Well, now I know what people do in ski towns when they can’t ski. They eat a fuck ton of food and walk around looking like pretentious asshats in expensive gear that’s probably never been worn before.

I kind of hate myself for admitting this, but, it could be worse.

Nat and I are on an eating tour of Breckenridge. I heard Ben leave at the ass-crack of dawn this morning, but I burrowed into my Chuckles sheets and managed to shut my brain off long enough to get back to sleep. Sleeping in is not my style normally, but I’m not ready to watch Ben suit up and share a cup of coffee before he heads out to the one place on earth I want to be. Too many memories and too much unfinished business. I made a deal with myself when I decided to come back here that I wasn’t going to hide from the hard shit, but bitter experience has taught me that pushing myself too far, too fast gets me exactly nowhere.

So I waited until Nat was stirring and off we went: greasy diner with limitless shitty coffee refills for breakfast; a slow stroll to a fancy cafe for hot chocolate; burritos spicy enough to make my eyes water for lunch; and now she’s dragging me to another cafe so I can try a marshmallow fluff latte that will probably finish me off.

“You realize you’re going to have to roll me home, right?”

“You said you missed American food,” she reminds me.

“Yeah but I’m okay with sampling one delicacy a day. I don’t need to eat everything at once.”

“Don’t be a wimp, Westlake. Undo the button on your jeans, zip your jacket up to cover it, and try to keep up.”

That’s actually a good idea, so I go for it, ignoring Nat’s eye-rolls. It feels strange being zipped into a winter coat again, completely familiar but also claustrophobic, which is why I’ve been letting it flap open all day despite the freezing temperatures. I try pulling the zip up to my chin, but it’s too much, so I drag it back down a couple inches.

“So your Instagram is insane by the way,” Nat says. “You’ve got like two million followers.”

I nod. God knows why that many people want to see pictures of what I do every day, but apparently they do.

“Have you thought about studying photography? Or getting sponsors or something? You’re really talented, Adam.”

“Thanks,” I mumble. The pictures started out as a way for me to record my travels, because when you can’t trust your brain, you kind of want proof of everything. Solid evidence that yes, you saw a kangaroo yesterday or you did actually go to that temple in Bali last month. Instagram was a way to keep track of where I’d been and what I’d been doing, just in case. The pictures became my back-up memory, and I kept taking them even after I stopped being as worried about losing moments and experiences. Somehow life made more sense when I looked at it through a camera lens. Maybe everything was less raw. Maybe controlling the images gave me the illusion that I could control my life.

“I’ve been approached by sponsors,” I admit. “Companies wanting me to wear their clothes or plug their hotels, that kind of thing. Haven’t accepted any of them.”

“Why not?”

I shrug. “I don’t care about that stuff. I just want to take pictures, not freak out about followers or likes or whatever.”

My account isn’t under my real name. It’s not linked to any of my old social media shit, the stuff I did to make my snowboarding sponsors happy. I don’t reply to most comments or even look at them regularly. I don’t want fans from my old life to find me there, and I definitely don’t want anyone talking about me, comparing my life now to what it used to be. Even the thought of that happening makes my stomach turn.

“Can we can skip the sugar goop latte for now? I need to walk a little. Work out the travel kinks.”

She nods and stops in the middle of the sidewalk, glancing up at the mountain, which is visible in the distance. It’s a perfect day: the sun is out, the deep blue sky is free of clouds, and I swear the snow on the trails is sparkling like fucking diamonds. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s wander.”

“Okay.” She turns to head back toward the town center, but I shake my head and grab her arm.

“I can handle a closer look at Peak Nine, Natalie. I’m not going to throw myself at the chairlift or anything.”

She bites her lip and I feel like a dick, but I don’t know how to do this. It’s hard enough trying to make this shit okay for myself—how am I supposed to reassure and comfort everyone else? I can’t. I don’t have it in me and I’ll never have it in me, which is another reason why I’ve stayed away. And suddenly Natalie, who I genuinely love like a sister, and who has been a kick-ass friend all day, is the face of a problem I’ll never be able to solve.

“I’m not a fucking baby, you know? The accident happened, my brain is screwed, and it is what it is. The last thing I need is all of you guys treating me like some kind of fragile, damaged snowflake. I’m sick of this shit.”

My voice is getting louder and Nat’s eyes are looking watery and somewhere inside me an alarm bell is going off. But I can’t quite tell if it’s warning me to stop or alerting me to the fact that I’m going to blow up if I don’t start getting some of this stuff out so I should keep going. At least I can tell something’s wrong though, which is more than I could do fifteen months ago.

