The first breath of frosty air hits me like a punch to the gut. My eyes start watering and I double over, hands braced on my knees, trying to get my shit together.

Trying to forget.

Fifteen months I’ve been running, chasing sunny days and balmy nights around the globe. Bumming around on beaches in Australia, hiking in New Zealand, camping in the Spanish desert. Making damn sure I didn’t see a snowflake, didn’t check a weather report for upcoming storms, and definitely didn’t take so much as a single breath of the blade-sharp freezing air that used to get my blood pumping like nothing else.

I thought maybe I could handle it, but one breath is all it takes. The cold air rushing through my nose, the shock as it hits my lungs, the puff of steam as I exhale and I’m amped. Like the fucking junky I am, my legs are twitching, fingers itching for my gear, eyes scanning the dark shadows of the mountain even though it’s pitch black out and the middle of the night.

That doesn’t matter though, not when I take my first step away from the jeep and hear the snow crunch under my foot.

Fuck.

Snow.

I knew I’d have to see it, obviously. It’s January in Colorado, for fuck’s sake. Snow is part of the package. Ben picked me up from the airport after dark in Denver, and it was clear, but we’ve been driving three hours into the mountains and as soon as we hit the pass, there it was. Snow. Jagged piles of plowed snow on the side of the road, soft blankets of snow on the hills, tiny flakes hitting the windshield as we got closer and closer to Breckenridge.

We’d been chatting up until then, but I shut up fast as soon as I saw the white stuff. Couldn’t push the words past the lump in my throat, and Ben must’ve figured it out because he turned up the music and left me alone. I tried all the shit people have been telling me to do since the accident. I took deep breaths. I relaxed my muscles one by one.

The one thing I didn’t do, that I never, ever do, is “visualize my happy place.” Because this is my fucking happy place: standing at the foot of the mountain with the promise of a powder day and my best friend at my side.

My shoulders curl in and I lower my head and close my eyes, as if that will protect me. I knew this would be tough, that the snow might set me back, but I need to start dealing with it if I’m ever going to be able to stop running someday. That’s what this trip is all about.

I give myself three deep breaths and then square my shoulders and lift my head. Ben’s standing in front of the jeep, my battered backpack over his shoulder, staring up at the sky. The snow’s really coming down now, fat, puffy flakes falling silently and relentlessly. Ben’s hat and the windshield of the jeep are already covered.

“You’re gonna get a good day tomorrow if this keeps up.” My voice is creaky and weird, but at least I got it out. I need to prove to everyone else—and myself—that snow isn’t a forbidden topic of conversation. Because I’ll be sleeping in tomorrow, but Ben will be up to catch the first lift. The Olympics are next month and he’s everyone’s favorite to take gold. He’s in serious training, and for Ben that means total discipline with what he eats, how much he sleeps, and when he rides.

It used to mean no fucking before the competition, but I’m guessing his girlfriend has something to say about that.

Normally I’d ask him, just to give him shit, but not tonight.

Ben nods and takes a deep breath. “I’ll be out early,” he says, “but Nat’s here.” He pauses, and a little jolt of adrenaline explodes in my stomach, because I know what’s coming.

“And Piper,” he adds carefully.

I’m sick of people speaking to me carefully. You can’t talk to Adam about snowboarding, or winter, or the Olympics. And definitely don’t say a word about the girl who broke his heart, then turned up in the hospital years later and got him through the worst nights of his life.

“Piper’s here?” My voice is less creaky this time. Ben and I have been in touch a lot while I’ve been gone, but we’ve pretty much avoided the subject of Piper. He never asked me what happened the summer she was with me in the hospital. We have a don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t be a dick policy when it comes to me seeing his sister naked, and it’s worked out fine so far.

“Yeah, she’s in her room.”

Her room. Ben and I bought this condo from his parents when they built their dream house a few miles away after Piper graduated high school. She and I were together at the time, so she kept her stuff here, and she never moved it out, even after we broke up and she went to Boulder for school. Ben owns a place down there where he and the girls live, so the condo doesn’t get used much, but he’s never asked if I want to sell it and neither one of us needs the money. I won enough when I was competing to fund my travels and keep me going for a long time, even without the payday I’ll be getting after the Olympics.

Even if I did need the money I wouldn’t want to let this place go. I was happy here.

“Hope that’s okay,” Ben continues. “She graduated and Nat’s taking the semester off to come watch me in Korea, so…” He trails off, like maybe he wants to say something else, but he changes his mind when he looks at me.

“Fuck, Adam, we need to get inside. You’re shaking. Did you even bring a jacket?”

I brush snow off my long sleeve t-shirt, the warmest thing I have with me, and shake my head.

“Haven’t needed one,” I say. Then I shiver, because in my life before, I was pretty much impervious to cold, but I’m not used to it anymore and I’m suddenly aware of the icy water trickling down my neck as the snow hits my hair and melts.

“There’s a ton of old stuff in your room,” Ben says.

“I’ll check it out.” I nod but don’t take a step toward the condo. Not yet. This is so fucking strange. I’ve been here, in this exact place, hundreds of times before. Snow. Ben. A garage full of our gear. My room in the basement and Piper right next door.

