Jace isn’t the only one in shock.

It’s been a day, the longest day, and it’s night time and I’m at the hospital and yet it doesn’t really feel like I’m here.

Jace is being treated for hypothermia and should be okay to go soon. It’s about time, it’s eight p.m. and everyone on the team just wants to go home and grieve.

But I’m not even sure I can grieve. I don’t even feel like I’m present. I think I died a little up there on that mountain. I keep seeing myself going over the edge. I see my fingers letting go of Maverick’s boot. I see myself sliding back, staring into his eyes, knowing they’re the last thing I’ll see and then I’m falling.

I see it so clearly that I’m not sure I’m even alive.

“You’re alive,” Tony says tiredly.

I must have said that out loud. I just nod, too fucked up to even be embarrassed.

All of us are in the waiting room at the ER. It’s a small hospital and there are a lot of people so we’re all crammed in here. Tony is sitting beside me in the chairs, Neil is pacing. Sam is here too and a few members of the volunteer squad.

Maverick is out roaming in the halls. I’ve tried to talk to him a few times but he’s not talking. I don’t think he’s in shock though. I think he’s feeling things too clearly.

The guilt.

And I know I’m feeling it too.

“Jace will be out in a moment,” the doctor says to us as he comes into the room. “He’s made a full recovery but…after what happened, well I’m sure the government will take good care of him. You know there are grief counseling services here if anyone needs one.”

We nod and grunt our thanks.

Losing Tim has been a blow that I don’t think anyone will recover from. We’re all glad Jace is okay and alive but…

We lost a member of our family today.

Because these guys, this team, they are family.

I sigh and get up, unable to keep still. I need to wake up, need to be here.

I head over to the coffee machine and get a cup with extra sugar, then go out into the halls. At the end I see Maverick, just outside the doors in the darkness of the parking lot. Just standing there, shoulders slumped, back to me. His breath rises up into the darkness.

I know this has the chance to break us but I don’t want him to break down. He stayed behind with Tim, sending me and Jace back to get help, and he knew the risks. He knew and didn’t care and I feel that if I don’t bring him back, we’ll lose him as a leader for good. And we need him right now.

I need him. More than I’ve ever needed anyone.

I need his protection, his safety. I need him to take care of me and tell me everything is going to be okay.

I sip my coffee as I walk down the hall. It’s hot, scalding me, tasting burnt, but I gulp down half of it because I feel like it’s the thing to do, I’m a woman playing a part in a play.

The doors automatically swing open and the cold air hits me in the face but Maverick doesn’t turn around.

“Want a coffee?” I ask softly.

I stop where I am, just outside of the doors, so they don’t trigger automatically.

He doesn’t even move.

“Mav?” Nothing. “John!” I yell.

Finally, he looks over his shoulder at me. His eyes are glazed.

It breaks my heart and leaves me frustrated all at once.

I come over to him, holding out the coffee. “Here.”

He shakes his head, looks away. He pulls the beanie further down on his forehead and shoves his hands in his pocket. Everything about his stance right now screams FUCK OFF.

But I’m not gonna fuck off.

I take the coffee back and have a sip, but I don’t retreat and my eyes don’t leave him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him.

He seems to shrug it off. “How is he?”

“He’s fine. They’re letting him go soon.”

I watch his throat as he swallows. “Good.”

“John…”

“Don’t call me John,” he says in a dull voice.

“Okay. Sorry. Mav.”

“Don’t…don’t call me anything right now.”

Now I get that we’re grieving. I know that’s what’s happening. But even so, those words and his tone sting.

I put my hand on his shoulder and he shrugs it off.

“Mav,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Please, talk to me.”

Silence.

“This wasn’t your fault,” I go on. “I know you want to blame yourself but…you can’t. It was an accident.”

“No,” he says quietly, giving a shake of his head. “It wasn’t an accident.”

I don’t even know what to say to that.

“This was a mistake,” he mutters.

I know I don’t know what he’s talking about, but everything inside me clenches, this horrible knot in my gut that tightens at those words.

“What was a mistake?” I whisper.

“You and me. Us.”

Oh God.

Oh God.

I open my mouth, trying to digest the pain from that hit, to find the words.

“What are you talking about?”

Please don’t…please don’t…not now.

He glances at me and in the sickly light of the hospital’s glow, his eyes are cold. Colder than the ice that almost killed us today.

“Us, Riley. You and I…together. It was a mistake. I always knew it was but now I know for sure. In the worst possible way.”

