Chapter 1
Clara
Trips drags me out of his awful father’s office as the echos of his ultimatum ring in my ears. Abandon my guys, or my parents end up homeless. Marry and have a baby, or piles of incriminating photos send people I love to jail. Get publicly engaged, tomorrow, with no time to plan an escape. Panic tightens my ribs as we stumble through the winding hallways, Trips’ grip making my bones ache, my heels slipping on the polished floors.
He bounds out the front of the mansion, hauling me into a stand of trees past the circle drive, the snow whirling around him, melting as it hits my mostly-bare feet. Following a trail through the woods—something I would hardly be able to find in the light, let alone tipsy, at night in heavy snow—he pulls me, not reacting when I ask him to stop, to talk to me, to slow down.
He’s gone. I know it before he stops in a glen far from the house, his roar cutting through the air.
Some part of me wants to join him, to scream until I’m hoarse, until the fear that’s enveloped me gets knocked loose and turned into rage. But the rest of me shivers, the snow melting as it hits my bare skin, dripping under the delicate silk I’m wearing, my toes and fingers icy, my mind fogged with confusion and alcohol.
“Trips,” I try again, but instead of listening, he lets go of my hand, charging a tree and slamming his fist into it. Bark flies, and he pounds it again, building an irregular rhythm as he gains momentum, blood spattering the surrounding snow.
My feet sink with every step as I circle him, trying to get into his line of sight, trying to find a way to calm him.
Full body shivers wrack through me, my mind and body sluggish. My thoughts come slowly, and as I stare at Trips, no solution comes to me.
No plan. No action.
He’s so far gone into his own rage, all I can do is wait for it to work through his system, my shivers violent as he yells and yells, his knuckles more mangled with every hit, his face torn into a picture of fury and grief.
My mind and emotions meld with my stinging skin, slowly growing numb. A few tears mix with the melting snow, the cold morphing from unbearable to comforting the longer I stay. Something tells me to go back, to find the house, to get warm. But I’m so tired.
Weeks of not enough sleep and not enough food, coupled with shock and snow melting down my spine, and I know I’d never make it. I need to rest. Afterwards, I can get back to the house. Right now, I want to hide from whatever the hell is happening. I’m just so damn tired.
Some part of me yells that this is bad. Scary. Maybe lethal.
But that part of me gets quieter and quieter as I curl up in the snow, out of reach of the semicircle of destruction surrounding Trips, half behind the poor, innocent tree.
Blood splatters across the white before me, sinking in as the snow melts, only to be covered by thick clumps of white. Like dandelion fluff. Piles of the stuff, building, building, higher around me. I lay under a blanket made of beautiful fractals of frozen dandelion fluff, and I wait for his anger to abate.
I wait.
And the world grows dim.
Chapter 2
Trips
The persistent ache in my hands, swollen and mangled, with at least a few bones cracked if not broken, forces me back into my body. Back to the fucked-up reality where the one person I was working to keep safe at all costs has been well and truly fucked over.
I slump forward, my forehead pressed against the destroyed tree, calming down enough to face Clara. It’s bad enough I lost it. She doesn’t need to deal with the aftermath.
The wind cuts through my dress shirt, my sweat icy against my chest, and I shuck off my blazer, careful of my hands, ready to offer it to Clara.
I dragged her out here in a silk sleeveless gown and heels. In a fucking blizzard. I’m the worst asshole ever.
Turning, I don’t find her waiting, but there’s no trail back to the house either.
Fear, a different, brighter pitch, hums in my chest as I trace the mostly snow-filled steps behind the tree I’d attacked. The deep post holes lead to a slim body curled under a layer of melting snow, fingers and lips blue.
The sound I make differs from any other I’ve made before, a choked whimper as I scramble to her, trying to wrap her in my blazer with swollen, busted hands, whispering her name and getting nothing in return.
“What the fuck, Clara? Why’d you stay out here? You should have gone in. Fuck, you should have refused to leave the fucking house with me. God damn it, Clara, say something.”
Struggling to pull her into my arms, I manage it, but without being able to grip her, every step through the deep snow is precarious. I keep her pressed as close to me as I can, trying to share some of my warmth with her, needing her to wake up, to yell at me, to come up with a half-assed, terrifying plan to fix anything and everything. Instead, I have icy skin against my sweat-drenched shirt, the wind quickly cooling me past shivers to a sluggish numbness.
By the time I make it out of the woods, I’m terrified and torn. I need to get Clara warm, but I can’t let my father have anything else over us. I’m voice messaging Mattie before I can think too hard about it, barely able to hit the buttons to do even that. Slipping into the back door of the garage, I stumble to the lower level, sleep threatening to take me the same as it has Clara.