Piper. It’s the thought of seeing her and getting the chance to make things right that finally gets me moving. One foot in front of the other, desperately trying to ignore the foreign familiar crunch of snow under my shitty sneakers. We go in through the garage and I keep my eyes straight ahead, blocking out the rows of snowboards neatly stacked on the racks that cover each wall. The place is so stuffed with gear that no cars have fit in here for years.

The garage is frosty but heat hits me as soon as we walk through the connecting door. So do Natalie, Ben’s girlfriend, and their dog Thor. Nat screams and pulls me into a hug and Thor jumps all over my legs and nearly takes out my dick, and for a minute all the shit fades away and I’m just happy.

“It’s so good to see you!” Nat lets me loose for a second to stare intently at my face and then pulls me close again, squealing and laughing when I shake my hair, and snow and cold water fly everywhere.

“You’re worse than Thor,” she says, letting me go so I can crouch down and let their dopey dog lick my face.

“Man, he’s huge. The pictures you’ve been sending don’t do him justice.” Nat spent a lot of time in the hospital with me the summer she and Ben got together, and we’re pretty tight. She sent me pictures of Thor most days and I sent her pictures of stuff I saw on my travels that I thought might inspire her writing.

“He’s a menace,” Ben says. “We were going to have steaks ready for you, but he somehow opened the fridge and got to them.”

“He’s a genius,” Nat says proudly. Ben rolls his eyes but pulls her close for a kiss.

Fuck. He has the girl and the snowboarding, and if I didn’t love the guy so much, I’d probably want to kill him.

“Guys, it’s the middle of the night,” I say. “I don’t need steak. I’m beat. I’m just going to grab a glass of water and hit the sheets.”

Nat fusses a little about how cold I must be, and Thor almost takes a piss on my bag, but eventually they head up to their room and I eye the stairs down to the basement. Twelve stairs down and I’m in a cramped hallway with three doors. Piper on the left, bathroom in the middle, and my room on the right. Piper’s room is totally silent and there’s no light coming from under her door. I know I have no right to feel disappointed that she wasn’t there to greet me, not after the way I left things, but her absence leaves a hollow feeling in my gut that means I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.

My room is a fucking disaster. I stand in the door, my heart pounding, and take in the detritus of my life. I haven’t been in Breck since months before the accident, and everything is exactly how I left it. Old snowboarding posters on the wall, boards and boots stacked in the corners, closet stuffed full of jackets. There are boxes everywhere: stuff my sponsors sent me, stuff my parents sent up here from the hospital, and probably, hopefully buried deep, the shit I had with me at Mammoth when I crashed. I know Ben cleared out the place we were staying after the accident, and he would have brought everything here.

I’m not ready to deal with that yet, so instead I focus on the positives. One: there’s plenty of cold-weather gear here. I’ll be set to walk into town tomorrow with Nat and check out the Mexican place. Maybe get coffee. Do whatever the fuck people do in ski towns when they can’t hit the slopes.

Two: Nat told me she’s almost done with the sequel to her book and she’ll let me read it tomorrow. That’ll be good.

Three: Piper’s next door. She’ll have to talk to me tomorrow and I’ll be able to explain and hopefully, someday, she’ll manage to forgive me. Maybe even take me back and give me a chance to prove that I can be the man she deserves. I want to go to her now, but she must hate me, and she’s probably asleep anyway, curled up around her psychotic cat, Chuckles, with her hands under her cheek and her body all warm and soft under her pile of blankets. Smelling like peaches with her hair all messy and spread over her pillow…

Fuck. Not going to think about that.

Someone, probably Nat, cleared a kind of path to the bed and put on some red flannel sheets that I don’t remember seeing before. Of course, there’s a lot of little shit that slips through the ratty web of my memories these days, so maybe I’ve had them for years. Then I clock the packaging peeking out the top of the garbage can in the corner and smile. I met a lot of awesome people on my travels, but it’s been a while since anyone took care of me and the thought of Nat dragging Ben to the store and picking out new cozy sheets for my homecoming warms me up inside.

There’s some kind of pattern on the sheets that I can’t make out from the door, so I wade through the junk and collapse on the bed. My body’s stiff and sore after the long flight from Australia and the drive from the airport, and at first I just close my eyes and enjoy being able to stretch out on the soft mattress.

When I finally check out the sheets, I see they’re covered in tiny orange cats that look exactly like Chuckles. I laugh out loud and then swallow down a sob, because there’s no way in hell Nat picked these out.

This was all Piper.

Maybe she doesn’t hate me.

Only one way to find out. I dig some snowpants and a jacket out of the closet, pull on some warm socks and a pair of boots, and open my window. The place is built into a hill so there’s a little drop to the ground, even though we’re in the basement, but the snow is deep enough to make the landing soft. Safe enough even for a guy with a skull more delicate than a blown-out eggshell. I land on my feet and resist the urge to roll around in the snow because yeah, it hurts like hell to be here, but fuck I’ve missed this.

And I’ve missed her too, and I’m not going to be able to rest or relax until I tell her what I have to say. So I stumble the few feet through the fresh powder to her window, pull my hand out of my glove, and knock three times.