Page 23 of New Hope, Old Grudges

I’d crashed in the upcoming twilight in the middle of a blizzard on Thanksgiving night. That wasn’t exactly a recipe for being fine.

“Fuck!” I screamed, slamming my hands onto the steering wheel as I regarded the whiteout surrounding me. I was well and truly buried in a snowdrift. Despite knowing what I’d find, I tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. There was too much dense snow packed against it.

Panic crawled up my throat.

I scrambled to get my phone from my purse sitting in the passenger seat. The screen flashed with my lack of signal. How in the fuck we still lived in a world where there were places with no cell phone signal, despite all the satellites clogging up our atmosphere, I had no idea.

I was stuck. In a snowdrift. In a blizzard. Down a road that would probably not be traveled tonight. I didn’t think anyone else was stupid enough to want to go visit their dead relatives unless they planned on joining them tonight.

My headlights were still visible, but I didn’t know how long that was going to be the case. The snow was still falling at a heavy pace, night was fast approaching and my car battery wouldn’t last forever.

I wasn’t dressed for the weather either. I was wearing a soft cashmere sweater, thin leggings and Ugg boots. I’d been ready for Thanksgiving dinner, not a night in my car out in the cold. And because my car had come with me from L.A., I didn’t have any emergency gear like blankets or flares or shovels. All of the things my father ensured that I had when I was living here.

Fear barreled through me as cold crept in from the windows, the doors, the spores in the air. Sure, I’d been in a pretty miserable and depressed place these past few weeks, but I never actually wanted to die.

“You have a family. But that’s never been enough for you. You’ve never seen that.”

My brother’s words echoed against the icy interior of the car. I thought of him. My mother. That squishy little baby. People who loved me. And despite my brother’s anger, he did love me. That I knew.

I’d been so determined to leave New Hope behind, I didn’t realize I was abandoning the people who would be in my corner no matter what.

And if I didn’t get out of this, I’d be hurting them more.

Regret stung like a snake bite.

I had to survive.

That’s all there was to it.

Except that I was pretty sure that me surviving this situation required a miracle. And didn’t those only happen in cheesy Christmas movies?

* * *

I must’ve drifted off because the last thing I remembered was being very cold and very mad at myself for actually dying in the place I’d vowed to leave forever.

At least the cemetery wasn’t far. They could just haul me up and throw me in a hole. But the ground was too hard to dig holes. So I’d have to spend time in the chilling drawer of the morgue. Did we even have a morgue?

It wouldn’t matter too much to me anyway. I’d be dead, and I didn’t believe in any kind of afterlife.

Though I was momentarily questioning that belief when I’d gone from freezing cold, exhausted and thinking of my inevitable demise to being in motion and nestled up against something warm and pleasant smelling. It smelled like snow, cedar and leather. And something else. Something woodsy and comforting.

Hair was brushed from my face. “Willow? Can you wake up, baby?”

Baby?

I must’ve been in some kind of afterlife because I was no one’s baby.

BRODY

I’d been in a lot of pretty fucking intense and scary situations. Situations where I was sure I was going to die. Situations where I’d feared my friends would die. I’d watched one of my best buddies take his last breath.

Fear was an old friend, one I thought I’d gotten familiar with.

But nothing prepared me for what I’d felt when I saw the dim headlights of the car in the snowdrift, the vision of Willow’s unconscious body after I’d dug through the snow to open her door.

Her skin was icy to the touch, her limbs like lead as I carried her to my truck, turned the heat up as high as it could go then covered her with the emergency blankets I kept on hand for situations such as this.

I ran my knuckles down Willow’s porcelain cheek. Her lips were tinged blue, her breathing shallow but there. She was breathing.

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