All three nod. Fast and frantic. Then I turn away and don't look back, because I don't need to.
My hands are still balled into tight fists.
Not from adrenaline. From the effort of keeping my anger contained… keeping my voice level and my grip relaxed when every instinct screamed to do more. To make them feel a fraction of what Natalia felt, alone on that mountain, hurting.
I strip off my jacket and boots in the dark vacant chalet. No Natalia already in bed asleep like she usually is when I return this late. I move through it without turning on the lights, my eyes already adjusting.
I head to the bedroom and change into swim shorts before heading to the patio and slide the door open.
I step out and toss the hot tub’s cover off. Steam curls from the hot tub, rising into the cold night air like ghosts. I sink into the water slowly. Heat crawls into my muscles, degree by degree, easing the tension that's been coiled in my shoulders since I saw her through that café window.
I lean my head back against the edge of the tub, close my eyes.
Her laugh echoes in my skull. The way she looks at Zack—open and easy. She’s only ever looked at me like that once. The day we shared lunch together in the bar.
I've spent years perfecting the skill of separating what my body wants from what my head knows is safe. Keeping things transactional, and most importantly… meaningless.
Now I can't even touch that part of myself. It's like she rewired something fundamental, and I don't know how to rewire it back.
The water laps against my skin, hot enough to sting.
I am my father's son.
I've spent my entire life trying to outrun that truth. Years learning to channel his violence into something controlled, something acceptable. I fight on the ice and collect a paycheck.I protect my teammates and get called a hero. I break people's faces and sign autographs afterward.
But it's still violence. Still the same capacity for damage. Just dressed up in a jersey and played to a crowd.
My father never walked away from anything. Never chose distance when he could choose confrontation. Never measured his words, or his hands, or the damage he left in his wake.
I won't do that.
I won't.
Maybe walking away, staying silent, choosing absence, is the only way I know how not to become him. Not because I'm better. But because I'm self-aware enough to know I'm not.
Steam rises around me. I exhale slowly, watching my breath mist in the air above the water.
Another night survived. Another line not crossed.
Tomorrow, I'll do it all again. Keep my distance. Choose absence over action, silence over words, safety over everything else that claws at my chest.
I close my eyes.
And wait for the morning.
Chapter Nineteen
NATALIA
The cold hit my face as Zack and I stepped out of the café. A reminder after spending a couple of hours in the warm café that I’m not in Arizona anymore.
"Thank you for coming," he says, and I can hear the hope threaded through his words. "Did you have fun tonight?"
"I did. I needed this," I say, because I really did.
"Zack!"
A group of three materializes from the direction of the village center—two men and a woman, all around Zack's age, just a few years younger than me, if I had to guess, bundled in the same red lodge wear Zack wears when he’s on the job. They must all work for the ski resort too.
