Everything feels like a dream. I’m still woozy from the anesthetic, and the reality that I’m coming back to is even worse. My room is quiet, the sterility of every surface making me feel unwelcome. The glow of the TV pools sickly on the floor, and around it bad things crawl in the darkness.
When the soft knock comes I startle, but the figure in the doorway is too small for my heartbeat’s hope. Hanne is a fragile silhouette against the corridor’s harsher light, her shoulders stooped as if all the weight of the world is on them. I last saw her only a few hours ago, when she arrived from Bella Coola, and already she looks ten years older.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get back here sooner.”
It’s fine, I want to tell her. She should know how grateful I am. For her coming to look for me as soon as she arrived with JJ. For the sound she made when she heard my head was fine. For being the one who finally told me about JJ’s—JJ’s—
The words won’t work. They burn behind my eyes and choke up my throat.
Hanne lets her snow jacket fall to the floor as she comes to me. “Yeah,” she whispers, catching my face before I can turn it away and stroking my tears with her thumb. “Yeah, I know. Move up.”
With delicate care she pulls herself up onto the bed, avoiding the cast-wrapped lump of my arm. Beside me she’s spindly, her limbs coltish. Her body is so much smaller than the one I want to be there.
I hate myself for being selfish enough to think of that. Of course he’s with his best friend. JJ is the most important thing.
Hanne’s fingers in my hair can’t soothe away the ache, but they help.
“He’s out of surgery now. The doctors say the pinning went well.”
Smiling, generous JJ.
When I shake harder Hanne only squeezes me more tightly.
“You can see him when he wakes up. This whole observation thing worked out, right? You even get a bed to wait in.”
She tries so hard to make that joke. It’s the least I can do to smile, even if it tastes of tears.
Even if we’re cradled in the wreckage of JJ’s dreams.
I take a deep breath, fighting to keep the crack from my voice. “Will he be able to …”
Hanne’s hand stutters in its rhythm over my hair. She’s not a delicate person. She doesn’t lie. I know that. So I appreciate how gently she says it.
“It’s his spine, Brooke. We just don’t know.”
The horror of it vibrates in the air and curdles in my stomach.
What is JJ if he can’t walk? If he can’t do the things he loves?
What are any of us, if we can’t ride?
The risks of what we love crowd around in the darkness, and Hanne squeezes me in her exhausted arms.
“Just get some rest. You called your mom, right?”
It’s not a conversation I want to be reminded about. It took so much effort to prevent Mom from coming to get me. It took even more to say, I’ll be home soon.
Everything is over. My dream of filming. My dream of getting the perfect photo.
Gone, just like that.
I grit all of my strength together, rubbing my wet face over the pillow before looking up to Hanne. I try to make the words strong. I hope they are. I want to be strong, for all of them.
“I want to come down and wait with you and Chase. I want to be there when JJ comes round.”
Hanne’s arm jostles me as she pulls away. The bed feels so empty without her. When she straightens up from bending over her jacket she’s holding a tissue, leaning to press it into my hands.
It doesn’t distract me from the look on her face. A thin frozen surface covers something roiling within.
Hanne seems to chose her words very carefully, her voice stripped of emotion. “I haven’t seen Chase since I took the medevac with JJ.”
My mouth struggles against my confusion. “… What?”
Hanne’s voice has lost all of its usual sparkle. She doesn’t even sound angry. It’s deeper than that. Darker.
“He hasn’t come. He disappeared after the rescue heli got us to Bella Coola.”
What the fuck.
The anger that burns in my chest isn’t for me. It’s for JJ, with his broken spine and his shattered dreams. It’s for Hanne, who’s doing this alone.
I can’t help but think of Trent who never came. Not for my birthday. Not for Thanksgiving. Not when I graduated from college or broke my leg. He was never there. Not for the good things. And more importantly, not for the bad.
Chase didn’t even lie. He told that reporter straight to her face: I always looked up to him.
