Frost Bite

Chapter 45

Josie

"I don't know how we're going to explain this second trip," Ryan says with honesty as we stand in front of my house. It's four in the morning or maybe it's nine at night. I don't know. The hours are blurry and run together.

"I don't know," I echo. It's not what Ryan's looking for. He sighs in frustration and runs his hands through his hair.

I don't know and I don't care. They can throw me into juvie for running away. I could be a juvenile delinquent. It doesn't matter.

None of this does.

"How's your hand?" Ryan asks.

I shrug. "I don't know." I look down at the bandage and there's only the slightest hint of red peaking out from underneath from where I burned my hand touching Jack.

The last time I touched him.

"Does it hurt?" he asks, with more frustration in his void this time.

I just look at him and it takes all the energy that I can muster. Less than twenty four hours ago, I was in Jack's arms. Jack was alive and for a brilliant moment, he was mine. He was mine and I left his body in the jungle. "Everything hurts," I say.

Ryan stops asking me questions then. He leads me into the house and my father is there and he's shouting at me and I just look at him and I wonder how he has the nerve to pretend to be so worked up.

If he really cared, he would have noticed I haven't really lived here since mom died.

I sit on the couch and wait as Ryan explains things as the police come and paramedics that tell me to look into the light breathe in and out and how do I tell them that breathing is hard?

"She's just tired," Ryan says. "We've had... it's been rough," he says and it's the truth and so the authority figures decide to let us rest.

"I'm going home now, Jo," he says and I nod.

"Okay," I say because he expects a response.

Ryan leaves and then it's my father and me and he's leading me up the stairs and into my bed.

"I can manage on my own," I say, anger suddenly running through me at the sight of my bed. My dad stops and nods and closes the door of my room behind him.

I stare at the bed that Jack and I slept in.

I stare at the window where he drew patterns in the frost for me, reminding me that he was there. That he cared.

There is no frost on my window now.

I sink into bed, and I pray that tonight, I don't dream.

My father doesn't know what to do with me. He doesn't understand as I walk around the house, staring at all the windows, looking for frost that isn't going to be there. He doesn't understand my reluctance to eat or why I go through the medical books I have obsessively, looking for an answer to a problem they could never imagine.

But I don't blame him for that. He's never known what to do with me. And right now? I don't know either.

He gives me a week before I have to go back to school. Seven days to somehow pull myself together and pretend to be a human being again.

But I left all that in the jungle.

Almost, anyway.

Ryan knocks on my door early the next morning, because he knows I won't be asleep. I open it for him and he comes in without a word and leads me up to my room.

I'm beginning to hate it in here. The sheets smelled slightly of Jack and I found one of his shirts in my closet. I wore to bed last night. I can't tell if it made the ache worse or better.

I think I understand why Jack was so cold when I met him. A thousand years of this and I'd be glacial, too.

"You look awful," he says sitting down on my bed and I sit next to him. He wraps a blanket around my shoulders.

I shrug. "I feel awful," I say and I can't help the way my voice breaks. It hasn't even been forty-eight hours.

"I'm so sorry, Josie," he whispers, squeezing my hand and it's like having my Ryan back again.

I stare at him. Something about his sympathy wakes me up. "Why are you comforting me? You hated Jack."

Ryan's expression softens. "But you love him. And as much as I hate to admit it, he loved you. And I love you. And I'd rather see you happy and with someone else — or alone — than miserable."

"I do love you, Ryan," I say, chocked by the thickness of my throat and the depth and breadth and ceaselessness of his love for me. If I get through this, it will be because of him.

"I know," he assures me before kissing my forehead. "And I'm so, so sorry, Jo."
 "Do you think there's a heaven?" I ask because all the Sundays in church, listening to some old man tell me I'm a sinner didn't quite convince me.

Ryan smiles a soft smile. "Yeah, there's a heaven, Jo. And a hell. And a God," Ryan says as picks me up and sets me down so we're both leaning against my headboard and I'm grateful for the warmth coming off his shoulder because I haven't felt warm since Jack died. "Jack saved you but stopped believing in the idea that he could be really good. And so for a while he wasn't until you brought it out of him. So I'm sure even God is having trouble deciding if Jack belongs in heaven or hell."
 I laugh, a choking, gasping laugh between sobs. "That wouldn't surprise me. He stopped believing in God, though. Doesn't that mean he goes to hell?"
 Ryan nudges my shoulder with his. "Nah. I don't think God cares whether or not you believe in Him. I mean, He's there either way, right? I think God just cares whether or not you're a good person, even if you make mistakes." And even though I don't know what to believe, don't know up from down right now, hearing Ryan say those words is a balm — not curing, but treating. Helping.
 "Ryan, I'd be dead without you," I whisper because it's true. Because right now I'm dying and he eases the aching of my broken heart as I long for a man that's not him even as he loves me.

"You saved me, remember? I'd be dead without you," he says as he pulls me toward him until my head is on his shoulder and his arm is wrapped around me. And I feel less un-tethered. It's been eight years since Ryan was my anchor and now he's holding me on earth again.

Because the two people who did it before are both gone.

Tears burn in my eyes and my chest feels heavy. "I'm so tired..."

"Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up," he promises. And that one promise means everything right now.

"Thank you," I breathe as my eyelids flutter shut.