Page 53 of On the Edge

My heart is pounding in my chest faster and harder than it ever does. Because after years of wanting to know why he left and never came back, I’m terrified to hear what he has to say. What if he has a good reason and I have to forgive him? Without this hatred keeping us apart, what protection do I have?

My need to keep Marco’s secret, to protect him, reigns supreme in my mind. That was a close call in Paris. And letting Nate get close to me again, even if it’s just by forgiving him, will open us up to speculation we don’t need.

I don’t say anything. I just look straight at him while I slide the headphones back over my head, close my eyes, and will myself to fall asleep like I always do on flights.

* * *

Pretending to sleep is exhausting.

I’ve been lying here for what feels like hours, and the images I’ve worked hard to not think about over the last few days are now on a live reel looped in my brain. It’s like being stuck in a dream watching snippets of various movies on repeat. Except instead of actors, my snippets are full of Nate and me. In the bathroom after he pulled me out of the tub the night our heat went out. In the kitchen eating ice cream the night before we left Copper Mountain. At the top of the mountain before his first World Cup race where he looked me straight in the eye and told me he’d come back for me. On the balcony of the club at the hotel in Levi, with his hand trailing up the back of my leg and his breath next to my ear.

I’m a confused bundle of emotions and hormones, a bad combination for the conversation Nate wants to have. Or maybe a good combination for him, because my will to keep hating him seems to be weakening the more I watch the instant replay of the times we’ve had together since he returned. In some ways, we’re the same together as we ever were. But in most ways, this feels different. Like we’ve grown and matured. Or at least, he has. I sometimes feel like I’m more irrational and emotional than I was as a teenager.

Back then, I knew who I was and what I wanted; I had my life planned out before I even met Nate. And my life went according to plan—I was invited to join the National Ski Team’s development team my junior year of high school. I left Danforth halfway through college to ski full time. I won an Olympic gold medal, a few World Cup small globes, and almost achieved my ultimate dream of an overall World Cup crystal globe. And Nate was there for all of it, fit into the space I carved out for him in my life.

But he always wanted more. Looking back I can see how little I gave, how small and defined that space truly was. My focus and determination were enormous, just like my dreams. But they only left so much room for a relationship. I was afraid that if I gave him any more of me—if I married him like he wanted—that I’d lose some of my focus and maybe lose out on achieving my goals.

And then I crashed and lost everything anyway.

I open my eyes and turn my head toward Nate. He doesn’t see me at first. He’s wearing some tortoise shell glasses and reading a book, and the sight does something funny to my insides. I’ve never seen Nate with glasses, and I definitely don’t have a thing for guys who wear glasses. Somehow they make Nate seem more grounded, like instead of the sex god who haunts my dreams or the sculpted athlete I work with daily, he’s just a normal guy.

I can picture him in my bed, his back leaning against the headboard, reading before going to sleep. And it’s startling to realize how much I crave that reality. How I want to come to my bed and find Nate there, waiting for me like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I’m a mess.

He glances over at me then and I remove my noise-canceling headphones. “What’s that look?” he asks. Because of course he sees something in my face that I don’t want him to see. He always does.

“I’ve never seen you wear glasses,” I say, because I can’t say what I’ve really been thinking.

“They’re just reading glasses. My eyes get strained when I read for a long time without them.”

I’m about to tell him how insanely hot he looks in them, but I catch the words as they’re almost out my mouth, swallow them back down where they belong, and bury them there.

“Did you sleep?” he asks, when I don’t say anything. I shake my head no as I lie there, looking up at him. “What were you doing for”—he glances this watch—“the last three hours?”

“Thinking,” I tell him as I bring my seat back up to a sitting position.

Nate raises an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him quietly. I know it feels like we’re in our own little pod, separate from the rest of the passengers in first class. But in the unlikely event anyone recognizes either of us, I don’t want our conversation overheard. “I know I’ve been acting like a crazy person. I know I’ve been closed off and angry, then professional but distant, I know that sometimes I let my walls down and then build them back up quickly. This is just really, really hard for me.”

“I’m sorry too,” he tells me, “for causing all that. But what I really don’t understand is why you don’t want to know what happened? Why haven’t you let me explain?”

I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Because you hurt me so badly, Nate. You leaving like that, and not coming back ... I’ve never felt so helpless, so unloved. I swore to myself that I’d never forgive youorgive anyone that kind of power over me again. So I turned that hurt into hate. It fueled my recovery and it’s what’s driven me forward when it would have been easier to just give up on life.”

I probably sound ridiculously melodramatic to him, since he has no idea how his leaving impacted me. No one does. I hid it from everyone, insisted I was better off without him. Only Sierra and Marco know how much he hurt me, and they both fed into that hatred at first, like it was the healthiest way to deal with the loss.

It feels good to be honest with Nate, finally. But I can tell from the stillness of his face, the way his eyes are squinting behind his glasses, that this isn’t what he was expecting me to say. He takes the glasses off and sets them in the pocket of the seat in front of him, then rubs the bridge of his nose and slides his fingers across his eyelids before looking at me again.

“I did come back, Jackson.”

It’s like the plane has kept flying and left my body behind, and now I’m free-falling through the air, hurtling toward the ground at a hundred miles an hour.

“What?” I manage to squeak out even though there’s no air left in my lungs.

“I did come back,” he repeats. “And I don’t know why you don’t know that.”

But he has to be lying. There’s no way.

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