Chase is just like Trent after all.
The harshness in my voice feels good. “Where is he?”
Hanne shrugs helplessly. “I wish I knew.”
It’s evening before we’re allowed to see JJ. The drugs. The knock to his head. Visits from his family. The nurses give Hanne and I one reason after another that we can’t see him, so we sit in the waiting room living off bad coffee and vending-machine snacks until we’re given in the all-clear.
The man in the bed doesn’t look like JJ. JJ doesn’t have wires coming out of his arm, or a machine beeping beside him. He’s not pale and still. JJ is bright and golden, always friendly, always smiling.
This man can hardly turn his head over the pillow. He struggles against heavy lids, looking for someone else behind us before he seems to give up and settles his drugged-up eyes on us.
“See?” His voice is a dry rasp. “Not dead.”
“Don’t joke, you dick.” Hanne’s voice is hardly a murmur. I wish I could move as surely as her. I’m jealous of how easily she tucks in beside JJ’s bed, stroking back his hair and smoothing her thumb over his temple. “How are you feeling?”
JJ’s tongue passes over his cracking lips. “About seventy percent more metallic.”
“What did I say about joking?” Hanne despairs, but her smile is achingly tender. It’s still warm when she looks to me, tilting her jaw toward the other side of the bed.
I don’t know how to stand there beside JJ. Not when all the unsaid things swirl in the room. The doctors are hopeful—that’s what JJ’s mom said when we passed her in the hall. Hopeful. I don’t know what it means. Like stable, and no neurological damage.
I don’t know if those things mean walk. I don’t know if they mean ride.
I can’t breathe with all the things we can’t talk about heavy in the air.
If Chase ever does show up, I’m going to kill him.
JJ works hard to turn his head to me, the effort pushing the air from his lungs. “I’m sorry you were alone. In the heli to Bella Coola. In the flight here. In surgery. All of it. I’m so sorry.”
JJ shouldn’t be saying that. He shouldn’t be saying it so much that I can’t believe he has. I only have a broken arm, and he … I stare, open mouthed, before I manage to find words.
“It was—It was fine. It’s not important.”
“Your arm …” JJ’s bicep quivers beneath his hospital gown as he reaches for me. All that effort only to brush his fingertips over my cast before his hand falls limp and exhausted. “Someone should have gone with you.”
“She was walking,” Hanne corrects, a sharp edge to her voice. “She wasn’t screaming and fucking broken …”
A shadow passes over JJ’s face. Hanne makes a sound, a half-breath oh of distress as she realizes what she said.
“Broken,” JJ manages once he’s closed his eyes, his lashes glistening. “Not dead.”
He has no energy to make seeing the bright side true.
The space where Chase should be emits a static which raises the hairs on my neck. I feel like I’m going to be sick. My hand at JJ’s shakes so much I have to let his go.
I want to hit Chase. I want to scream.
Why would he let his best friend down? Why wouldn’t he be here? Why would he run away from all of this pain?
Everything’s broken, and he’s gone, and I hate that asshole so much.
“I’m t
ired,” JJ says in a monotone.
Hanne kisses his forehead first. When I do the same, I can hear the stifled only-just sound of the tears he can’t show us.
“I’ll send him in, if he comes,” Hanne whispers.
JJ forces a ghastly smile without opening his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t want … You know how it is.”
The tattoo. Chase’s unspoken, unerasable pain written out in black ink. It shimmers on the inside of my eyelids, there every time I blink. But in this moment, as Hanne nods, deflated, I’m angry. Why isn’t she as pissed as I am? Why is she giving Chase a pass?
Some shit happened, JJ said. I’ve only brushed the surface of that truth, and I’m so sorry in all the ways I could never tell Chase.
But the tattoo isn’t now. Now is JJ lying in this hospital bed, his body as broken as his dreams.
All the things Chase said about not being there for me—about going—about not being serious. They don’t matter. I don’t give a shit.
