Frost Bite

Chapter 14

Josie

It is so completely dark outside. It's the kind of dark you never get in Anchorage with the streetlights and the TVs and too many people.

This is the black of the stars and the moon and absolutely nothing else.

I climb out of bed and even though I know it's cold I don't feel it. I just stare out the window and God, I can't sleep. I'm restless and uncomfortable in my own skin and it's all because of Jack and I know, I know that I'm the stupidest person ever.

Because I want the one thing that I know is impossible for me to have. The absolute one thing.

I want Jack.

I know it and there's no taking it back, no ignoring it.

It makes me wish, for one small second, that I hadn't ever met him. Because I am tired of wanting what will never happen. I'm tired of wanting Jack and wanting my mother to come back and wanting to be anywhere but Anchorage, Alaska.

I stare at the stars and the dark and I wonder if this is what the sky has always looked like for Jack. If there are changes no one could ever know or notice in the sky but him.

I wonder what Jack was like when he was human.

I wonder what he hoped for, what jokes he made, what he imagined himself doing when he was grown up.

I know who Jack ended up, and I think I know who he wants to be. But I don't know who he wanted to be.

But there's a reason for that.

Jack is a star – millions of light years away, untouchable and already gone. Surrounded by the black and vacuum, the only source of light for himself.

I turn away from the window and stare at my door. And I know that if I let myself, I will go to Jack's room and make a fool of myself. I will bare all my human frailties at him – frailties that Jack could possibly understand hypothetically, but if they were presented to him he wouldn't know what to do.

Loss is one thing. Jack is the leading expert in loss.

My frailties, what I want from him are another. They are a kind of weakness Jack wouldn't understand. It's too far away in either direction – past or future – for him to sympathize with, for him to be able to reciprocate.

And it makes me want to scream.

I yank my coat out of the closet. I grab my heaviest, oh it's winter in Alaska gear. I'm fairly sure I look like I'm about to lead an expedition to the north pole, but I don't really care right now.

Right now, I'd like to be outside in the cold. I'd like to sit in the cold, and I'd like to go numb and forget, just for a second, that I am Josie Herrmann and that I'm in love with Jack Frost – who will never, ever want me back.

The cold has this wonderful way of demanding your attention.

I creep down the stairs quietly, carefully because I know that Jack sleeps less than I do and God, I just need to be away from him right now.

I pop the front door open and slide through quickly, careful not to make a sound and then I'm outside ten fifteen a hundred yards away from the house and I close my eyes and I am just me.

I pull off my gloves and I spin around and God the cold hurts my fingers, it seeps into my bones and it grabs at every last bit of heat in me but for a second it's all that I can think about.

My mind is blissfully empty of everything and everyone and every problem.

That is, until someone claps their hand over my mouth.