Chapter 2

Isolde's POV

I don't know how long it had been. A bone-deep cold jolted me out of unconsciousness.

I forced my eyes open. The heat had shut off, and every breath came out as a white puff of fog.

I turned my head toward the digital clock above the driver's seat: 3:15 AM.

Louis still wasn't back.

His "be right back" had turned into hours of being completely forgotten.

My throat was raw and burning, every breath like swallowing broken glass.

I needed water. If I didn't drink something soon, I was going to freeze to death in this chair.

I bit my lower lip, pressed my hands against the edge of the table, and pushed myself up. I shuffled, inch by inch, to the kitchen sink.

I turned the tap. Ice-cold water filled the cup.

I bent down and gulped it down as fast as I could.

I braced myself against the wall and made my way to the storage cabinet under the bed. I pulled out a thick blanket and wrapped it tight around myself.

It still carried a faint smell of cedarwood. Louis's smell.

A smell I used to love. Now it just turned my stomach.

My body temperature kept climbing. My forehead was burning, but my arms and legs were so cold I could barely feel them. My vision started to blur.

In my head, I kept seeing Louis in that red jacket, chasing Lily Martin through the snow, both of them laughing.

Louis had always been the center of everything, for as long as I could remember.

He raced cars. He played guitar. He seemed to have endless energy.

And me? I was just the one standing in the corner, waiting for him to glance back every now and then.

After all these years together, I should have figured it out by now.

In his eyes, I was someone who needed to be handled carefully, kept safe.

But what he actually wanted was someone who could run wild with him.

Someone like Lily. Healthy, full of life. Not held back by illness.

My fever kept rising. My forehead was on fire while my hands and feet had gone completely numb. Dark spots kept flashing across my vision.

I fumbled for my phone and called Louis.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

No answer.

I called again. Still nothing.

Third time. Fourth time.

Every call ended the same way — a long wait, then voicemail.

He wasn't picking up.

He was out there having the time of his life and wasn't even looking at his phone.

I curled deeper into the blanket and closed my eyes. Hot tears slid down my face and soaked into the wool.

Isolde, what are you doing?

You let yourself get this bad just to see if he still cares about you?

How pathetic.

No. I couldn't keep waiting like this.

I took a deep breath and tried to start the RV. Nothing happened.

The temperature up here was too low. The diesel engine had been sitting outside in negative fifty degrees all night. The fuel lines were frozen. The battery was dead.

It wasn't going to start.

I took another breath and opened the map on my phone with shaking hands. On the screen, the little blue dot marking my location sat alone on the side of the mountain. The nearest hospital was forty-five miles away.

I opened the ride-share app.

Past three in the morning, on a mountain campsite in a snowstorm. The answer was exactly what I expected: "Sorry, no drivers available in your area. Please try again later."

I refreshed. Refreshed again. Same message.

I couldn't keep waiting. If I stayed here, I might actually die.

I wasn't going to just sit here and let that happen.

I grabbed the table and pulled myself up. I dug the thickest down jacket out of my bag, pulled it on, wound my scarf around my neck, and put on my hat and gloves. I kept the blanket wrapped around me and stuffed two chocolate bars and a pack of fever medicine into my pocket.

I pushed open the RV door.

The cold hit my face like a blade and stripped away what little warmth I had left.

Behind me, the empty cabin. In front of me, nothing but dark and snow.

I didn't look back.

The campfire was nearly burned out, but I wasn't going to look for Louis anymore.

If he wasn't answering his phone, I'd handle this myself.

I walked toward the campsite exit.

The snow came up to my ankles. Every step felt like pushing through wet cotton. My knees kept threatening to buckle, and my head felt like it was packed with lead.

The scarf covered half my face. My breath frosted on my eyelashes.

The lights behind me grew smaller. The path ahead grew darker.

Past the campsite, there was nothing but open snow.

A narrow mountain road wound forward, with black pine trees pressing in on both sides.

I don't know how long I walked. Half an hour. An hour. Maybe only ten minutes.

Sweat soaked through my clothes, and when the wind hit, it felt like being dropped into ice water.

Eventually, the road split.

One fork curved down toward the switchback highway. The other wound up toward the slope of the smaller mountain across the way.

I was heading toward the highway when something caught my eye.

On the slope across the valley, there were flickering lights.

Torches.

A dozen or so torches moving through the dark, with the distant rumble of engines and the sound of people laughing.

A group of people on snowmobiles. The orange firelight made the whole hillside pulse and glow.

I stopped.

Across the narrow valley, I could see them clearly.

Two red jackets.

One was Louis's. The other was Lily's.

Even from this distance, even in the dim light, I knew the way Louis carried himself. That loose, easy confidence, like the whole world was his stage.

He was straddling a snowmobile. Lily was behind him, her arms around his waist, her head resting against his back.

The engine roared and the snowmobile carved a wide arc through the snow.

The people around them raised their torches and cheered as if they were celebrating something.

They looked so happy.

My legs were barely holding me up, but I took two more steps forward and grabbed the guardrail.

I opened my mouth and screamed with everything I had left.

"Louis!"

But the wind was too strong.

Snow swirled up and hit my face, filled my mouth.

My voice broke apart the second it left my lips and vanished into the dark.

Nobody turned around.

The party on the other slope kept going. The torches snapped in the wind. The snowmobiles roared, one after another. Louis didn't hear me. Lily didn't hear me. None of them did.

I gripped the guardrail and called out a few more times.

Nothing.

The wind and snow swallowed every sound.

The tears finally came.

They burned as they ran down my frozen cheeks and soaked into my scarf.

I wiped my face and turned back to the road.

I walked down the mountain toward the highway.

Behind me, the cheering faded.

The torchlight shrank smaller and smaller until it was just a faint smear of orange in the dark.

I don't know how much longer I walked after that.

The highway finally appeared ahead.

No cars. No people.

I held onto the guardrail and moved forward one step at a time.

My vision kept blurring. The road seemed to shift under my feet. The whole world was spinning.

One more step.

Just one more step.

My knees gave out.

I lost my balance and went down.

I fell into the snow at the side of the road.

The cold crept up from underneath me, through the down jacket, through the blanket, straight into my bones.

Snow landed on my face. On my eyelashes.

Soft as a quiet kiss.

My thoughts began to slip away.

The light in front of me slowly faded.

Somewhere far off, there were still torches burning. But they had nothing to do with me anymore.

Then everything went dark.