Nico stops before me, and I thrust Amelia Bearhart at him. “This… Amelia Bearhart. Can you hold her? I don’t want her to get wet, and I’m about to pass out,” is all I manage before my legs give way.
Strong arms close around me before I hit the cold ground, and I stare up into the face of my dad’s best friend for the first time.
Huh. He’s… kind of hot.
I meet his gaze, and his wide, charcoal gray eyes are the last thing I see before everything goes black.
2
NICO
Este Skylar is older than I expected.
I could’ve sworn it had only been ten years or so since Bryan called to tell me he and his boyfriend, Chris, were getting married, and he was adopting Chris’s daughters. But then, time more or less stopped for me when I was twenty-five, and everything since has blurred together.
Bryan invited me to their adoption ceremony. I didn’t go. Nor did I go to the wedding, or any of the birthday parties, or the graduation parties. I’ve picked up on fragments of information about Este and her sister over the years, absorbed from the texts Bryan sends to keep me updated, even though I never have anything to update him on in return.
Until last year, I did.
Last October, when Bryan texted me his bi-monthly update and asked if there was anything new with me.
Shay has a new girlfriend. They’re opening a bakery together.
Not necessarily new with me, but even as a kid, I foundit easier to talk about my sisters than myself. And it opened the lines of communication on my end enough that his daughter is sitting in my living room right now. Clutching a stuffed bear named Amelia Bearhart—an objectively hilarious name.
Her face is whiter than the snow swirling around outside the cabin, but at least she’s conscious. She was only out for a few seconds, but it made a knot of panic swell in my chest.
She’s said nothing since I carried her inside and sat her on the couch—she’s just staring at the fire in a way that makes me think she’s not entirely mentally present. It’s a state I’m familiar with.
I keep an eye on her as I cross the room to the fridge and pull out one of the mini bottles of Gatorade I carry in my pocket when I’m doing particularly physical work, like processing and carrying big pieces of wood. Este looks up at me, her chocolate brown eyes glinting in the firelight, as I pass it over.
“Drink.”
Her eyes widen a fraction. Shit. I sound like an asshole, trying to boss her around like I didn’t meet her ten minutes ago. Este doesn’t know me well enough to know I can be a little uptight when I’m worried about people.
Still, she unscrews the cap, and her lips close around the mouth of the bottle. She takes a sip and pulls the bottle away.
“All of it,” I say, trying to sound a little more gentle. I’m not sure I manage, but soft color floods Este’s cheeks, and it’s hard to feel bad when the Gatorade is clearly working.
The muscles in her neck flex as she swallows the neon blue liquid, and, as I watch the rise and fall of her chest even out, relief settles over me.
I’m towering above her, so I step back and sit on the old wooden stool I keep in front of the fire. I usually only sit here when I’m building the fire, but I don’t want to crowd Este by sitting beside her on the couch when she’s just had such a shock.
She screws the lid back onto the empty bottle and puts it down on the table before clearing her throat. “Are you a masochist?”
It’s not the first time someone’s asked me that, though I can’t say I expected it from her. “Depends on who you ask, I suppose.” My sister would say yes. As would the therapist I visited once, at my parents’ insistence, after the accident. And the therapist I had a single appointment with at the start of this year—over video call—then never made a follow-up. “Why do you ask?”
“The road—actually, no. I refuse to call it a road. How the hell do you stomach driving up and down?” She shudders, her eyes drawn together in narrow slits, like she’s pissed off at the mere existence of the road.
“I don’t go down the mountain often,” I say, and she winces.
“Shit, yeah. I knew that. Sorry. Still, it’s awful.”
I chuckle at the disgust on her face. “My sister, Shay, hates it, too. I’m sorry—I warned your dad it wasn’t an easy drive so he could make sure the car they rent at the airport would manage it. I assumed you’d all be flying in togetheruntil he called at the start of the week to say you were driving. I forgot to remind him.”
“He’s known I was driving for months,” Este says, rolling her eyes. “I think he was just in denial and hoped I’d change my mind and fly with them last minute.”
“Why didn’t you?” I ask. For a moment, she’s wide open, a mix of anxiety and regret sliding over her face. A split second later, it’s gone, a closed-off, blank mask in its place.
