IT’S NOT THE COLD of everything around us that gets to me in these last five minutes—it’s the heat building in me.
The way my mind races hot and fast, knowing there’s no way out of this cave.
The warmth that spreads through my body against the furious wind outside, the snowy walls of this makeshift den—warmth that feels a whole lot like those last hazy seconds before sleep.
The smoke and red in Jonah Ramirez’s eyes when he grabs my jaw and says through clenched teeth, “Don’t. Hallie Jacob, if you give up on me now, if you leave me alone up here, I will never fucking forgive you.”
I blink.
Slow.
Breathe.
One Mississippi.
Snow and wind beating against the trees, the ground, everything, everything.
Two Mississippi.
Lightning, flash against a tree, snap and crackle and the clean stench of burning wood. They call it thundersnow, not that that matters now.
Three.
Three.
I breathe the cold into my lungs.
It all feels like ice. But touch it long enough, and ice starts to feel like fire.
I brush my hand over Jonah’s knuckles on my jaw.
The world lights up like a flare.
CHAPTER ONE
IT ISN’T THAT I don’t want to be here, as much as it is that if the devil were to show up at these hipster-ass crossroads in horn-rimmed glasses and a waxed moustache and happen to offer me transport out in exchange for my soul, I’d take it.
I don’t hate Colorado, I don’t hate ski slopes, I don’t even hate the sharp-toothed bite of the cold in my calves, the numb in my toes. I almost like the way it hurts when I sit by the fire in the lodge and ice-pick feeling returns to the frozen items I used to call fingers. It prickles, it hurts, but it makes me feel like life is returning to pieces of me. So no, I don’t really hate any of it.
It’s just that, god, I loved Massachusetts. I hate that I even think it past tense, like Oh, right! Massachusetts died. I don’t “loved” it. I do still love it. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the bright crisp fog off the Connecticut River, clinging to my clothes when I strayed a little too close to the water.
I shut them tight, but not so tight that it doesn’t dissipate in an instant.
Here, outside this ski lodge, it smells like weed. Like skunk rot and smoke.
And well. You know what they say.
Where there’s smoke? There’s Jonah.
I can hear him laughing over all the rest of them—who knows how many of my cousins and their significant others and their who-knows-whoevers. I want to go find them.
I want to distract myself with what they’re smoking. I want to know what it is Jonah’s laughing about so loud, but I’m not really allowed. I don’t know how intensely your parents can really ground you two months out from eighteen, but if I’m hanging out alone in the dark anywhere Jonah Ramirez is, and I come back into the suite smelling like weed, I’ll find out.
My parents are kind of assholes about my dad’s brother’s kids—Jolie and Jaxon (maddening, the same-letter-first-name thing. Thank god they stopped at two). Everyone knows it’s more about the super Family Drama on the CW history between my dad and my uncle than it is about Jolie and Jaxon. But my cousins have given my parents enough reasons, I guess, for them to feel okay about being total jerks. Jolie is cool but a little artsy, a little follow-your-heart, a little vegan for their tastes. And Jaxon, well. Jaxon is a fucking disaster.
I like him because he always shows up to family gatherings in clothes that are super politically inflammatory and his hair is always cut weird and different and he always finds me and talks to me like he cares what I think about anything. He drops f-bombs too loud and has too many tattoos, and the same shit I think is great about Jaxon Jacob is the same shit my parents can’t stand about him.
Side note: Dad and Uncle Reuben pretend they hate each other because of four decades of bad blood that everyone knows about but no one’s allowed to mention. But, I don’t know. If I’m putting money on it, I’d say it’s gotta be this bullshit: Jaxon and Jolie Jacob. Jaxon. And Jolie. Jacob. How much can you really trust people who do this to their children on purpose?
It’s complicated, I guess. Always eggshells when we’re together because my parents make a big show out of being Disapproving™ of Uncle Reuben and, by extension, his wife and their offspring. And Uncle Reuben plays back, and I have to pretend I’m not on my cousins’ side. But they don’t outright ban me from hanging out with them. There’s a line, I guess.
They just . . . say uppity things the second we leave, acting like we escaped something when we head back to Massachusetts after a weekend (because that’s all they can handle), getting to big family events as late as possible and leaving as early as semi-politeness allows. They don’t like to hear me talk much about what we do when we’re together either; mostly we see them or they see us and then everyone leaves and we pretend, as a family, that it never happened.
Well. Guess that’s all in the past now.
Anyway.
Jaxon and Jolie, and my Favorite Cousin relationship with them, my parents can pretend to ignore.
Jonah, they can’t.
Jonah has been Jaxon’s best friend since middle school so they’ve been attached at the hip since we were all kids. It’s almost like he’s one of them—requisite J name and all.
My parents have made it extremely clear that, in their minds, all of Jaxon’s activities are at least 75 percent Jonah’s fault, and that’s totally not true if you ask me, but they never do.
So.
Here I am.
On this cool family-bonding ski trip, listening to my parents and my dad’s five siblings laughing adultily over their chardonnay or whatever in the common room in front of the fireplace. And I’m just sitting here in the stairwell.
Alone.
Bonding as hell.
I scrape my teeth over my lip and lean my head against the wall; it’s kind of unsettlingly wet, but I’m assuming that’s because of the, you know, snow everywhere. People tromp into a ski lodge with their boots all iced over and their coats covered in powder, stuff gets a little wet. It’s not a big deal.
None of this is a big deal.
Moving away from Massachusetts my senior year isn’t a big deal, and neither is navigating this big family weekend that I’m already kind of tired of, and neither is the reason we had to move here in the first place. My zayde basically dying—one foot in the grave at the very least—isn’t . . . it isn’t a big . . .
I’m sniffling now, in this dark hallway in a very fancy ski lodge all alone, which is totally pathetic.
I feel even more pathetic when the door opens and my cousin Tzipporah’s tall, sleekly braided, absurdly gorgeous girlfriend about trips over me.
“Oh my god.” She catches herself on the cement corner of the wall and I just cough.
“Sorry,” I say.
“For what? Existing?”
I raise an eyebrow.
“I should have been watching where I was going. Peripheral isn’t as good from this height.” She winks and yeah, it’s abundantly clear why Tzipporah is into her. In addition to the old Tall Dark and Handsome—well, not handsome. Tall, Dark, and Stunning—combo, she’s super funny, laid back, not just cool. Good lord, am I sweating?