Frost Bite

Chapter 31

Josie

I sleep by the window, because in the snow and frost of winter that's where I feel closest to him. I know that he's there in the draft that sneaks into my house and rolls over my skin in gentle waves. Jack is everywhere and nowhere and I don't know if I should scream or cry or laugh.

He said he would keep his distance but I know he's broken that promise. Because I know that the frost on my window is his doing. Everything about it speaks to me.

Of course, I could just be going crazy. But I don't think that's it.

Today is Saturday. No school. No sports. No anything. So I throw on my heaviest coat and scarf and gloves and hat, and I trudge out in my boots to the backyard and I sit. It's still early so no one else is up. It's just me and Jack, even though I can't see his impossibly blue eyes and his inky hair.

"Jack," I say aloud because no one will hear me but him. Because I am so tired of feeling his absence so tangibly. "Jack, I miss you. Come back to me."

The air is silent but a cutting wind blows over me. It reaches down to my bones and steals the heat from me.

"Jack, don't be a dick," I mutter. I close my eyes and hug my coat tighter around me. "I know you miss me, too. You promised me you'd always come back for me. Aren't you gonna keep your promise?"

I pretend I hear his laugh. The cocky, oh-so-infuriating laugh that makes me want to punch him and laugh too. The laugh that's so classically Jack it makes my bones ache with something that's not the cold.
 But I don't hear anything. Just my own ragged breathing that threatens to turn to sobbing.

When my father comes home, hours later, he finds me still outside. I hear his sigh over the cold wind numbing my ears. "Josephine, will you please tell me what happened out there?" he asks as he kneels beside me.

"There's nothing to tell." And there isn't. My dad can't fathom the existence of Jack in the same way that he can't fathom how to really talk to me. For a second, I try to remember what he was like before Mom died. But all my memory holds is this man who is a shadow of what he used to be.

"How long have you been out here?" he demands, putting a hand on my cheek. His hand burns — ninety-eight point six degrees warmer than I feel.

I don't respond. What is there to say? I spent all day out here and Jack didn't come — not even as I felt my fingers and go numb. Not as my nose burned with the cold or my eyes watered. My stomach gives a wild turn in panic that maybe he really was telling the truth when he said I wouldn't ever see him again.

"Josephine, say something," he demands and I see something like concern in his face — like, but not quite.

"I don't know what you want from me."

My dad frowns at me, like I'm something in a specimen jar that he didn't expect to find. "I don't know how to help you," he says finally, and I hear how broken he is. And I think that might be the only proof that I'm his daughter.