I flinch like I’ve been backhanded. “Mav,” I tell him, my voice breaking, I try and hold myself together. “You’re under a lot of stress right now. We all are. You’re grieving. It’s okay. But don’t make rash decisions or—”

“This isn’t a rash decision!” he snaps at me. “I know when I fucked up and I fucked up okay? There’s a reason there are rules. It’s so shit like this doesn’t happen. It’s so people don’t fucking die!”

Oh my God.

My hand flies to my chest because it feels like my heart is breaking. “What the fuck are you saying? You’re saying we’re responsible for what happened to them? That’s fucking nuts, Mav. That’s crazy!”

“We did this!” he yells. “He’s dead because of us!”

Fuck that.

Fuck you.

“How dare you!” I scream at him, spittle flying out. “How fucking dare you try and pin this on me! Don’t you think I’ve been through enough already? I’ve been responsible for someone’s death before, I won’t be responsible for this one. It was an accident Maverick, it could have been anyone.”

“And it should have been me!” he screams right back. “I should have taken that call, it should have been me on the mountain.”

“And then maybe you’d be dead too, is that what you want?”

He shakes his head, walking away.

“Where are you going?!” I yell and start marching after him. I grab his arm and pull him back but he’s basically a tank and I can’t stop him. “You want to have a pity party and blame yourself for this, fine! But you’re not blaming me. Okay? We knew what we were getting into and we chose to do it, we chose to be with each other, because we are old enough to make our own decisions. We’re fucking adults, John. That is your real name, a real fucking adult name, no wonder you don’t fucking answer to it.”

That gets his attention.

He turns and I nearly shrink back from the simmering rage in his eyes.

“Way to kick a man when he’s down,” he growls.

“Kick you? I’m trying to save you.”

“I don’t need saving.”

“Only me then, huh?”

He glares at me, looks away. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe…everything is crumbling away. Everything I thought I had, it’s falling through my fingers. I thought I had him.

I love you, I want to scream it at him. But I know he won’t care.

“I should have said no to you from the start,” he says.

“You did say no to me from the start. I wore you down.”

“And I should have thought with my brains instead of my dick for one second.”

Again, his words lash me. I feel like I have open wounds all over, stinging from salt. “You were thinking with more than your dick, weren’t you?”

He clamps his lips together into a thin hard line.

Oh my God.

“Please tell me that meant something to you,” I cry out. “Please tell me that wasn’t just sex, that you care about me, that I’m something to you. What we had was…it was real. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it real?”

He clears his throat. “It was never real. You knew that.”

My fingers grip the edge of my jacket. I can barely breathe. Today I nearly died but this almost feels worse than that. This is a slow death, right in front of his eyes.

“This hurts. Do you know that you’re hurting me?” I ask him.

“Today a man died because we were screwing each other. That’s on us.”

Oh fuck no.

No. No. No.

“Why are you being so hurtful?” I smack his arm, my hand bouncing off. “So fucking cruel? Why save my damn life just so you can fucking hurl this shit at me, huh?!”

“I’ve never had a team member die on my watch!”

“Not until I came around, that’s what you’re trying to say. Isn’t it!?”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” he says angrily, basically swatting me away.

“I am not. You’re saying all of this. That I’m a mistake.”

“You are great for the team,” he says quickly. “You are not great for me.”

I shake my head, trying to catch my breath. None of this feels real. None of it can be real. How can we switch from last night to this that fast? How can…

He never told you he cares about you, never said he loves you. He had said it was just for fun. He had told you that a million times but you never listen, you never listen.

I swallow hard, tears burning behind my eyes. It’s all too much. And he’s right. Maybe none of it was real except to me. I started sleeping with him and my emotions came out to play. I couldn’t separate the physical from my heart. I fell head over heels for this man and this whole time I assumed he felt the same way.

The town’s player. He told me he couldn’t commit. God, did I really think that I was that special that I could change him? Did I really think I would be the one? He kept saying I was unreal…that was his way of keeping his distance. To keep me just out of the reaches of his heart.

I’m a big fucking idiot.

Suddenly I’m so drained of energy, I almost collapse right there. It wouldn’t be so bad. The nurses would rush out and bring me inside to a room and maybe they’d drug me and I could dream all of this away.

“Riley,” he says softly when he realizes I’ve been standing here and breaking silently in front of him.

I shake my head, pressing my lips together to keep from sobbing, tears running down my face.

I’m the idiot.

He’s a man who lost a lot today.

I’m the girl he blames.

I should be used to this.

Love is chaos.

There is no shelter for my heart here.

“I’m going,” I tell him. “I’m sorry…” I choke back a sob. “I’m just so sorry.”

Then I turn and run back into the hospital, back out the front doors and all the way home.

I sleep for twelve hours straight.

No calls from the team come in. I know they would come regardless if anyone died or not, but they don’t. God is taking a break with us for the moment.

He’s not taking a break with the weather though. When I wake up, there’s a huge dump of snow and it’s freezing cold again. This winter just doesn’t know when to quit.

I don’t know when to quit either.

It’s something I’m thinking of, though. Leaving.

I came all the way to North Ridge to start over. I would have gone anywhere, to be honest, and their SAR was the first to call me back. So I took the job.

But now, what kind of job is this? My boss fucking hates me it seems. He blames me and himself for the death of a team member.

And I’m in love with him. I try and tell myself I’m not, as if that will harden my heart and spare me any pain, but I’m in love with Mav, head over heels and tumbling and now I think I’ve hit the ground. I was airborne for too long.

It hurts. It hurts so much. It shouldn’t and I wish it didn’t but all I want to do is curl up in the fetal position on the floor and cry. Cry because I lost the closest person I had here in this town, cry because I lost the idea of a future here with him, as vague as that idea was. Cry because I can see his point. I can see why it’s all our fault.

Shit happens. I know this so well. I’ve been so good at outrunning it. I left my home in Washington because I thought running was the way out. I ran away from Colorado because I didn’t want to face the tragedy. And now I want to run away from here, start again elsewhere.

I think about all this for hours. I don’t eat, I don’t shower. I lie on the ground and I think about all the what ifs and I think about things I should have done differently and I think about picking myself back up off the ground.

But everything seems too heavy for me to carry. I can’t fathom walking back into the SAR office. I can’t picture myself rescuing anyone right now because I can’t even rescue myself.

That’s the thing about search and rescue. We go out there and we find those who are hurt, who are lost. But if you’re lost yourself, you won’t be able to find anyone. You can’t help anyone. You’re the one who needs rescuing. And right now, I’m drowning in ice, my head barely above the surface. I’m no use to anyone until I can crawl out on my own.

That day bleeds into the next.

I wake up just after dawn, my body apparently having enough rest now.

There’s that horrible moment, a fragment really, where the reality hasn’t blended in yet. You’re still in a dreamland, living the life from a few days before.

Then you realize the truth…

It hits you like a frying pan.

Takes your breath away.

Freezes your heart.

The truth.

This is your life now.

You don’t have Maverick.

You might not even have a job.

Someone is dead.

This is your life now.

I exhale forcefully, trying to get it all out. I don’t want it to pull me under anymore. I don’t want to sink. It’s too easy to do so.

If this is my life now, I have to make peace with it.

Accept it.

And move on.

Easier said than done.

I reach over for my phone and in the split second before I look, I have the highest hopes that Maverick has texted me. Saying he’s sorry. Saying he didn’t mean anything that he said. That he was lost with guilt and grief.

That he loves me.

But of course, he doesn’t say that. There’s nothing. Because I don’t fucking know anyone in this god-forsaken town.

I sigh and check my emails, thinking perhaps he’s emailed me.

But I see an email that makes my heart drop.

An email I never expected.

Oh my God.

It’s from Levi’s parents.

The subject line reads: We thought you should know.

I click the email and open it before I have a chance to chicken out and delete it. I haven’t heard from them in nearly two years. Everything in me is shaking.

---

Hello Riley.

It’s Pat and Art here. We’re not exactly sure if this is still your email or where to reach you, or if you still care to hear from us. If not, then we’re sorry but we feel we have a responsibility to you.

Levi was pulled from life support the other day. It was the hardest decision we ever had to make but it was the best one for him and everyone involved. We’re sorry things didn’t end right between us and we know you should have been there. We also know you’ve probably tried to move on.

We just wanted you to know so you can have your own closure about Levi. We know you loved him dearly and he loved you.

Please take care and God bless you, wherever you are.

Pat and Art.

---

Tears are streaming down my face.

The sorrow inside my chest is so intense, so hard, I think it might split me in two.

But I don’t push it away. For Levi’s sake, I let it in and I feel it. Because he deserves to be felt. So does Tim.

I let that in too and I fall back onto my bed, letting the grief climb me, consume me, turn me inside out.

There’s closure in all of this.

But closure doesn’t mean a door closing on pain.

You can have peace and pain at once.

The heart can weather any storm.