But to leave his best friend here, crying and shattered?
Only feeling my heart break makes me realize I’ve given it away.
When I come out of the restroom, Hanne’s holding a dark-haired woman who looks strangely familiar. They stand wrapped together in the corridor, rocking slowly back and forth on the silent rhythm of care.
It’s long moments before Hanne disengages, squeezing the woman’s shoulder before she walks over to me. She doesn’t comment on my tear-blotched face. Her own eyes are glistening, her smile shaky.
“Raquel has come. All the way from Paris. She’s …” Hanne clears her throat. “Do you mind if I talk with her for a minute?”
The woman on JJ’s laptop looked so different, smiling and sunlit. Now she’s pale and tear-streaked, curling into a chair, her expression twisted with pain.
Raquel. The woman whose photo JJ stared at in the night. The one he still misses.
JJ’s ex came when his best friend didn’t. She came even though they don’t see each other anymore. They’re over, and still she came. All the way from Europe.
Chase didn’t come. Not even from the same mountain.
I force a smile, squeezing Hanne’s elbow gently. “Yeah. Of course. I’m going to get some fresh air.”
Hanne nods. “Thank you.”
It’s freezing outside. They cut off my jacket and shirt in Bella Coola to reach my arm, and the spare coat a nurse found for me for the plane ride to Vancouver doesn’t quite fit. I tug the loose fabric about me like a shawl, drawing in a deep breath of city air. The road before the spinal surgery building is small, but beyond I can hear the thrum of the main avenue. The breeze smells faintly of gasoline.
Snow is falling, and slowly the sidewalk and tarmac are being draped with a perfect white sheet. I’ve loved it for so long, and now the sight makes my heart hammer in my chest. It’s not the crushing white indifference of the mountain’s powder, but even this light dusting can remind me of things I’d rather forget. Better not to stand in it. Better to tuck in along the center’s plate-glass wall, trudging along toward no place in particular, trying to keep the open flaps of the coat closed over my arm in its sling.
And then, from nowhere, there’s Chase.
My heart pounds painfully against my ribs.
He looks wrong in a city. I’ve always known him in the mountains, and here in a world of brick and cement he seems lost. With his face set like stone and his arms crossed he stands and stares out over the road, the movement of his jaw betraying the slow grind of his teeth. His skin is sallow and his eyes are glazed. From the dark circles under them he hasn’t slept since the mountain.
Good. He deserves it.
“How could you.”
Chase startles, but he doesn’t run from my striding approach. For a moment his muscles go loose, his arms dropping. His hands twitch as if he might reach for me.
Too late, Chase Austin. Too late.
“How fucking could you.”
“Brooke—”
I don’t want him to hold me. I plant my hands on his chest and push him away, where he wants to be. The place he should have stayed from the start.
“He might not walk again. He could have died and you wouldn’t know. Your best friend. He loves you.”
Chase smells of booze. Way too much booze. I don’t want that. I don’t want the hold of his arms. I fight against his reaching, batting at his hands with my own, my rage against his persistence. It only makes me angrier when he keeps trying, my voice rising to echo ugly over the cement and asphalt.
“Why the fuck weren’t you there? Why not? Why?”
“Brooke—”
“He needs you there. I—JJ needed you there.”
I’m crying. God. Why am I crying? Just because he didn’t care. Just because he left. Just because I can’t trust—
The hot wet tears sting in the cold, spreading salt over my tongue. My words are hitched by the thing that hurts in my chest and jerks at my breathing, spreading sickness through my stomach.
“Don’t you care? Doesn’t it matter to you?”
“It matters.” Chase has given up reaching for me, the power of his muscles transformed to a solid tension. The air seems to quiver about him. Each molecule which separates us can be felt, separate and whole. So few inches. So many millions of miles. “Of course it fucking matters.”
“If you love someone you’re there.” My accusation is choked with tears. “If you love someone you care for them.”
