Page 169 of Let It Snow
Then he kisses my temple gently, and I climb upstairs to my room.
Once there, I look at my poor excuse for a nest. Somehow, over the last few weeks, I never managed to make it better. Will the time ever come? I’m not sure. There’s been so much stress, and my life just keeps throwing things at me.
Then I collapse onto the pillows, and darkness closes around me.
???
When I wake up, I have no idea what time it is or even what day it really is. I can’t tell if it’s the next one or the same one; everything’s all mixed up. I glance toward the window.
The sun has set beyond the horizon, and I feel like my whole body has been hit by a truck. I drag myself out of bed and notice a tray of food on the nightstand, my mouth starting to water. Who knows how long it’s been since I last ate. I pounce on it like a starving bear in spring, devouring everything in huge bites. After that, I head to the shower.
As the warm water runs over my head, flashes of what happened in the other reality fill my mind, the wave of destruction, the fear, the realization that I would never see Snow again. Of course, those images don’t belong to this world anymore, yet they feel painfully real all the same. My whole nervous system seems tuned to that lost world, and this new one doesn’t feel right. It’s foreign. I guess I need to readjust or something?
For a moment, I rest my forehead against the bathroom tiles, trying to sink into nothingness. I feel trapped, like I can’t escape the bad events that keep coming my way. Is what Moon said even possible? That from now on everything will be alright? One catastrophe followed another this year. Could I actually start believing everything will change for the better?
At the moment, I feel almost like my old trauma, the one I clawed my way out of after escaping the fortress, is coming back in a new form. Will I let it grow to full strength, or can I stop it somehow? Can my mind dissolve it? It doesn’t help that my burning hatred for Rocco has flared up again, along with the bitterness I feel toward their entire family. Well, one of them is effectively my brother-in-law, so it’s not like I can completely erase the existence of the mafia from my mind.
I keep pouring hot water over my head, imagining it washing away at least some of those emotions. It works a little. Aftermaybe half an hour, I finally feel calm enough to get dressed and go downstairs.
Snow and Jordan aren’t there.
Instead, Aiden and Lake sit by the kitchen island, holding hands and leaning toward each other. I blink, surprised by how healthy and radiant they look.
I guess Moon’s suggestion paid off. The Joining obviously worked miracles.
Lake is on the phone, talking to someone, asking about rescue ships and surveillance drones. It takes me a second to realize he’s probably arranging to bring Winter back from the island where I left him.
Wow. How strange. I blink again, taken aback, as it hits me: Aiden and Lake are dealing with a completely differenttimelinefrom the one that’s been haunting me. They don’t even know what happened with the Ferros, that we were all kidnapped. Maybe that’s for the best.
But that means I can’t exactly dump my bad mood on them. That’s mine to deal with.
My eyes drift almost involuntarily toward the patio. The shrubs visible from afar and the softly glowing garden lamps promise the prospect of a pleasant walk.
I decide I need to make an effort to bury the negative energy swirling in my body, the strange bitterness, the anger at Fate. I want to push it aside and forget, at least for a short while, just so I can breathe a little easier and try to move on.
I smile at Lake, and he smiles back, covering the phone with his hand as if he wants to say something. His lips curve into a grateful smile, his eyes shining, but I’m already moving toward the door. I just nod to Aiden in passing as he opens his mouth too, probably about to thank me for the Winter intervention, but before he can speak, I slip out onto the patio and almost sprint across the lawn.
No. I don’t want them to thank me. There’s no need.
The Nolans are now busy with things that feel distant and meaningless to me. I had to deal with the fact that I killed half the city. Sort of. That’s way too heavy to discuss casually at a kitchen table.
Determined to bring myself back to normal, I start walking around the property, breathing deeply and trying to unwind.
But my whole body, my entire nervous system, feels way too shaken. I wander around the estate for nearly an hour, dazed and disoriented, sometimes stopping completely, my mind blanking out for seconds at a time.
There are moments when I feel like I’m losing my mind, like I’m really slipping into insanity. All those fears that haunted me in the past, about my power being impossible to fully control, about that dark thing sleeping inside me, turned out to bereal. They manifested in a spectacularly destructive way, and now I have to live in this body, a walkingatomic bomb, pretending that nothing happened, that life just goes on. Dammit.
While I’m strolling through the garden on the east side of the property, I hear Bay’s car pull into his part of the driveway.
A strange smell reaches me, and I have to investigate. I’m kind of grateful that I can pull myself out of my hazy state of mind, even if just for a moment.
So I step out from behind the garage just as he’s pulling a small black bag out of the trunk.
Where was he? Just minding his business as if nothing happened, as if the world didn’t end? Well, I guess it’s my problem only, or… is it?
He blinks when he sees me, and I catch the faintest grimace of irritation on his face.
Clearly, he didn’t want me to be here.
