India’s car is still in the ditch, just like I thought it would be. Trey, the only guy I know who does towing around here, is an asshole who doesn’t show up half the time. She might have better luck today, when the plows have been out for several hours and it’s not such a bitch to get things back on the road.

She stares out the window on the drive back to her parents’ house. I assume that’s where we’re going, and she doesn’t correct me when I start heading in that direction. She just locks her eyes on the snowbanks outside.

India swallows hard, over and over again, and my jaw is clenched so tight it hurts.

All of this is just pointless.

It’s just too close to that shake of her head ten years ago. The way she dismissed me without a second thought. The way it was all just pointless, so pointless, otherwise she would have been with me, would have admitted that what we had together was too precious to just jettison because her parents didn’t like my tattoos.

Words boil up in my chest, but I can’t force myself to speak. I can’t do anything but drive.

It takes three times as long as it usually would. The plows have been running, yeah, but they’ve also compacted the snow so it’s nothing now but a slippery surface, and the absolute last fucking thing in the world that we need right now is for the fucking Jeep to go off the road. I don’t know if we’d survive being trapped together.

My stomach churns. Last night was so fucking perfect. I’ve been with a few women over the years, and none have ever come close to what I had with India. That’s the bitch of this. She comes around one more time, just to let me taste what I want, and then yanks it away. Because it’s pointless.

Pointless, pointless, pointless. The word echoes in my mind.

I can’t fucking wait to get to her parents’ house so that she can get out of my car.

At the same time, my stomach is coiled up in knots thinking about the moment when she gets out of my car and I never fucking see her again.

I don’t know which is worse, but the closer we get, the more my muscles tense until I’m holding the wheel so hard that one wrong move and I could rip it right off.

India’s shoulders are shaking when I pull up to the curb outside her parents’ house. They’ve redone the siding, but it’s almost the same color. Practically nothing has changed.

The only thing that’s different is that India doesn’t live here anymore, and she never will again.

This is our last shot.

I see her steel herself, and when she turns back to me her eyes are red but dry.

“Thanks for the ride home, Dawson.” Her voice is raw, aching, and I want to take her face in my hands and kiss her until there’s none of that pain left. But I can’t. I can’t touch her. If I do, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

“You’re welcome.”

There’s so much more I want to say. Her eyes bore into mine, but every second that the silence lasts, the more the words die in my throat.

I’m sorry for that bullshit before. Last night was incredible. Please, I just want to hold your hand and talk to you about every single damn thing that’s happened in your life since the day we stopped talking.

India gives a little nod, like she’s waited long enough, and then she opens the passenger door.

My heart hammers painfully against my rib cage as she steps out into the snow.

She stands for one more lingering moment with her hand on the door, looking in at me.

She opens her mouth, then closes those pretty lips.

And then she closes the door.

My body wrenches to the left. I want to go after her, but something keeps me pinned in the car, my eyes glued on her back as she moves up the walk to the front porch, walking faster the closer she gets to the house.

She climbs the steps two at a time, almost losing her footing on the slick surface but catching herself on the railing at the last second. I reach toward her instinctively, but she’s far as fuck away and I have nothing to do with her anymore.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

She slips inside without a backward glance.

The silence inside the car is so loud that it pulses in my ears.

I reach forward and turn on the radio, cranking the volume of whatever shitty pop station this is, and then, though my chest is so tight I’m probably having a fucking heart attack, I put the Jeep into gear and pull back into the road.

The house recedes in the rearview mirror, and I’m choking on my own sadness. Once again, the fact of my existence has fucked things up for me. Why would I have ever thought this was some kind of a gift? Last night seems like a million goddamn miles away already.

The radio abruptly switches gears.

I’ll be home for Christmas…

I’ll never be fucking home again, now that India has walked away from me again.

No—now that I’ve chased her out of my damn life, like some kind of cowardly idiot.

Merry Christmas to me.