I don’t know where I am.

I’m cold.

So fucking cold.

So cold I can’t feel a thing.

Not even sure I have a heart beating in my chest. If it’s there, I can’t feel it.

Maybe I never could.

“Get up.”

A man’s voice.

Gruff.

Angry.

Far away.

Maybe it’s my voice.

Where am I?

I’m not dreaming.

My dreams make more sense.

My dreams have fire.

And death.

So much death.

I’m cold, frozen.

I’m numb and yet somehow in pain.

Maybe it’s a pain in my heart.

“But you don’t have a heart,” I mumble.

“So you’re alive,” the voice says again, and then I do feel something.

A quick kick to my side.

My eyes open slowly. There is ice stuck to them. “Who is there?” I say but my words come out all jumbled, like alien speak.

“All right buddy, time to get up.”

Hands grab me and I’m hauled to my feet.

There’s a loud clank and I look down to see an empty bottle of bourbon roll away on the ice-covered pavement. “Hey there might have been something in that.”

“You drank it all, pal,” another voice says, and now I think there are two of them.

I try to push them away, but I can barely twist my body, so I let them drag me along the ground, it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters.

I wish I hadn’t let go of that bourbon.

I watch the ground go past, snow, ice, cigarette butts.

There’s music somewhere, in a dream maybe, loud thumps that rattle my chest.

Someone laughs, a girl, and says, “Look at that drunk.”

I wish I was drunk.

Suddenly I’m thrown in the back of a car and my head hits the window and I sleep again. It’s warm.

I’m moving.

Stopping.

My skin comes alive in pins and needles and it hurts. I start to feel pain again, the numbness wearing off.

Wear the fuck am I?

I’m grabbed again, pulled away from a car and into a building, bright ugly lights that stare into my soul and then I’m leaning against a wall, slipping down, down, down until I’m on the floor.

It’s not cold here, not like outside.

I think I’ll rest.

I think I’ll rest forever.

* * *

“Fox Nelson.”

I hear my name said from humorless lips but my head is too heavy to lift up from my hands. I don’t care what Petey Paul has to say anyway. That’s the cop’s name or something like that. I don’t fucking like Petey Paul since he hasn’t let me leave this cell for twenty-four hours.

“Fox Nelson,” Petey Paul says again. “Your brothers are here for you.”

My head snaps up and I’m rewarded with what feels like a kick to my temples, the pounding is excruciating. I wince, blink in time to see Constable Paul walk away.

My brothers?

Jesus. That can’t be right.

There’s no way they would be here.

I’m only supposed to be held for twenty-four hours and then let go. I was arrested but I haven’t been charged for anything.

It’s a joke.

It has to be a joke.

I’m in Whistler, I’m nowhere near home.

And yet as I’m staring dumbly beyond the bars of the jail cell, Maverick and Shane appear.

I have a hard time believing they’re real until Maverick speaks.

“Jesus fuck,” Maverick says with a low whistle. “You look like shit, Fox.”

“I feel like shit,” I tell them, my voice ragged. My pulse is quickening and it was already racing all day, my stomach is twisting into knots and I fight down a wave of nausea.

I’m embarrassed.

Humiliated.

Ashamed.

They shouldn’t be here. They shouldn’t see me like this.

Their eldest brother in a fucking drunk tank.

“Why are you here?” I ask roughly.

Shane sighs quietly. “They called me. Said they called your work here at the resort and they gave them my number for some reason. Well, dad’s.”

“They said they wouldn’t release you unless we came and got you,” Mav adds. “What the fuck did you do, Fox?”

Honestly, I don’t know.

I don’t remember the last three days of my life.

I don’t even know if I’ll remember this moment later on, the drugs and alcohol still have their hold on me.

But if the cops called my work, then they know where I am.

“Do you know if I still have a job?” I ask feebly.

Shane shakes his head. “It’s doubtful. They said that you missed a few shifts so you were in trouble for that before you were in trouble with the police, so…”

I groan, resting my forehead against my fist.

“There goes my fucking money. That would have all gone to Del.”

“Hey, Fox,” Maverick says in such a tone that I have to look at him. “Del just wants you home, brother. That’s all.”

She doesn’t.

