Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2)

by Harper Dallas

  He’s well, then. His back wasn’t too badly hurt.

  With every day that goes by, I have more and more of a sense of something building up. Some decision hanging over me.

  I can’t stop thinking of how JJ must be feeling. Will he still be going to the season starter? Would it hurt more not to go—or to go and to see his friends doing the thing that he still can’t?

  The final day before the season starter, when I see that Chase has tagged himself at High Performance HQ, the text writes itself before I have time to think of it.

  Hey. You’re in LA?

  Until 6 yeah

  Fly out to season starter in Mammoth then

  Catch up?

  I don’t stop to think that it’s unlike Chase to be sociable on his own. I only reply with a place and a time.

  Inside of my chest there’s a light, floating feeling, and my head is filled with rushing, as if I’m traveling very fast.

  I shove back my chair, grab my car keys, and head to Palisades Park.

  I’ve always found the beach peaceful. No matter how many other people are out here, it always feels just as lonesome as I want it to. It gives me space to consider my thoughts and just as much company as I need. Not alone, not with anyone, just me, walking my solitary way down the line of the sea, which sucks at the land as if hungry for me, for my thoughts.

  The on-and-on rush of it, ever changing, ever the same.

  JJ might already be in Mammoth. I picture the journey—over the valley, over the mountains. As if I could fly there like a bird.

  I’m angry that he’s pushing himself relentlessly back into the career that hurt him.

  I’m worried that he’ll push himself too far again.

  And as much as I try to deny it, it hurts to imagine that he’s there, sad, watching the people he loves do the thing that he wants to do and can’t, not yet.

  Maybe not ever, something says inside of me. Something planted there by the doctors in the first hospital, by all the non-believers who couldn’t understand JJ’s drive.

  The thought twists my stomach with a feeling I can’t name.

  I don’t want him hurt. I hate the thought of him being afraid or in pain. I hate the thought of him pushing himself to do this and then breaking his spine again. I hate the thought of him too hurt to walk, this time forever. I hate the thought of him with a head injury that makes him a different person. I hate the thought of him dead under the snow, where I will never be able to find him again.

  But the thought of him not being able to do what he loves anymore…

  As the time I agreed with Chase gets closer, I head back up over the sand to the park above the bluffs. I walk beneath the palms until I find a free bench with a view, where I can sit alone with my thoughts while I wait.

  I catch sight of Chase soon enough. His jeans and t-shirt might not stand out among the other people wandering the park, but he’s a big, imposing man. It’s impossible not to catch sight of him.

  He’s on the phone, and I can just hear his voice over the wind. “Okay. Call me later.” There’s a pause, and he’s just close enough that I can see the secretive curve of his grin, the faraway look in his eyes. “Love you too.”

  To hear Chase saying those words still shocks me. To be reminded of how much he’s changed—how meeting the right person has softened him, opened him up. Made him into the better man Hanne and JJ always saw in him, even when other people never did.

  There’s an ache in my stomach, and though Chase’s smile is warm when he reaches me, there’s a quizzical look in his eyes.

  “You okay?”

  I find a smile and a nod, standing up so that we can manage an awkward hug. “Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks for coming out.”

  “No problem.” He shrugs. “I had some free time before I had to start heading out, anyway. We sitting?”

  He doesn’t wait for me to answer, just folds his long legs into a seat on the bench. He spreads the arm to the other side of me along the backrest and stares out at the sea as if he might say nothing at all.

  As if my ex-fiancé’s best friend might come to see me so easily and never mention his reason why. I might have been the one who texted, but Chase is the one who was so eager to come.

  I wonder what he thinks of me.

  I wonder what he thinks of what I did.

  “You’re heading to Mammoth for the season starter after this?” I ask, though I know the answer.

  “Yep,” Chase says to the distant waves. “JJ’s already out there.”

  I pretend to be very interested in a passing gull, when really I’m hanging onto this moment so closely that I can’t breathe. I refuse to worry the space on my finger where the ring used to be, no matter how much I want to.

  There’s a long silence before Chase turns his face to me.

  “Whatever you wanna talk about, I’m here for it.”

  He might not be the most eloquent man of all time, but there’s a steady openness to his look that wasn’t there before JJ and I called off the engagement. A presence, like he’s really here.

  He’s come out to see me without asking why. He’s made an effort. Whatever he thinks of me, it doesn’t stop him from being here.

  Somehow, that realization allows me to say the things that I’m thinking.

  “I wanted to talk about JJ.”

  Chase spares me the embarrassment of pointing out how obvious that is. Instead he turns his face back to the ocean. “He’s been a mess without you.”

  I’m not a good enough person not to feel a rush. I guess there was a part of me that worried maybe he was over it. Maybe he’d finally realized that I wasn’t the right one for him.

  Chase doesn’t seem to feel the urge to say more. He just waits, as the sea sings its on-and-on song, and the gulls shriek overhead.

  I take a deep breath, twisting my fingers together in my lap. There’s so much I want to ask, so much I want to talk about. The words that finally come out surprise even me.

