Page 17 of The Edge of Never

“He’s kind of like family, then.”

I nodded slowly. Callan was the only person I had left, but Kit didn’t need to know that. They didn’t need to know anything about me, so why was I answering all their questions?

“Ye could say that. What aboot ye?”

Why the fuck did you ask that?

“Me? There’s just my dad and my younger brother.”

“Did yer mother pass away?”

Again, why are you asking them questions?

Kit wrinkled their nose. It was an endearing habit of theirs.

“No. She’s very much alive.”

They fiddled with the straps of their pack and stared off into the distance.

The snowy landscape was beautiful. I always appreciated the mountains in the winter. Like the hills, the evergreen pine trees were covered in a light dusting of white. It was peaceful in the frozen wilderness, reminding me I still had things to live for, even if some days I didn’t know why being alive was so important.

“But she’s dead to me, if that makes sense,” Kit finished finally with a sigh.

Prying into what happened with her mother would make Kit question my intentions, no doubt. I left it there. It was fucked up that I had asked them anything in the first place. I had no plans of getting know them further.

“I have an older sister and three nieces.”

Why did you tell them that?

“You’re an uncle?”

“Aye. I dinnae see them much. They live in Stornoway.”

Kit looked thoughtful at my admission.

“Olly moved to Manchester when he turned eighteen, so I don’t see him often either. Dad still lives in Seaford. That’s where I grew up. Sometimes I wish I’d left too.” Their mouth turned down, and they looked lost for a moment. “But I’m sure you don’t want to know that, so I’ll just shut up now.”

Kit put on a smile that didn’t meet their blue eyes. Instead, there was a deep sadness in those icy depths. One that made my heart jerk in my chest. The sensation disconcerted me so much that I kept my mouth firmly shut and didn’t tell them I was glad they revealed something about themselves to me.

By the time we reached the bottom of the mountain and took a break before starting our ascent, I’d asked myself a million times why I appreciated knowing more about Kit. There was no reason for me to understand them. Their safety was my only priority. At least, it should be. But it wasn’t. And I hated myself for that.

Kit said nothing as they put their crampons on, and we all started off up the slope. They were clearly lost in thought, and there I was, thinking things I shouldn’t be.

What was it about the thought of home that made them so sad?

Why didn’t they speak to their mother?

Why had they come on this course?

And why the fuck did they enjoy winding me up so much?

None of those questions would be answered. I wasn’t willing to voice them. Kit couldn’t know I had any interest in them or who they were.

It didn’t bother me to walk in relative silence, but my concern about why Kit was so quiet did. I tried to concentrate on the terrain and keep my footing, but my gaze kept drifting over to them. Running over their expression to garner any imperceptible change in them that would clue me into their melancholic mood. It affected mine. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I missed Jenna. Waking up alone every day was grating on me. I’d been with her for fourteen years, almost half my life. She’d been in it for longer than that, but we only got together when we were sixteen.

No one tells you how difficult it was to go from being with someone every day to having no one. How empty your life would feel without that constant presence. And how no one can replace it because you won’t let anyone else in. You can’t. Not when the memory of what you had lingers. When you weren’t prepared to live without them. When it gets so hard to breathe because grief and loss are choking you from the inside out. People tell you time heals all wounds, but they lied. Or maybe it hadn’t been long enough.

The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t move beyond this. I was stuck in the past, living with the ghost of my dead wife, haunting me every passing second of each day. And that was why I came out here. To feel alive again. To remind myself that I was here, and I had to keep going even if she wasn’t. Too fucking bad it wasn’t working.

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