I lick my lips, they sting from being dry and cracked. “Did you forget what happened?” I ask in a steady voice. “I proposed to her. I asked her to marry me. I did the right thing and she said no. She doesn’t want me home. She doesn’t want me at all.”

“She’s in love with you Fox, how can you even come to that conclusion?” Shane says, then he runs his hand over his jaw, shaking his head. “No. No, I’m not doing this here, not through a jail cell.” He jerks his chin at someone I can’t see. “Can you let him out? We’ll take him straight back home, promise.”

Another cop appears, one whose name I can’t remember. I just know I don’t want to punch his face as bad as I do the other. “He needs help, are you sure that’s something you can give him?”

“I’m fine,” I snap and stagger to my feet, rubbing the heel of my palm along my temple. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this hungover before. It’s like all the pain I’ve ever felt has decided to gang up on me for one day.

“We’ve got him,” Maverick assures them and the doors to the cell open with a loud clanging noise that feels like a jackhammer to my brain.

“Are you seriously taking me back to North Ridge?” I ask them as they practically escort me out of the police station. Outside it’s cold and bright, snow everywhere. I can’t imagine having to leave here and go back home so soon.

“We are,” Mav says firmly.

“What if I don’t want to go?”

Shane gives me a tight smile before saying, “That’s why we’re both here. We won’t let you.”

“This is ridiculous. I have a job here. I can’t leave like this.”

“You don’t have a job, get real,” Mav says, leading me over to his truck in the parking lot. “No one goes on a three-day bender like you did and skips out on work and ends up in motherfucking jail and still has a job. You’re just a snowboard instructor here, Fox, some loud-mouthed Australian has probably already taken your place and is scoring all the hottest ass.”

“I haven’t scored any hot ass,” I mutter as I get in the backseat of the truck.

“Good,” Shane says. “Because if you had cheated on Del while you were here, I would personally beat your face in with my boot.”

“Jesus, Shane,” I tell him. “When did you get so protective? And violent?”

“Well you’ve been gone, someone has to take up your role as resident asshole,” he says.

“He’s kidding, of course,” Maverick says, starting the truck and driving out onto the highway. “You will always be the resident asshole, Fox. But he’s right about Del.”

“I haven’t done a thing,” I cry out, showing my palms in a plea of innocence. “And again, for the record, we aren’t together. I proposed to her. She said no.”

“You told her you didn’t love her,” Shane says. “What the fuck did you expect her to do? Still say yes?”

I swallow. God, I need water.

“Can we swing by the hotel room first?” I ask. “I need to get my stuff.”

“Already got it, it’s in the back.”

I crane my neck around and see my suitcase and duffel bag in the back of the truck.

Fuck.

“Oh, we found your drugs too,” Shane says, lifting up a baggie of pills from his shirt pocket.

“Those are mine,” I say, reaching forward trying to swipe them out of his hands. “I need them.”

“You need a swift kick in the fucking ass, that’s what you need,” Maverick says, and in one quick motion he takes the bag from Shane’s hand and undoes the window, tossing the pills out onto the highway where they are quickly crushed under the tires of the oncoming traffic.

“Fuck you!” I sneer, feeling a strange restless panic work its way through my blood. “Do you know how expensive those were? You could have at least resold them.”

“Not interested,” Mav says, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. Mav knows me better than anyone, other than Del, and he’s always been one to handle me with that easy going attitude of his. He rarely gets mad.

But this is different.

I’ve seriously fucked up here.

I’ve fucked up and I know that I have no idea how badly.

“Fox, we need to talk to you. Both Shane and I,” Mav goes on. “You understand why, don’t you?”

“Is this an intervention?” I ask warily, but suddenly I’m so tired. I smell my sleeve. I stink too. Who the fuck knows where I went or what I did when I was on my bender.

“If you want to call it that,” he says. “Though you pretty much intervened with yourself.”

“Where did they even find me?”

“Passed out on the ground behind a café,” Shane speaks up. “It was snowing. You were out. And it was only luck that an officer happened to spot you there, otherwise, you were out of sight of people and that café was closed at night. You could have died, Fox.”

I know I could have.

And I think I knew that in my dark drunken soul.