“Gold fucking star!”
His shout shocks me to silence, stalling all the air in my chest. I’ve seen Chase moody before. I’ve seen him angry. But this isn’t the controlled fury he turned on the man who touched me in Laax. This is something feral, something savage, all control stripped away to reveal the raw thing beneath.
“I’m not there for people. I’m not. I’m a shitty-ass person who’s never been good for anything. I let people down. I hurt them. I’m not there for them when they need me.”
I wish he would stop. But now Chase is going, his voice rising, all that rage barely contained in tight-wound muscles. People must be hearing. Anyone on the street must be looking.
But Chase doesn’t care.
“I have always been honest with you,” he shouts. “Always. I never promised you a fucking thing I couldn’t give you. I respect you too much to offer you some Prince Charming I could never be in a million years. Do you know why I said not serious, Brooke? Do you know why?”
I can’t speak at all. I can only stare up at Chase, my mouth dry. He towers over me, all that bulk rigid with adrenaline.
Chase doesn’t need an answer, anyway. He’s unstoppable, his shout hammering against the glass and the tarmac, breaking the peace of the snow.
“Because you don’t deserve this shit. JJ doesn’t deserve this shit. But it is who. I. Am.” He slams the words into his chest with his palms. “I’m a good-for-nothing fuck up who ruins everything he loves. I have hurt every single person I’ve ever cared about. And I knew I would do the same to you.”
I’ve never seen a look on someone’s face like that before. That empty. That vicious. Like a wounded animal, cornered and snarling.
“Do you feel better now? Up on your high horse?” Chase takes a step toward me. A breath heaves over the line of his shoulders before he drops his voice low, leaning closer to me in a sickening parody of the intimacy we used to have. He isn’t kissing. He’s hurting, the words snarled in pain. “Because you were right, Brooke. You were always right. I’m a motherfucking asshole and you should never, ever have let me touch you.”
We always think anger is hot. But when it’s real—when it’s true—it’s cold.
The tears taste like iron on my tongue.
“Fuck you, Chase.”
This time, I’m the one who leaves.
27
Chase doesn’t show his face again before I get on the plane back to Bella Coola.
JJ’s still being kept in the hospital, so it’s just Hanne
and I traveling together. We promised JJ we’d pack up his things for him—and anyway, we need to get our own. On the plane Hanne, exhausted, falls into a fitful sleep against my shoulder.
It’s not her slender weight that rests so heavy on my chest. The past clings to me, a ghost that won’t let go.
Last time I flew out to the lodge I pressed my face to the helicopter’s window, my lips tingling with Chase’s kiss, and the world opened up before me like the mountains. I was so happy. I was going to get my name on an actual feature film. I was going to get the photo that would win me an Illuminations prize.
And I was going to see Chase. Chase like he was then. When we didn’t fuck stuff up by talking about it, just like he said. When we were just us. When he made me laugh. When we could sit in silence and watch the mountains together, seeing the same beauty in them. When we lay together in the dark and I felt something I couldn’t name tingling in my chest.
Now the clouds have socked low in the air, and it feels like the sky will never clear again.
But if I was stupid enough to let someone hurt me after only a few months of knowing him—that’s my own problem. Something that hurt so quickly must heal quickly, too.
Except these new cuts only opened old wounds.
I dig my nails as hard as I can into my palms, letting the bite of pain be a punishment. What kind of bitch thinks about this, when a few hundred miles away JJ’s lying broken in a hospital bed?
They say he’ll walk again. I think it over and over, turning the words about in my head like a talisman. He’ll walk, he’ll walk, he’ll walk.
The rest …
Dinkler and Ryan have been waiting for us. They visited JJ two days after the accident, but came back soon after to pack up here. They’re shooting in Europe next week with another group of boarders. That’s the brutal reality of what we do. Life goes on. Shit still needs to be done, and films have production schedules that don’t stop for anything but death. Sometimes not even that.
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