreeze.” He stoops down to check under the car, but straightens just as fast and shakes his head. “Can’t see shit. Too dark, too much snow.”
“Yeah, I just lost heat, so you’re probably right. I’ll check it tomorrow before I head home.”
He pops off a little two-finger salute and waves the car behind me forward as I move into the tunnel. The whole world is wiped away in here. I always loved this part of the trip when I was a kid. We have a house in Vail and before my dad died a couple years back, it was a pretty regular thing to spend a few weeks up there at Christmas and a couple months over the summer. When I was a teen it was every single weekend year round. But…
The tunnel ends abruptly and from here it’s all downhill for a good while as I head into Silverthorne and then Frisco. I don’t stop. I have no intention of stopping. Heat or not, I’m all in now. I just need to get the fuck out of this state. I’ll check the fluid levels the next time I need gas, but right now I still have half a tank. So I’m good. Heat is nice, especially when it’s the dead of winter and I’m in the mountains, but I’m not gonna die from exposure inside the truck. I’ve got an emergency kit in the back anyway. I’ll live for another half a tank.
Besides, the Bronco loves me right now. We’re going downhill. And I feel better already. Crossing the Great Divide is sorta cleansing. Like Rook is on the other side of something. She’s east now. And I am west. She’s far away. Even though it’s barely an hour’s drive in good weather from the tunnel to Denver, it feels… significant.
My pensive mood lasts for like three minutes, because that’s how long I get to enjoy the flat stretch of highway before I am climbing again.
The transmission whines, it’s a steep grade, but I downshift, give it some gas, and then pick up enough speed near the next summit to shift back into fourth. The trooper wasn’t lying, this side of the Divide is much worse off as far as the snow goes. It’s thick and wet, sticking to the windshield even though I have the wipers on full.
Copper Mountain comes into view and I briefly entertain the thought of stopping. But I can’t make myself do it. If I can get to Vail, well, then at least I can be on some familiar territory. Spending a cold night in a Copper parking lot does not sound fun. The mountain house is not somewhere I’d like to be right now, but it’s doable.