  “How do you deal with her going out and doing this stuff?”

  The question is so out of left-field that I’d understand if Chase wouldn’t answer it. But he doesn’t say: That came from nowhere. He doesn’t seem to resent me asking. He just tilts his head at me, his bright blue eyes curious. “This stuff?”

  “Riding. I mean, Brooke was in that avalanche too. It’s not like it couldn’t happen again.”

  “Well shucks, thanks for reminding me.” But Chase raises a hand when I realize what I said and begin to scramble for apologies. He shakes his head, his mouth softening. “It’s okay. I get it. It’s true. She could be out there when anything happens. Avalanches. Accidents. We fly in a lot of tiny planes. Some of the routes I’ve done out in Russia still give me nightmares.” He tilts me a smile. “I spend a lot of time at night turning this shit over in my mind.”

  “Sorry,” I say lamely.

  “I’m not.”

  I look up at him, confused. “What…?”

  “How do I deal with it… That’s a weird question.” Chase is moving on. He looks out at the sea, his tongue pressing against his lip, before he looks back to me. “If I didn’t deal with that, I couldn’t have Brooke. But that’s not the answer you’re asking for.”

  No, it’s not. I don’t know what I’m asking for, though. I’m sitting here, lost and confused, so heartsick I haven’t eaten in days, or slept more than a couple fractured hours a night since I came back to LA.

  “There’s this way Brooke looks when she’s been boarding.” Chase’s sudden voice surprises me. His gaze is still fixed on the sea. “She gets this—this light, in her eyes. There’s this way she smiles…” He trails to his own grin, as lovestruck as a teenager. I’ve never seen his face look so soft. So transformed. “It’s like she’s buzzing with it. Maybe it’s easier, because I feel it too, but Raquel…”

  He turns his face to me. “I’d rather die than never see that look on her face again.”

  But what about her dying?

  I d
on’t say it, but Chase must see it. His smile turns, lowers, is left deeper and stranger.

  “I’d kill for her,” he says quietly. “The idea of losing her… I don’t think I’d survive it. Without her…”

  A breath shudders through him. For a moment his chin drops and he rubs his hand over his face, pressing his fingertips into his eyes.

  When he raises his eyes to mine again he has that steady, sure look I’ve seen on JJ before.

  The look that says: I know what I’m doing. I know the risks. And I’m ready.

  “I love her,” Chase says to me steadily. “And I will never, ever take away the thing that makes her smile like that. And if that means I have to be man enough to face losing her, then that’s what I’ll do. Because you don’t meet a woman like that every day. You don’t clip a bird’s wings.”

  He smiles, as if that’s silly, but he’s deadly serious as he says, simply: “I love Brooke. I love her happy.”

  We say goodbye with a one-armed hug, and then Chase goes to fly out to the season starter in Mammoth. He says that Brooke will be joining him there—apparently it’s where she grew up.

  I force myself not to think of it.

  I go home, and I eat dinner with my mom before we watch TV together. When Dad comes back from work he joins us.

  Finally I kiss them both goodnight, and head up to my room, where I can’t sleep at all.

  I lie in bed, and everything that Chase said swirls around my head.

  I love her happy.

  It comes back to me over and over. I can hear the words as clear as if he’s saying them right now.

  When JJ was boarding, he looked so happy. In the video clips that would be shared on social media, when he’d tug down his neck warmer and grin, flushed and glowing, at the camera. In the evenings when he’d come back from a day’s backcountry boarding with his crew.

  The only other time I’ve seen him so happy is when he was with me. When we cooked together, or after we made love. When we hiked, and swam, and climbed.

  All this time I’ve thought of JJ’s boarding as the enemy, but now Chase’s voice and my dad’s echo in my ears.

  I’ve always loved JJ’s sense of adventure. His wild, free spirit. The ways he was different from other people. His drive, and his commitment. His determination to make the most of life.

  I remember how he looked in the hospital, when he thought he might have lost that forever. Even thinking of that unhappiness hurts me now, all these months later.

  I think too of how the desire to get back on his board powered him forward—just like it did all the years we were together, through other injuries, through early mornings and grueling schedules, through back-to-back time zone changes and the exhausting interview schedule Vertex sometimes asked of him.

  I’ve never respected someone more than I respected JJ.

  All the time we were together, I imagined the kind of father he’d be. I dreamed of our kids inheriting his tenacity, his generosity of spirit, his grit. I wanted them to seize life the way he did—to make the most of every moment. To really live, rather than simply existing.

  And all the time, in the shadow of that, was the fear.

  The fear that I’d lose him.

  The fear that he wouldn’t choose me.

  The fear that I couldn’t survive without him.

  How is it only now that it’s so clear—that I lost him anyway, because I pushed him away. Because I was so afraid that I gave him a black and white choice which, either way, would make him lose something he loved.

  Something or someone that he needed.

  Now it’s suddenly clear that even if JJ had chosen me, I wouldn’t have gotten what I wanted. Because I don’t want a half of JJ. I want all of him.

