Page 99 of Snowed In with Benefits

“Don’t get lost going down the mountain and end up at some other guy’s cabin,” I say lightly.

“Never,” she says.

I kiss her on the forehead, then back up and look deep into her eyes. I see a reflection of my own heartache there, and I don’t want that for her. I feel my face soften.

“I meant what I said that night in the office,” I tell her. “When I told you that you deserve to have your life lit up. Go get that lit-up life, sugarplum.”

She blinks hard, fighting tears, and nods.

Emmett comes up behind me and I step aside. “You’re too good for every man in Seattle,” he says, his voice rough. “You remember that. Remember what you’re worth.”

“You do the same,” she says. “You deserve more than you think you do.”

He nods once, his jaw tight.

Beau comes around all of us and grabs his coat off the peg. It barely seems like his coat anymore. It’s the one she’s been using the most, the one that has a faint line around the waist now where she’s been cinching it with a belt. He tucks it around her shoulders.

“Keep it,” he says. His jaw is working. He leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead, lingering there for a second. Then he pulls back. “Be good, duchess.”

We each take one of her bags. I’ve got the wedding dress. Emmett has her camera bag. Beau has her clothes. She holds on to our elbows as we walk her down the driveway and across the street to her car. It’s still sitting there, askew against a pile of bushes that have since shaken off their snow. We load up her trunk for her. Emmett gives her the camera bag, knowing that she won’t want it that far away.

She gives us all a watery look, swallowing hard. I force a grin. She smiles back and starts the car, pulling out of the ditch without a problem. She points herself in the direction of Seattle, hesitates for just a moment, then starts driving. We all stand here, watching her go.

The sound of her engine fades until it’s just the mountain again. Wind in the pines. A bird somewhere. The cold presses in around us like it’s been waiting for her to leave to remind us what winter actually feels like. We stand there for a while, the three of us, not moving, not talking, just watching the empty road like she might change her mind. She doesn’t. The road stays empty. The trees close around the bend where her car disappeared, and it’s like she was never here at all, except that we’re all still standing outside in the cold with no reason to be.

“I guess things will go back to normal now,” Emmett says.

Nobody responds. Normal is a word that doesn’t mean what it used to. There was once a time I thought Emmett would be happy about having the cabin back to ourselves. But right now, nobody seems happy.

38

JOSIE

Driving down the mountain feels like traveling to a different world. The snow thins, the trees give way to highway, and buildings crop up around me. I keep checking the rearview mirror, which is stupid, because what am I expecting to see? Nobody is following me. Nobody is standing in the road getting smaller. But I keep looking anyway, watching the trees close behind me like a door I walked through and can’t find again. The mountain doesn’t shrink so much as it just stops being there, swallowed up by the curve of the highway and the gray sprawl of civilization, and at some point I realize I can’t see it anymore and I don’t know exactly when I lost it. By the time I reach Seattle, it’s dusk. The city seems too bright and too loud after weeks in the Cascades. I follow my internal map back to my apartment.

I park the car in my old parking space and grab my bags, leaving the wedding dress in the trunk. I’ll drop it off at a thrift store when I get a chance, so it’s best just to leave it there for now. I climb the stairs slowly, taking the building in. The cold concrete, so different from the warm wood I’ve been surrounded by for weeks. The sounds and smells of people living in the same building but apart, the particular loneliness of apartment life.

I slip my key in the lock and hold my breath like I’m not sure what I’m going to find on the other side. The door creaks when it opens, the weather stripping catching slightly on the doorframe. I forgot it did that. I walk into my cold, dark apartment and put my bags down. Closing the door behind me, I turn on the light.

It’s smaller than I remembered. One room, a galley kitchen with a bar, a bedroom and bathroom to the right. The couch practically fills up the living room, and my little TV seems too big for the room. The walls are whitewashed, the carpet is cheap landlord special, and the single window looks out across the complex at the apartment opposite mine.

Mine. That word has taken on a different meaning recently, and I’m not sure what it means now that I’m back in Seattle. My lease was supposed to close at the end of this month. Am I going to renew it? Is this apartment going to stay mine, or is it going to be lived in by somebody else?

I slip out of Beau’s coat and hang it over the back of a chair at the breakfast bar. I can still smell him on it, and the scent makes my heart ache. I turn up the thermostat and the heater rattles then blows, a mechanical, artificial sound after weeks of warming myself by the fire. Shivering, I take my bags into the bedroom. My camera bag goes on the desk. My suitcase slides under the bed, forgotten until I decide to remember it.

I go to my closet. Slipping out of Emmett’s flannel, I put it against my face and breathe in his scent before setting it aside. I peel off my crop top and toss it away. Then I take off Hunter’s sweatpants, rubbing the soft fabric between my fingers before setting them on top of Emmett’s flannel. I kick out of my heels and take off my leggings, and then I’m just standing there in my underwear in my cold apartment with a small pile of their clothes on the chair and nothing on my skin that belongs to anybody.

I wasn’t expecting that to feel like something, but it does. It feels like a lot, actually. For weeks I’ve been wrapped up in them, literally, their flannels and their sweatpants and their t-shirts, and I got so used to the weight of their fabric on my body that I forgot what it felt like to just be me without any of them touching me. The air in the apartment is cold and thin and it hits my bare skin like a reminder. This is what alone feels like. This is what you chose. I wrap my arms around myself, which is pathetic, and stand there for a second too long before I turn to the closet and try to figure out what to wear.

All of the clothes that Preston bought for me are front and center. Designer clothes. Dresses. Pants that sit too low on my hips for my comfort, shirts that fit a little too snug and are cut a little too low. I push them aside, digging into the back of my closet. There’s a pile of boxes back here, clothes that were meant to be donated to a thrift store that never quite made the journey. I rifle through them and find my favorite sweater, an oversized turtleneck striped in different shades of purple.

I pull it on, feeling better almost immediately. I get back into the boxes and find a pair of worn jeans, frayed around the bottom and high on the waist. They still fit perfectly, which speaks to how well I’ve been eating lately. These were too big the last time I wore them. Preston had a way of killing my appetite. How had I not noticed that I was literally disappearing when I was with him?

I shimmy into them, then find my old comfortable tennis shoes. I wouldn’t have been caught dead around Preston’s friends in these. They’re off-brand, obviously worn, and colorful. In other words, they’re only stylish if you’re five years old. I like them. I’ve always liked them. They’re comfortable, they’re cute, and they’re mine.

That word again. It’s starting to get more comfortable to think it, but I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to mean to me. I guess ‘supposed to’ doesn’t factor in anymore. I haven’t been doing any of the things I was ‘supposed’ to do. Taking a deep, steadying breath before I can start spiraling, I grab my purse and my keys and head for the door.

There’s one place I need to go before I go anywhere else or do anything else. One wound I need to tend to personally and quickly. I drive across town to my parents’ neighborhood, watching the apartments turn into small houses turn into bigger houses. My parents went deeply into debt for their house, and it’s their most prized possession. They won’t have it paid off before retirement. They don’t care.