Will comes to my first meet that winter. He makes no secret of the fact that he's there for me, and it becomes pretty obvious to everyone who hadn't already figured it out why Will left his job. But people love Will, and inexplicably seem to like me, so it's not a big deal to most of the team. There are a few assholes, naturally, and I really don't care. Betsy and her peers can be snide about it all they want: I'm the only one of us who's taking first place consistently, and I'm the only one of us going home with Will. That last bit makes it easy not to care what anyone thinks.
It's almost perfect, aside from this: I'm having nightmares again. And in these, my father is longer the villain. I am.
I dream that I'm arriving somewhere-the farm, our apartment, the track-like it's any other day. And then I suddenly remember, as if it's something I could ever forget, that Will is dead. The realization tears through my chest, cracking it wide open, and when the pain hits I remember something else: I'm the one who did it. In some moment of blindness, like the one that happened with Mark Bell, I attacked him and I can never bring him back.
I wake sobbing, with Will beside me, trying to calm me down. When he asks, I lie and say it was about my father. I can't imagine telling him the truth: the awful thing is no longer something outside of me.
It's inside me, waiting to strike.
By March, Colorado's year-round sunlight grows warm instead of merely bright, and the snow begins to melt. Will is always doing small things, things I suspect he doesn't think anything of-he stuffs newspaper in my wet running shoes to help them dry faster. He makes coffee even on mornings he doesn't have time to drink it. Every time he passes Starbucks he stops to get me a pumpkin scone. These are small things, meaningless things, but what they tell me is not: I matter to him, always, and even if I'm being evil or cool or dismissive, he's not going anywhere.
///
He isn't going anywhere, but I might be. Because the nightmares are more frequent now, and each time I wake from one I tell myself I should leave. That I should go somewhere Will could never find me in order to keep him safe. Sometimes the only way I can ease my anxiety and go back to sleep is by swearing to myself I will go. Once I even begin to pack, but then daylight comes and I look at Will sleeping there and can't bring myself to do it.
It changes things between us. Will begins to discuss the time after I graduate, though it's over a year away. He talks about us moving to Seattle, where I can train for long distance and he can lead bigger climbs, and I dismiss it. He references marriage, and kids, and I say nothing, hating the small glint of hurt in his eyes each time I fail to respond. But how can I possibly discuss the future, discuss marriage or-God forbid-kids, when I have no idea what this is inside me and what harm it's capable of?
It's created a wedge between us, one he feels but can't identify and one I understand but won't explain.
Summer comes and Will gets me a job working the desk at the tour company. It should be ideal. We drive to work together, and I love when he comes into the office between climbs, the way his whole face lights up when he sees me. We ride home together. Sometimes we stop on the way to hike or to climb. Sometimes we make dinner, and sometimes we rush straight to our messy bed and remain there for hours, only leaving once hunger pangs set in. But the wedge between us is growing, and because of that we argue, and the arguments are less playful than they once were.
It's July. He pushes an article toward me about a group of ultramarathoners in Seattle, and I push it back without reading it.
"I thought that's what you wanted," he says, the words clipped and precise.
"I don't know what I want anymore," I reply flippantly, pushing away from the table.
That muscle in his jaw pops. "What exactly does that mean?"
"Who knows where we'll be in a year?" I reply, busying myself scrubbing a counter that's already clean. "We can't know, so there's no point in discussing it."
"I know, Olivia," he hisses. "I know that wherever you are in a year, I want to be there too."
I say nothing. I don't meet his eye, knowing what I'll see there.
"You don't even know that much?" he demands. "You're so uncertain about us that you don't know if you want to be with me in a year?"
I glance at him and he looks so wounded I have to look away. "It's not that simple," I reply.
"Yeah," he says, heading for the door. "It actually is."
The door slams and the glass-framed pictures vibrate in protest. I grip the counter so hard that my hands ache.
I don't know what to do. I can't tell him the truth. I can't trust that he's safe with me. I also can't keep him in this permanent limbo, never sure whether I'm planning to stay, assuming I just don't love him enough to commit.
I need to let him go, yet even the hours I spend waiting for him to come home are torture. I need to let him go, and it's going to kill me when I do.
He comes in late, far after we've normally gone to bed. "I thought you'd be asleep," he sighs. It's the first time he's looked unhappy to see me and it makes my chest ache.
I stand, blocking his path, resting my hands on his arms. "I love you," I tell him. "You know that. I love you more than anything in the world. I just … " And here I trail off because I don't know the rest of that sentence myself.
He pulls away from me. "It's late. I'm going to bed."
"Will," I plead. "Don't do this."
"I'm not doing anything, Olivia," he says without inflection. "You are."
He goes to bed and I remain on the couch. I have the nightmare again and wake to find him scooping me up and bringing me to bed, but in the morning he doesn't say a word to me.
He drops me off at the office, with a kiss on the forehead that feels more obligatory than willing.
I spend the day watching my phone for a text from him, scanning the parking lot for his car. By mid-afternoon, that sickness in my stomach has grown. I've always heard from him by now.
If he's mad, if he's done with me, that's good, right? It means I can leave and maybe he won't care, or he'll at least care less than he would have. I pick up my phone to text him and put it back down. Why try to fix this when it has to end? Why console him or console myself when we'll just have to go through it all again?
///
There's this restless, painful energy inside me as if I've had way too much caffeine on absolutely no sleep. I can't stop pacing, moving, my hand reaching for my phone and jerking away.
I've just picked up the phone and begun to type when Mike, our boss, emerges from his office. I put the phone down guiltily, but he doesn't even seem to notice.
"Jim just called," he says, in a voice of forced calm. Jim is another guide who often works with Will. "There was an accident."
My body shakes as I sit in the passenger seat of Mike's car, on the way to the hospital. Mike knows nothing except that a bolt came out and Will fell.
Which means he could be paralyzed. He could be in a coma. He might already be dead.
The terror I feel is worse than any nightmare, a fear so acute that I refuse to believe it's happened. A small, irrational voice in the back of my head suggests I find a way to end this-throw myself out of the car, anything-so I won't have to endure the piece that comes next.
Mike leads me by my elbow into the hospital, steering me blindly as we go to the front desk and the elevator and the nurse's station. I feel both desperate and numb at once, suffering one interminable wait after another with my stomach clenched so tight that it nearly bends me over with pain.
And then we arrive in his room, and Will turns-he's in a bed but he's alive, he's moving-and with an anguished sob I run across the room, where he pulls me to him, burying my face in his neck. I cry endlessly, uncontrollably, the way I have only once before in my entire life. He runs his hand over my hair, soothing me, promising me he's fine.
"You're in a hospital bed," I whisper, broken and almost unintelligible. "You're not fine."
He gives a low laugh. "Two broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. That's it."
It doesn't help. I should be overjoyed and instead it feels as if someone's wrapped a cord around my heart and is pulling it so tight I can't breathe.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry we fought. All I could think as I fell was of how I'd left things. That me being shitty to you was going to be your last memory of me."
I press my face to my hands. I'm still crying. I can't seem to stop. It's partially the relief of discovering he's fine, but it's also the terror of discovering that he is vulnerable. I can keep him safe from me by leaving, but how can I possibly keep him safe from everything else? From climbing accidents and car crashes and muggings and illness? There are thousands of ways he could be hurt, and I can't prevent any of them. He lowers the bedrail and pulls me next to him on his uninjured side.