It was like I wanted everything to just be over, to submit to the cold, to the way I so royally fucked everything up. I ran away by coming to Whistler but it wasn’t quite far enough. You can never run away from yourself.

I told myself I left because of Del. The fact is, I left because she made me realize the man that I’m not, even when I try to be.

But I don’t want to give up.

Coming here was giving up.

Drinking and taking pills and trying to forget my existence, her existence, the baby’s existence for the last three months. It hasn’t worked. Because she’s not the problem. I’m the problem. Even in my emails back and forth with her, getting as much info as I can without stepping on her toes, I’ve been too afraid to interject myself back in her life.

“I…” I start to say but I don’t have the words. My mouth is dry like sawdust, my mind slugs along as if it’s been poured with cement. I stare at the scenery going past, snow-covered trees, a beautiful, peaceful winter setting and I know that I don’t feel at home anywhere. Not in the fires, not in the ice. Not in my head, not outside of it.

Only Del made me feel at home.

Only Del is my home.

Delilah and our baby.

Our little girl.

“I fucked up,” I manage to say, the emotions starting to choke me. “Christ, I fucked up.”

They don’t say anything for a few moments, the only sound is the road under the tires.

“Fox,” Maverick says delicately. “You know you have a problem. You have more than a few. But you have to recognize them now and you have to face them. You have to face all of them. And we’ve got nothing but time on the drive back to North Ridge.”

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s begin, then. Let’s have it.”

They start with the obvious.

Over the years I’ve been relying on alcohol more and more, to the point where it’s obviously become a problem and interfering with my life. I mean, if you ever end up on a bender and in the drunk tank, that’s a clear sign right there that casual drinking no longer applies to you, even if you think it does.

Then there are the pills. The pills that at some point helped me, gave me clarity, took away the pain inside and out. But those pills only work so well for so long. It’s not long before you need more, before they don’t even have an effect on you anymore.

And yet they do. They continue to harm. Your tolerance bends and then it breaks and you break with it. The cycle continues.

“You can’t do this on your own,” Shane says. “I know you do everything on your own, but you can’t do this. We have to help you, be your support. You need professional help, rehab, a treatment center…”

My denial doesn’t run that deep. “I know. I know. I’ll go.”

I’ll go because if I’m going to be back in North Ridge, if I’m going to try again for another shot with Del, then I need to be the best man I can be, even if that man seems as foreign as a stranger.

“And counselling,” Maverick adds.

I look at him in surprise. I’m not sold on this one. “Counselling? What for?”

They exchange a look with each other.

Maverick nods at Shane, then looks back to me in the mirror. “Because you’re fucked up man, and you know it, and all the rehab in the world won’t make a lick of difference unless you get to the root of you.”

“You blame me for our mother’s death,” Shane says so matter-of-factly it actually hurts to hear it. “And I refuse to take the blame for it. Which means you need to deal with this, Fox. You need help dealing with every ugly thing you’ve been feeling and hiding and burying or one day it will eat you alive. I promise you that.”

“I don’t…” I try to say but I feel all the strength drain out of me. The energy needed to confront this demon inside me, to give it a voice, it’s too much.

But still I try. “I don’t blame you.” My words are a weak whisper. “I don’t blame you, Shane.”

He turns around in his seat to face me and I see so much hurt in his eyes that it hits me all at once. What a terrible brother I’ve been to him our whole lives. He was just a baby when our mother killed herself. Our sad, depressed, sweet mother. She was ill, she had her own demons and she never knew to watch out for them and they killed her.

Shane was just a baby. I can see him now, in his crib, innocent. He was the surprise for my parents, he was the apple of everyone’s eye, even my mother’s, even though she was in so much pain, she loved him.

I loved him. I still do. I was his older brother and I shunned him because I couldn’t deal with myself, because I hated myself and it kept going and going and going.

A tear escapes my eyes, my head feeling hot as a tidal wave of all that’s been buried tries to surge up through me. I try and hold it back, hold it back and chain it until it gets unleashed as anger. That’s what I’ve always done.

But I let it out, just enough.

A sob rips through me and I clamp my hand on Shane’s shoulder, squeezing it. “I love you, brother,” I manage to say, my words thick. “I’m sorry I haven’t been there. I’m sorry I failed you. I’m sorry I turned on you. I’m sorry that I haven’t known how to love anyone. I’m so, so sorry.”

