Updated Apr 11, 2026 • ~9 min read
Chapter 17: Self-Sabotage
Jackson
I’m self-sabotaging.
I know I’m doing it even as the words leave my mouth, even as I watch the hope in Sloane’s eyes dim, but I can’t seem to stop myself. It’s day sixteen, the weather has been clear for two days straight, and I can hear the distant sound of helicopter rotors in my head even though they’re not here yet.
They’re coming soon.
She’s leaving soon.
And I need to protect myself before it destroys me.
“This won’t work outside,” I say, and my voice comes out harsher than I intend. “You know that, right?”
She looks up from the book she’s reading, confusion and hurt crossing her face. “What won’t work?”
“Us.” I gesture between us, at the domesticity we’ve built, at the fantasy we’ve been living. “You’re city. I’m wilderness. When you leave—”
“What if I don’t want to leave?” She sets the book down carefully, and there’s steel in her voice now. “What if I want to stay?”
“You will want to leave.” I can feel the panic building in my chest, the old familiar fear of attachment, of loss, of caring about something only to have it ripped away. “This is novelty. An adventure. A story you’ll tell your friends back in New York about the time you got lost in the mountains and shacked up with a wilderness hermit. But real life will call, Sloane. Your career, your partnership review, your actual life—it’s all waiting for you back there.”
“You’re my real life now.” She stands, moving toward me, and I have to force myself not to retreat. “These past two weeks have been more real than anything I’ve experienced in the last ten years.”
“For now.” The words taste bitter in my mouth. “For now, when it’s still new and exciting and different. But give it a few months of no running water, of hauling snow to melt for drinking, of being trapped indoors for weeks at a time during the winter. Give it a year of isolation, of no coffee shops or restaurants or theaters or any of the things you’re used to. How long before you start to resent me for keeping you here? How long before this stops being an adventure and starts being a prison?”
“You’re not listening to me—”
“I’m protecting you!” The words explode out of me, louder than I intend, and I see her flinch. “I’m protecting both of us from making a mistake that will destroy you and break me.”
“How is wanting to be together a mistake?” There are tears in her eyes now, and each one feels like a knife to my chest. “How is choosing each other a mistake?”
“Because I know how this ends.” I turn away from her because I can’t look at her face, can’t see the pain I’m causing. “I’ve seen it before, Sloane. My ex—she tried. She moved up here with me after I got out of the service, thought she could handle the isolation, thought love would be enough. It lasted six months before she couldn’t take it anymore. