Page 84 of A World Without You
“No, like in the mountains, far away from the city. Where the only traffic is if a cow crosses a road and the oxygen makes you breathe easier?”
My chest tightens. “I’d imagine it’d be awful.”
Colin laughs as he adjusts his ski boots, making sure everything is clicked into place. I pull down my goggles to hide my tears. There’s an innocence surrounding Colin. He knows nothing of what I know. And even if none of it happened in this world, I know what I’m capable of in another. I know I abandoned him for a place where the traffic was, in fact, cows, and the oxygen did seem to be cleaner.
And yet, I ended up hating it. All of the knowledge compounded together makes me feel irrevocably dishonest.
“Ready?” Colin asks as we make our way to the diamond run.
I’m barely able to take in a deep breath. I am not ready—I’m on the verge of a panic attack.
“Give me a second,” I manage and he steps closer to me, but I wave him off. “I’m fine. Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
Colin gives me a chaste kiss on the cheek and is off, gliding down the mountain with fresh powder billowing behind him and leaving me with my contradictions and feelings.
Staring at each skier and snowboarder as they drift off the mountain, I slowly catch my breath and find my bearings, when I hear, “Hey.”
“God, Graham!” I gasp out and jump at the sound of his smooth and rugged voice. “Why do you always have to scare me?”
His goggles are propped on his helmet and the crease between his brows deepens as his expression questions me. I don’t miss the amusement dancing on his lips.
He holds out his gloved hands, dusted in powdery snow. “I don’t always scare you...?” His voice trails and it comes out more like a question, reminding me this is a different world. This isn’t the man I married. This isn’t the man who would hide around corners when he sensed me coming and scare me just as he pressed me against a wall and swallowed my startled breath with a kiss. He isn’t the man who ran up behind me for our ‘First Look’ pictures on our wedding day and wrapped his arms around my corseted waist before I knew it was happening, making me scream and laugh for the photographer. This isn’t the man who, in a moment of devastated anger, tossed that picture on the counter and said, “This! This is us. We could be this happy again, Olivia. You just don’t want to.”
He was right. I could have forced myself to find the joy. The happiness. The thrill I once felt in his arms. But I didn’t because I knew we’d remain in a cyclical fight of me adjusting my happiness and needs to accommodate his life.
No man is charming enough for that.
And this man, in this world, is still just as charming. Kind eyes. Bright smile. A beard that is just so delectably mountain man that any city slicker would switch sides for...and then regret it five years down the line until she’s stuck in a parallel universe night after night, being reminded that she wouldn’t be as miserable if she just held onto her hormones and said no to the bearded hottie wearing flannel.
A groan begins to escape my lips, but I swallow it, trying to muster up some manners for this man who never became my husband. “Sorry, I just...you’re just...” I pull off my goggles so I can get an honest look at him.
“Still feel super comfortable with me?” he finishes, and my jaw drops.
“No.” My tone is drenched in offense, and I right it once I realize. “No, I just...”
“Really, Olivia. It’s okay. In another world, we’re great friends. I’m sure of it.”
Not in the two worlds I’ve visited.
He stares out over the snowcapped tree line, and his gaze travels over the mountain range. He starts to smile, and his face kind of freezes in a memory.
This is all getting too weird. I draw in a deep breath, steadying the turtle doves flapping in my gut, and ask, “What won’t you tell Colin?”
“Huh?” His gaze snaps back to me, full confusion in his eyes.
“Yesterday, before I passed out or...whatever. You said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell Colin.’ What did that mean?”
My chest is heaving with nerves, and he lets out a low chuckle, then tells me, “That you hate skiing.”
“Oh.” I breathe out, relief flooding my subconscious. “For a minute there, I thought you were going to say—”
He steps closer, cutting me off as the snow crunches beneath his boots, the oxygen getting devoured by my nerves. I have so much history with him. But I also have none. The impossibility of this situation is not jiving well for my mental health.
I swallow. “I mean, I do hate skiing. I barely remember telling you that—” I don’t “—but, I mean, really skiing is fine, I just find it—”
“Rather pretentious and something people do to show status rather than to actually enjoy the sport,” he says and my sternum twists as my heart practically stops. He offers a smile that feels intimate. Not in a way that makes me think he’s going to kiss me, but in a way that reminds me of our comradery—how two people from different worlds met by chance and accidentally fell in love, breaking a precious heart in the process. His smile morphs into a low laugh. “I’ll never forget when you said that and how much it made me laugh. I still tell people that.”
I glance down at his snowboard and can’t help but smile. “It’s been five years. I can’t believe you remember that verbatim.”