You cannot trust your brain, Adam. Dr. Warne’s words echo in my mind and I turn away from Nat and suck in a deep breath, checking the signs. Warne was the doctor in Australia that took charge of my rehab and recovery when I left Colorado like a thief in the night. She told me this would keep happening, that my brain might send up red flags I wouldn’t understand, or that sometimes I would rush past the flags and throw myself off cliffs. I’m getting better, and it’s been a long time since I had a grocery store-type incident, but stress still brings flare ups.

This is my reality. I cannot trust my own mind. The parts of me that are supposed to keep me and the people around me safe are damaged, and there isn’t anything I can do about it. It’s my new normal and I have to figure out a way to live with it, but I hate inflicting my shit on the people I care about. Which is why it’s just as well Piper told me about Europe and grad school last night before I blurted out that I wanted a shot at being her boyfriend again. My fucked-up self doesn’t deserve her, and there’s clearly no way I could handle being in Colorado for the next three years. It’s been less than a day and I’m already losing it.

Stop. Calm down. Keep breathing.

“Are you okay?” I open my eyes to reassure whoever is asking, the well-worn it’s cool, I’m fine already on my lips, but the guy isn’t talking to me. He’s talking to Natalie.

“Is this guy bothering you? He was yelling pretty loud there.”

He’s older, probably my dad’s age, and he’s got his hand on Nat’s arm, like he’s about to yank her away from a big, bad wolf.

That would be me.

Nat rubs her gloved hands quickly over her eyes and flashes him a smile. “We’re fine. He’s not bothering me.”

The guy looks like he doesn’t quite believe her, but she shrugs off his arm and reaches for my hand.

“You’re sure, miss?”

Her eyes don’t leave mine. “Totally. He’s a kitten. We’re heading up to the lodge for some hot chocolate.”

The guy doesn’t look happy about it, but he settles for giving me a dark look and then heads back to his family. Nat drags me away, squeezing my hand tightly to reassure me. Very tightly, in fact. Maybe it’s not all about reassurance: it might be partly about crushing some bones.

“I’m sorry,” I say after about a hundred yards. “I sometimes still have a little trouble…” I trail off, searching for the right words. A little trouble with what? Acting like an asshole? “Regulating things,” I finally say.

Nice one, Adam. Way to ruin a perfectly good day and make your friend, and your buddy’s girl, cry in the middle of the street. I wait for the inevitable telling off that I deserve, but Nat pulls me to the edge of the sidewalk so we’re both stumbling into a snow bank, and then throws her arms around my neck.

Hard. Hard enough that I lose my balance and we both end up on our asses in the snow.

“You don’t have to apologize,” she says fiercely.

“I do, though. I didn’t mean to get mad. Not at you. I can’t keep a handle on it sometimes. It’s a lot better than it used to be, but sometimes it just…comes out.”

Nat releases me from her stranglehold. “Kind of like the Hulk?”

I snort. “I guess.” Maybe I should be pissed she’s comparing me to a green monster with ripped pants, but I’m so fucking glad that she’s not giving me that familiar poor Adam look that I’ll take the Hulk. Hell, I’d even take the angry mutant baby of Godzilla and King Kong at this point.

I open my mouth to keep apologizing, but Nat shakes her head. “It’s in the Vault.”

That’s what Ben and Piper’s mom used to tell them when they were kids. It means: all is forgiven, and we don’t have to talk about this again.

I grin. “Look at you, throwing that Easton family lingo around like a pro.”

She shrugs. “I’m surrounded by them 24-7. I had to assimilate to survive.”

We’ve spent the day so far carefully avoiding the subject of Piper. Nat told me all about her book, and how psyched she is to be going to Mammoth because there’s a writing conference nearby at the same time, and she’s finally going to be able to meet a bunch of other writers she knows from social media in person. I talked a little about my travels and we discussed the hell out of why the rest of the world needs to get behind diner-style hash browns as soon as fucking possible, but I didn’t ask about Piper and Nat didn’t offer anything.

But now I’m sitting in a snowbank after losing my shit, so there’s no time like the present to rip off another Band-Aid, right? No hiding from the hard stuff.

“What’s Piper up to today?”

Nat squirms around in the snow, looking shifty, and doesn’t answer right away. Huh. Even my unreliable people-reading skills can pinpoint that something here is making her uncomfortable.

“Look, I know Piper’s your best friend. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not that. I did the unbutton my jeans thing too and when we fell down, I got a shitload of snow down my pants.”

She swipes out at me when I start laughing. “It’s not funny! It’s fucking cold. Help me up.”

I scramble to my feet and yank her up, pressing my lips together to hold in the laughter as she attempts to stealth wiggle the packed snow out of her jeans.

“Better?” I ask when she starts walking again.

“I think my ass is frozen, but I’ll recover. Eventually.”

“You’re a beast.”

“I know.”

We walk in silence for a minute, still heading up toward the lodge at the base of the mountain.

“She went to her parents’ house,” Nat finally says. “She texted me. Did she tell you about her eye surgery last night?”

“How do you know we talked last night?”

She shoots me a look. “Please. You and Piper in the same house? In rooms next door to each other? There’s no way in hell you didn’t talk to each other last night.”

“Touché.”

“Anyway, she’s getting laser surgery on her eyes in a couple weeks, and she’s going to recover at her parents’ place, so her mom wanted to take her to her final pre-surgery appointment today and get all the post-op instructions.”

“That’s awesome she’s finally doing it.” Piper’s vision is pretty sketchy, and she’s been talking about getting surgery for years, but I didn’t think she’d ever follow through.

“She finally got over the fear of the laser melting her eyeballs, huh?”

“Please,” Nat says. “She’s never been afraid of the laser.”

We share a grin. “I know,” I say. “She’s been afraid of having to depend on someone to take care of her while she recovers.”

“Got it in one.”

The recovery from the eye surgery she needs is fast—she’d have to keep her eyes covered for less than twenty-four hours, but Piper hates showing any type of weakness, and the thought of being without sight freaked her right the hell out whenever she considered surgery.

“Glad she’s going for it.”

“Yeah, she wanted to get it sorted before she left for Europe, and she’s heading there as soon as the Olympics are over, so now was the only time she had to get it done.”

“Her internship sounds cool.” I fight to keep my voice casual and thank god Nat is nice enough not to call me on it since I’m probably failing miserably.

“It’s a pretty big deal.” Nat’s tone is careful in the way that usually makes me angry—poor Adam—but not this time. “She beat out some pretty tough competition to nail it down.”

No surprises there. Piper has always done whatever it takes to make her dreams come true. She’s better than anyone I know at working hard, even when things aren’t fun, in order to get what she wants. Apparently that’s a career that will keep her chasing winter around the world, working with people who are living my old dreams in places that I can’t stand to think about, let alone go to. I can’t ask her to give that up, and I sure as shit can’t offer to go with her, so I guess that leaves me here, staring up at a mountain I can’t ever ride again and wondering what the hell happened to my life.

We’re at the base now, and people are piling out of the lodge after loading up on crappy food and hot chocolate at lunch. They’re talking and laughing and searching for their skis and boards on the racks, and it’s all so familiar that I physically ache to join them. I want to slip into the skin of that old life so badly and, really, there’s nobody to stop me. I could hit the shop, gear up, and be riding in an hour. I’d stick to the green trails, just carve out a few turns. It’s not dangerous. The risk is minuscule, if you really think about it. I should be out there. It’s where I belong, the only place I have ever belonged.

I should go.

No. I shouldn’t.

But it’s so hard to remember why. I rub my fingers over the spot on my arm where my NEVER tattoo is etched on my skin and think about Dr. Warne.

You cannot trust your brain, Adam.

No unapproved physical activity that could endanger your brain, no matter how low the risk seems to you. If you want to do something, you call me first.

I gave her my word, and it’s probably zero dark thirty in Australia right now, so I doubt she’d appreciate me giving her a buzz to ask a question I already know the answer to.

“You want to get a hot chocolate?” Nat’s voice is soft and sometime in the last couple minutes she must have grabbed my hand, because it’s wrapped up in the warmth of her glove.

I clear my throat. “I think I’ll hang here for a minute. You go.”

“Sure?”

I try to shoot her a smile, but it must not work because she hugs me before wandering off toward the lodge. I find an empty bench and sit down, staring at the stream of bright jackets and happy, relaxed people. I clench my fists at the sound of ski boots snapping into bindings and the clicks as boarders ratchet their front bindings tight and the quiet huffs as they gently stomp their boards in the snow, anxious to be on their way.

It sucks, but I’ll have to find a way to deal with this. Because I’m heading for the Olympics, where things are going to be a hell of a lot more intense than a lazy weekday morning Breck. So I make myself sit there and breathe through it, wondering if I’ll ever be able to trust myself again.

If I’ll ever be able to come home.