Jodi
It’s still dark when my alarm goes off on Christmas Eve.
Today is supposed to be the day.
The day I drive home. The day I prove my brothers wrong. The day I walk through my parents’ front door triumphant, on time and smug as hell.
But I don’t spring out of bed. I just lie there, staring at the shadows on the ceiling while my breath feels like wet sand dragging inside my chest.
I should be thrilled. I am thrilled. Kind of.
Yesterday I spent all day with Amber’s family. Her mom made homemade hot cocoa, and we put together a massive three-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle on their dining room table. It was wonderful, but something was missing.
Someone.
The look on Reid’s face haunts me.
I messed up.
He wasn’t angry. That almost made it worse. Disappointed. Hurt. He’d offered up something real and I’d shoved it back at him with cold hands.
I keep replaying the moment I closed the door. The soft click. The way my breath cracked in my throat the second I shut him out.
We didn’t have to be a fling. He wasn’t treating me like one. I panicked. Hell, it’s not like he’s going to California or Florida. The man is literally visiting his friend in Crescent Ridge soon. He’s going to the same place I am. We had the chance to build something beautiful. Something lasting.
I ruined it.
“Idiot,” I mutter into the blankets.
When I finally throw them off, the clock says 6:08 AM. Too early to knock on his door. Too early for anything except guilty clarity and that stupid twisty feeling in my stomach that feels an awful lot like regret.
I want to fix things.
No. Ineedto.
Even if he tells me to leave, even if he doesn’t want to hear it, I can’t leave Hope Peak with things unresolved.
Dressing fast, I yank open the door and freeze.
Because the world has turned into a white, glittering graveyard for all my plans.
Snow.
So much snow.
At least twelve inches piled on railings, smothering the walkway, burying my car up to the bumper like it’s been in the Arctic for a season instead of the mountains overnight. Snowdrifts slope across the inn’s parking lot.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
I step out and immediately sink to my calves. It’s powdery on top but dense underneath. The kind of snow that traps small cars like mine without mercy.
Slogging to the car anyway, I brush snow off the windshield with my sleeve. My fingers are numb by the time I tug the door open and sit inside.
It fires right up, running smoother than it has since I bought it. A testament to Reid’s skill. When I try to reverse out of my spot, it doesn’t budge. Not an inch. Not even a centimeter. My wheels spin freely, but the body doesn’t even rock.
The wheels aren’t just stuck. The whole car is pinned in place by snow up to the undercarriage. Even if I shoveled the snow out to free it, I’d be lucky to make it to the road, let alone down the mountain.
I lean my forehead against the steering wheel.
