Cameron Keen never expected her life to become entangled in the horrors of Blackwood Mountain.
Drawn back by a past she can't escape, she soon finds herself face to face with her old friend Josh Washington, a man haunted not just by grief, but...
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WASHINGTON.
Cameron stood there, just inside the foyer, watching as the others stripped off their coats and stomped the snow from their boots, laughing, chatting.
But she couldn't move forward, not yet.
She looked around at the others, already scattering through the lodge, acting as if this place didn't hold the ghosts of their past mistakes.
As if it wasn't haunted by the weight of what they had done. What is wrong with her? Why couldn't she just... let it go like they could?
But Cameron knew the answer. She had never been good at moving on, not when something was bothering her the way this was. The prank. The running. The endless white of the snowstorm swallowing Beth and Hannah whole.
She clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms as the familiar surge of guilt flooded through her. It felt like an old wound that had never healed properly—still raw, still aching, even after all this time.
She should have stayed out there with Beth. The thought came unbidden, sharp and cruel. She had been too cold, too nervous to argue when Beth had told her to go back.
But if she had just pushed harder, insisted, maybe they could have found Hannah together. Maybe the night wouldn't have ended with two missing girls and no answers.
Cameron felt her throat tighten as the guilt pressed heavier on her chest. She hadn't just been running from her friends this past year; she had been running from herself, from the memory of how she hadn't warned Hannah about the prank.
She had convinced herself that staying away from the group, from Blackwood Mountain, would make it easier. That if she didn't have to look into their faces—especially Josh's—she wouldn't have to be reminded of her own failures.
But now here she was, standing in the very place that held those memories, being dragged back to the same emotions she had tried so hard to bury.
Cameron swallowed hard and finally unzipped her coat, letting it fall from her shoulders and drop to the floor.
The heat in the lodge wrapped around her, but it didn't feel comforting. She rubbed her hands together, trying to rid herself of the nervous energy that tingled in her fingers.
You can do this, she told herself, though she wasn't sure she believed it entirely.
As she stepped further into the lodge, her footsteps echoing against the wooden floors, Cameron glanced around, trying to focus on anything but the knot of anxiety twisting tighter in her stomach.
She found herself moving toward the large windows that looked out over the mountain, the snow continuing to fall in thick sheets. She pressed her hand against the cold glass, her breath fogging up the window as she stared out at the endless white expanse.
