I look at the empty dresser. The wood is worn where Jesse's hands used to touch it. Now it carries the memory of Bella's white-knuckled grip. She survived the wreck that killed her parents, but she’s still sitting in the backseat of that ditch, waiting for the impact. And I'm still sitting in the dirt downrange, waiting for the blast that took Jesse.
We're both survivors, but we've chosen different ways to die. She runs to keep from losing; I lock myself in to keep from feeling.
I walk to the reception desk in the waiting room.
The printed Cascade contract sits on the scarred pine, the pages white against the dark wood. Bella left the contract exactly where it lay. She didn't sign it. She left the land safe, but she took her heart with her.
I reach into my pocket, my fingers closing around the cold metal of Jesse’s whistle. I pull it out and set it on top of the legal paper, its brass surface glinting in the cold grey light of the window.
The foreclosure execution is at noon today. Six hours left. The foundation wire is still pending Cascade’s legal signature, Brock Sterling is still circling the mountain, and the only woman who could have helped me hold the line has gone back to the safety of the valley.
I pick the whistle back up and slip it into my pocket. There are only six hours left to prepare for the hearing. Losing this clinic, letting Sterling and Cascade bulldoze this land, would mean letting Jesse die a second time. It would mean making Bella's sacrifice mean nothing.
I won't let that happen. Even if I have to stand in that hearing room alone, I will fight for this mountain. Otherwise, the walls I built won't just keep the world out—they will bury me.
SEVENTEEN
What the Counselor Couldn’t Tell Herself
BELLA
The windshield wipers scrape a rhythmic,screeching line through the grey slush on the glass, but they can’t clear the frost creeping up from the corners of the windshield.
My hands are frozen to the steering wheel, the black vinyl stiff and cold under my bare fingers. I left my gloves on the timber bench in the mudroom, right next to the basket of spare towels and the jar of dog biscuits, but I’m not turning back. I keep my eyes locked on the taillights of a county salt truck three curves down, the orange strobe light pulsing through the pre-dawn mist, warning me of the ice before my tires can find it.
The descent is a slow, white blur. The switchbacks fall away to the right, sheer drops of white drifts and dark pine branches heavy with the weight of last night’s storm. The SUV slips once on a patch of black ice near the third overlook, the back end giving a sickening swing toward the shoulder before the all-wheel drive kicks in. The tires bite into the packed gravel and pull me straight.
My heart doesn’t even skip a beat.
The adrenaline doesn’t flood my chest. There’s only a flat, heavy silence inside the cab, a cold vacuum that feels exactly like the space beneath a frozen lake.
In those first six weeks, this numbness was my shelter. It was the only thing that kept me from shattering when I found out Jesse was gone. I spent my life believing Jesse was the strong one.
The wool of the borrowed grey sweater is too warm, smelling of pine smoke and the damp, copper heat of the clinic waiting room. My knuckles are red against the steering wheel, my chest raw where the armor cracked.
Every mile down the mountain is a physical drag, a phantom pressure pulling at the small of my back.
I glance in the rearview mirror, my eyes shifting to the backseat. The black leather bench is empty. My suitcase sits on the floorboards, a clean, square silhouette in the dim morning light. On the way up here, that seat was occupied by eighty pounds of stiff, grey-muzzled German shepherd.
I miss the wet huff of Atlas’s breath against the back of my neck, the rhythmic thump of his tail when the truck slows down, the heavy, comforting heat of his body pressing into my side when the road got rough.
Now, there’s only the hum of the heater vents, blowing dry, smelling of old dust and cold iron.
I left him. I left Atlas, the guardian Jesse gave me to hold the rope, without even saying goodbye. I didn't dare look at him, asleep by the embers of the woodstove, knowing that if I met his dark, knowing eyes or pressed my face into his thick neck, my feet would've frozen to the floorboards and I would've never been able to run.
I just crept past them both in the dark like a thief, slipping out through the back door. And I left the man who, just hours before, had stood in the doorframe during our fight, his shoulder blocking the exit, his slate-gray eyes dark with a gravelly fury that cut straight through my defenses.
”You’re running because you’re afraid,”Wyatt’s voice echoes in the quiet cab, hard and sharp as the granite shelves of the pass.”You hide behind that phone headset in Denver because it’s safe. You can counsel strangers all night because they can’t break your heart. You don’t have to risk a single thing of your own.”
The words burn like salt in a fresh cut. I press my foot harder on the accelerator, the engine of the SUV whining as the road straightens out, leaving the steep switchbacks behind and entering the long, narrow gorge of the canyon.
I’m not afraid.The lie tastes like copper on my tongue.I’m protecting them. I’m protecting Atlas. I’m the one who's cursed
I was three years old when the blue sedan flipped into the drainage ditch off Route 285. I remember the smell of crushed pine needles, the sharp stench of leaking gasoline, and the flashing red lights of the ambulance reflecting off the snow-covered branches. My mother and father were quiet in the front seats, their heads tilted at strange, unnatural angles, while I sat in the backseat with nothing but a scratched knee and a plush bear. The state trooper who pulled me out wrapped me in his heavy sheepskin jacket, the wool scratching my cheeks as he carried me away from the wreckage.
I didn’t cry. Even then, the silence settled inside me, a thick, protective wall that kept the fire and the blood from touching my mind.
Jesse’s family took me in. Jesse was thirteen, a tall, quiet boy who spent his afternoons whittling pine blocks into miniature horses on the back porch, his fingers covered in sap. He became my shield.