Shane’s eyes well up. “It’s okay,” he says, putting his hand on top of mine and squeezing it right back. “It’s okay, Fox. I get it. We all get it. We all understand, we’ve all been through it. We just…we want you to get well. We want you to get better. And the only way that will happen is by talking through it and realizing you need to love yourself. You’ve been hating yourself your whole fucking life, man, and it’s been painful to see.”

I close my eyes, another tear spilling down, and nod.

I’ve been in pain for so long.

I’ve caused pain for so long.

To me, to everyone I care about.

I don’t want to do that anymore.

I don’t want to be lost.

I don’t want to be angry.

I don’t want to blame myself.

I want to be free, to have peace, a future.

I want love.

I want all the love I have and all the love I don’t have.

I want Del’s love.

And I want to love her. I want to love the baby.

I want to love them enough to make up for all the love I’ve never let myself feel.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Maverick says gently after what feels like an eternity of the three of us sitting in the truck and getting emotional. Definitely a first for us.

“I know,” I tell him.

“But sometimes we have to reach rock bottom. Sometimes you have to know what that feels like in order to lift yourself up from it.” He pauses. “But a revelation isn’t enough. You need action.”

“Okay…” I say uncertainly because it sounds like he’s going somewhere with this.

“I don’t think we should take you back to North Ridge,” he says. “I think you need to go to a treatment center first.”

“But Del,” I protest. “I need to see her. She needs to know how sorry I am for leaving, for—”

“Fox,” Shane interrupts me. “Del has been doing fine so far without you. Not the best, but fine. The only way you can actually be sorry in this situation is to take control now and do this. Come back to her sober, refreshed. Start again.”

“He’s right,” Mav says. “I know it sounds like a bunch of hokey bullshit but that saying that you can’t learn to love anyone until you learn to love yourself, well that’s fucking right. You need to work on yourself and get through your issues, at least start, before you can be everything you need to be to her. You need to do some serious fucking soul-searching brother, the kind that hurts.”

They’re probably right but I don’t like it. My whole being protests against it. I want to see Del now. “I can’t miss anymore of her pregnancy,” I tell them, realizing that I’m practically pleading now. “I’ve missed so much.”

“You’ll catch the most important part,” Shane says. “All Del will know is that you’re still working in Whistler. She doesn’t expect you back for a bit anyway so we’ll keep on pretending.”

“You mean you didn’t tell Del you had to come here to get me?”

“Nah,” Mav says. “None of her business. This is just between the Nelson brothers.”

I breathe out a loud sigh of relief. At least there’s that. She still thinks I’m working, which sucks in its own way but at least she doesn’t know what happened. She might not let me near her and the baby.

“I text and email her every now and then to check on her and the baby,” I tell them.

“Then email from there.”

I don’t even talk about what I’ve been doing in Whistler and she doesn’t ask. I ask her the questions and she answers and that’s the extent of our relationship now.

Shit, it hurts. It fucking hurts that this is what we’ve become, what we’ve been reduced to. And it’s all my fault.

No, I tell myself quickly. The blame stops now. It has to stop now.

I take in a deep breath. “Okay,” I say to them. “I’ll do it.”

Maverick gives me a broad grin that lights up his whole face. “Good choice, brother. Otherwise we would have made you and that wouldn’t have been pretty. Though I’m pretty sure Shane here more than deserves getting a few punches in. You’ve had it coming for a long fucking time.”

I smile. It feels like the first time in months. Years. It feels like forever. “He can try but Shane punches like a toddler.”

“Oh fuck you,” Shane says, but he’s laughing. “Next time we stop for gas, you’re dead.”

“Shit,” Maverick says. “Now I have to figure out which one of you to bet on. The odds are better on this than the scratch ticket I was going to pick up.”

“Yeah right, I’d obviously win,” I tell him, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Remember that time...”

And as I go on about the fights we’ve been in, the three of us in general, scrapping like brothers do, I realize how fucking lucky I am to have these guys on my team. They’ve always had my back, always been great brothers.

Time for me to return the favor.

I’m doing this for them.

I’m doing this for Del.

I’m doing this for me.