Her car is half-buried in snow. She drops her bag and starts digging with her bare hands, scooping snow away from the tires.
“Imani, please.” I’m begging now. I’ve never begged for anything in my life. “Come back inside. We can talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She doesn’t stop digging. “You made yourself perfectly clear.”
“I was wrong.”
“You were an asshole.”
“Yes.” I move closer. “I was. I am. But you can’t leave like this. The storm?—“
“I don’t care about the storm!” She whirls to face me, snow catching in her wet hair, her eyes wild. “I don’t care if I have to walk down this mountain barefoot. I am not spending another night in that cabin with you.”
She turns back to the car and yanks open the driver’s door. Climbs inside. Turns the key.
The engine sputters to life.
She puts it in gear and presses the gas.
The tires spin. Snow flies everywhere. The car doesn’t move.
She tries again. And again. The wheels just keep spinning, finding no traction on the ice beneath the snow.
“Come on,” she mutters, pressing harder on the gas. “Come on, come on, come on?—“
“You promised!” She lowers the driver’s side window. She’s screaming now, pounding the steering wheel with her fists. “You said you’d push me down the mountain! You said?—“
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” She turns to glare at me through the open window, fury and desperation warring on her face. “You’re a seven-foot bear shifter! Push the damn car!”
I don’t move. I can’t. My bear won’t let me help her leave. Every instinct in my body is screaming to keep her here, to drag her back inside, to never let her go.
“Fine!” She fumbles in her pocket, pulling out her phone with shaking hands. “I’m calling Derrick. He said he’d come get me. He said?—“
I reach through the window and snatch the phone from her grip.
“Hey!” She grabs for it, but I’m faster. “Give that back! That’s my phone!”
I look at the device in my hand. Her lifeline. Her escape route.
I close my fist.
Plastic cracks. Glass shatters. The screen goes dark as I crush it, pieces falling through my fingers into the snow.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Then she explodes.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” She’s out of the car now, striking at me with both hands. I don’t budge. “That was my phone! That was my only way to call for help! What is wrong with you?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. My bear is too close to the surface, too desperate, too wild.
“Do you have any idea how much that cost?” She shoves me again, tears streaming down her face. “I saved for months for that phone! Months! And you just—you just crushed it like it was nothing!”
“Imani—“
“Don’t you dare say my name!” Her fists strike my bare skin, bouncing off harmlessly. “You monster! You absolute psychopath! First you scream at me for touching your precious chair, then you tell me to leave, then you won’t let me leave, and now you’ve destroyed my phone? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
