“Where was home? It wasn’t here, right? Your apartment came with the job, didn’t it?”
“No, actually. I scored it before Harrison gave me a shot at the bar. Before that, me and Gabi had a cabin out on Black Claw, but we haven’t been there since I told him I was gonna wait for him to pass out so I could put his gun in my mouth.”
I search the mental maps I have in my head. There’s a few abandoned cabins on Black Claw. Only one looks like it’s been lived in any time in the last century. It has big windows and a cozy wooden porch that taunts me when I catch sight of it from the farthest lookout point. “Is it the one with the baby maple tree growing out of the old boot?”
“Yeah.”
“And you haven’t been back there at all?”
“Nope.”
“Well, your tree is still alive, in case you were worried.”And so are you.
Tanner smiles a little. “I’d forgotten about the tree. It’s not mine. Eve planted it when Gabi kept forgetting to bring his boots inside.”
“She’s never mentioned the cabin. I thought your brother was absent enough that he just stayed with you when he’s not with her.”
“He never stays with me. I can’t deal with him analyzing me all the time.”
I process that, trying to match it with my sibling relationships, but there’s no common ground. I’m the mysterious older brother who fucked off to America and never came back. “Can I ask you something?”
“If you like.”
“What happened before you came back to work for Jerry? Did something happen in Alaska?”
Tanner breathes in and out, and it seems to take forever. “Nothing happened.”
For the first time since we met, I don’t believe him, and it must show on my face as he shakes his head. “I mean nothing specific,” he clarifies. “Turns out I’m just not wired right for digging dead bodies out of avalanches week-in, week-out. It got to me before I could catch it, then a couple guys I worked with died in a winching accident, and I knew I’d had enough.”
“So you came home?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t do anything else…as in, I didn’t fix anything. I’d had this burning need to come home that I’d never felt before…like, if I could just get here, everything would magically be okay. And I was naive enough to believe it. I got another job on another mountain, and, well, you know how that panned out.”
I do, and though the knowledge has gouged a hole in my heart I can’t see ever healing, a weight has shifted from my brain. Everything about him now makes sense—the nightmares, the irrational fear of me dying in my sleep, and his reluctance to set foot in the wilderness he once called home. “Did you have therapy?”
“For a while. They figured I was probably having some kind of depressive breakdown before I even went to Alaska. I kept asking them what triggered it, as though if they told me that it would all make sense. Took me a long time to realize the details weren’t that important. Maybe I just wasn’t built for that life.”
“I don’t think anyone’s built for what you’ve lived through, mate.”
“But I didn’t live. That’s the point. You know the old dude who died on the Gentle Deer trail? His wife climbed Kilimanjaro this summer. She didn’t give up on the whole world like I did.”
“You’re not the same person. She didn’t live your life up until that point.”
Tanner makes a frustrated sound. “I know what you’re saying. And some days I believe it, but I’m a wreck, Jax. You know that, right?”
He’s not. But it’s not me he needs to hear it from, it’s himself. I touch his cheek, trailing a finger over the high bone, lost in his long, dark lashes. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That it happened to you. All of it.”
Tanner sighs. He’s done talking, I can tell. He’s breached his limits just to have this conversation, and I don’t know why. As in, whynow? And I’m not sure it matters. I lean in to kiss him.
He stops me. “Jax, I can’t go out there with you. You know that, don’t you? It’s fucking stupid, and I know it, but every time I even think about it, I just—”
“Shh.” I quiet him with a soft hand over his lips, so different to the palm I slapped across his face when we were fucking. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have asked you. Jerry told me not to, but I didn’t know how deep this was for you. Or maybe I did, and I thought I could fix it. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Tanner closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the despair in them rips me in two. He takes my hand from his mouth and kisses my knuckles. “You can’t fix this. I’ve done all the healing I’ve got in me.”