  I want his sense of wonder and his joy. I want his ambition and his dedication. I want his laughter and his strength.

  I think of what my dad said about compromises, and I realize: I don’t want JJ to give up everything. I just want him to reassure me. To prioritize me. To make me understand how he minimizes the risks of what he does as much as is possible.

  I don’t want my children to learn that it’s better to take guaranteed safety over risk and reward.

  Because risk isn’t just about what we might lose: it’s about what we know we will gain.

  It flutters through me, the memory of what it was like to teach amazing, incredible athletes to reach for their potential. To jump high, even if there might be costs. To believe in themselves.

  To go after their dreams, rather than giving them up.

  There are things I can’t accept JJ doing. Risks he can’t take. Especially not if we’re going to have children together.

  But suddenly I know that JJ doesn’t have to choose between the two loves of his life.

  He just has to be able to compromise between them.

  I love JJ Schneider. I always have.

  I love him happy.

  JJ

  Arriving at the season starter should feel like coming home.

  My name’s being shouted everywhere—in the airport when I fly in from Jackson. At the line for a rental. When I’m getting out of the car at the group of lodges Vertex has rented for us.

  All the people I’ve known and worked with for so many years come over to see me. The girls throw their arms around me and the guys slap my back. I’ve made it back. These are my people, skiers and snowboarders, athletes at the top of their game. Men and women who share my passion. Who understand how much what I do means to me.

  “So good to see you, man. How’s it going? How’s the back?”

  I tell them all that it’s doing great, and it’s true. No one mentions that I’m not traveling with my own board bag.

  I might be back here—Mike have been determined to invite me and prove that I’m still one of the team—but I can’t board yet. As much as I’ve tried to convince myself, the doctor’s right: if I have to delay a couple months to make sure that I don’t totally screw myself on the first jump, that’s all right.

  Because I’ve made it. I’m here. This is Vertex’s vote of confidence that I can do this. That I’m coming back. That the accident on that slope in Bella Coola hasn’t ended everything that I love.

  How could being here be anything less than the best thing that could happen to me?

  But after I’ve dumped my gear in my room in one of the lodges, I find myself lying back on the king-size bed rather than getting up.

  I’m here. I should be happy.

  Somehow, it still feels wrong.

  This is all I’ve ever wanted. To be a sponsored pro snowboarder. Since I was a kid, everything I’ve done has built toward this. And God knows I’ve given up a ton of stuff for it.

  If Raquel walked out of my life for the second time over this, I’d better appreciate it.

  Lying here though, listening to the rest of my team partying outside and in the main room…

  There’s something heavy in my chest, pinning me down. Something that holds me to the bed and just won’t let me go.

  I should go out into the main room. I should catch up with the friends I’ve missed. I should shoot the shit with them, drink beer, play hacky-sack out in the snow.

  I need to show Vertex how much I appreciate being invited here, even if I can’t ride. How serious I am about getting back to it.

  But there doesn’t seem to be a ton of a point to going out there, at this moment in time.

  If this is my home—if riding is everything—why isn’t not boarding the worst thing that’s happened to me?

  “I talked to Raquel today.”

  Chase says it like it’s normal. He doesn’t even look up from where he’s bent over his board in the cement-floored equipment room at the back of the lodge. He draws his hands back and forth over the board in its vise, peeling off wax with the scraper.

  The fact that he’s managed to keep this quiet in the hours since he arrived makes my jaw drop.

  He’s seen since he arrived just before dinner
that I’ve been quiet and subdued. He’s not great at talking about emotions, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t aware of them. He knows something’s been on my mind. Hell, everyone can tell. I can feel how they all look at me, the rest of the team, wondering why I’m here. If I’m really going to come back.

  If this time it’s really, truly over with Raquel.

  Chase isn’t a fool—not in that way, at least. He knows I’m in a funk.

  And he’s held this in until now, when it’s almost eleven p.m. and he’s finishing his last preparations for riding with the team tomorrow.

  “What the hell? Where?”

  “LA. Before I flew out.” Chase says it like it isn’t a big thing. He leans harder onto the board, pressing the plastic scraper flush against it with a grunt of effort. “She asked to see me.”

  My mind lags like a computer trying to open too many tabs at once. I don’t have the RAM for this.

  “She asked to see you?”

  “Uh huh.” Chase straightens to survey his handiwork before he reaches to exchange the plastic scraper for a brush. When he flicks a look up to me, he doesn’t hold it. “She wanted to talk about risk.”

  Risk. It’s what everything has come down to, in the end.

  Always, throughout our relationship, that constant balance.

  What I need to be happy.

  What she needs to feel safe.

  How we justify the love we feel for each other against the things that it asks from us.

  “What did she want to say about it?”

  Chase considers that as he begins to brush down the board, moving across it in bold sweeping motions, huffing with the effort of buffing the board down. “She wanted to know how I deal with what Brooke does.”

  Hope flares inside of me. My heart has forgotten to beat. “Are you serious?”

  I’ve been sure that Raquel is gone. That it’s over. The idea of her talking to Chase…