Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
I drag my hand over my cheek. I’m gonna kill Atlas. Bury his ass right beside dad just to piss him off.
Tapping the monitor, I watch her storm down the hall and disappear through her bedroom.
I snicker, grabbing the discarded hoodie at my side and forcing it over my head. Instagram notifications flood my phone, all variations of the same question.
When are you hitting the slopes, Asher?
When’s the next run?
When when when.
Fucking never.
I thumb through them anyway, letting the mindless scroll flatten the jagged edges still rattling around my skull. Some fourteen-year-old from Germany tagged me in a video of a backside double cork, captioned “thoughts?” My thoughts are that I want to put my fist through something until I feel bones crack and the rage stops fucking vibrating.
Movement flashes on the monitor.
Ivy’s bathroom. The mirror above the sink is a spiderweb of fractured glass, despite her efforts to clean up the mess.
My phone slips and hits the desk with a thud.
I lean forward and tap the screen twice to zoom, then hit rewind. The footage stutters backward, light reversing through the window of today. Then I find it. Her fist connecting with the mirror.
The angle’s shit but I can see enough. Her shoulders shaking, one hand braced on the counter while the other swings, glass exploding outward, her reflection splintering into a hundred broken versions of herself.
How fucking accurate that image is…
I check the time stamp. Right after she walked in on me and Camille.
I sit back, my hand finding the drawer without looking and pulling out the pre-rolled joint and lighter. Flame catches the tip. I drag in deep and hold it until my lungs burn, then slowly release, watching the smoke curl in lazy rings.
On screen, she’s stopped. She’s sitting there, shoulders heaving, head tipped back. Even through the grainy feed I can see her working hard to compartmentalize. Then she wipes her face with her uninjured hand and opens a cabinet, pulling out a suture kit. Stitching herself back together like it’s no big deal.
I take another pull, letting smoke sit heavy on my tongue before exhaling through my nose. The rage is still there and it wants to hunt down every man who touched her tonight, but that can’t be me. That can’t be who I am, wearing the title I do now.
She finishes the stitches and tests her hand, opening and closing her fist a few times. Thirty seconds later she has her phone pressed to her ear.
Ah. So this is how we got to where we are right now.
Interesting.
Thoughts drift through the smoke and land in an empty void in my chest as she moves through her bedroom. She pauses, head snapping toward the door.
Wait. Did she know I was there?
I sit up in my chair, tilting my head and zooming out further, opening a second frame that’s outside her door.
There I am. Hand hovering a few inches from the handle.
Inside the room, Ivy’s still frozen mid-step.
My jaw tightens.
She knew I was there. Of course she fucking did.
The moment plays out from both sides of the room. My body turns, leaning back against her door as I rest my head. Regret almost had me breaking it down and coming apart. What I didn’t know was that she was right there too, with hands ready to fucking catch me.
Two sides of the same door. Of the same life. Yet neither of us can fucking open it.
CHAPTER
NINE
IVY
Snow kicks off his board in a fine spray as he skids to a halt.
I push the swing with my foot, rocking it in a slow arc. The past few days have been the calmest since I landed in this mess. Asher’s been gone. Atlas is quieter than usual. Sinead and Daniel are acting like they’ve known each other for years.
Asher shakes the powder from his jacket.
I pause my movements.
Snow clings to his dark hair before melting against the heat of his skin. He looks good. Annoyingly good. Good enough that I want to shove him back down the mountain.
“You’re alive,” I say, all bright and fake.
“Disappointed?” His mouth curves into a grin, dragging me back to who he used to be. To the version of him that I ruined.
I hold his stare. “Undecided.”
He unclips his bindings, stepping off the board. I’d spent three days of silence wondering where he was, who he was with, and whether he was fucking Camille in private the same way he liked to in public.
“Good to see there’s at least some part of you that hasn’t changed,” I say, blowing steam off my hot chocolate.
“What else exactly is it that you think has changed?” he asks, his tone level as he climbs the steps.
I bat my lashes. “Would you like the list?”
He hesitates, and I wonder if for a brief moment he remembers how we used to banter, but then he brushes it off and drops down beside me.