Page 86 of Thin Ice

Eight-thirty. I picked up my phone. Put it down. Picked it up again.

Liam

Where are you?

I sent it and stared at the screen, and the screen stared back. Three dots. Then nothing. Then three dots again.

Alex

Line was long. Coming.

I put the phone on my chest. Closed my eyes. Told myself it was fine. But the telling didn't work because my body already knew something my brain hadn't caught up to. That feeling in my stomach. The one that starts low and spreads. Not nausea. Dread.

The car pulled into the gravel lot at eight-forty. I heard the engine cut. The door open and close. His footsteps on the porch, the cabin door, the cold air coming in with him.

"Coffee's here," Alex said.

He was smiling. He was holding a cardboard carrier with six cups and he was smiling and his voice was normal and he handed Noah his latte and Priya her Earl Grey and Remy his whatever-has-caffeine, and then he came to the couch and handed me my large black and sat down next to me.

And I knew.

I knew the way you know when someone's breathing is wrong. The way I'd known in bed on Christmas morning when his jaw was working and his eyes were doing math on the ceiling. His smile was too even. His hands were too steady. He was performing calm, and I'd been watching Alex Harrington perform calm since the day I met him, and the performance always meant the same thing. Something happened, and he was deciding how much of it to show me.

"Thanks," I said. I took the coffee. Our fingers touched on the cup, and his were cold, colder than a ten-minute drive would explain, and he pulled his hand back too fast.

"Yeah."

He sat next to me. Put his head on my shoulder. And his body was tight against mine, wound up, vibrating with something he was holding down, and I put my arm around him because that's what I do, that's what my body does when his body is next to mine, but the dread didn't go away. It got louder.

I gave him ten minutes.

Ten minutes of the cabin waking up around us. Ethan stumbling out in sweatpants. Noah making toast. Priya correcting Noah's toast technique. Remy not moving from his chair. The sounds of people being normal in a small space, and Alex beside me with his coffee getting cold in his hands.

"Hey," I said. Low. Just for him. "Come outside with me."

He looked at me. I watched his face do the thing where he ran the options, calculated the cost, and decided whether to let me in or keep the wall up. Then he nodded.

The back deck was cold. Snow on the railing, snow on the steps, our breath coming in clouds. The lake was flat and frozen, and the trees along the shore were bare and black against the gray sky. I leaned against the railing. He stood next to me. Both of us holding coffee we weren't drinking.

"What's going on?" I said.

"Nothing."

"Alex."

"It's nothing, I just." He stopped. Took a breath. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You've been nervous since you walked in." I set my coffee on the railing. "Talk to me. Whatever it is."

His mouth opened. Closed. He was looking at the lake, not at me, and his jaw was doing the thing and his hands were tight on his cup and I could see it happening in real time. The control slipping. The walls cracking. Whatever he was holding down was coming up whether he wanted it to or not.

"I." He stopped again. Swallowed. His eyes were wet. "I did something. This morning."

"Okay."

"I didn't go to the coffee shop. I mean I did, but I didn't. I went somewhere else first."

My stomach dropped. I didn't know why yet. I just felt it fall.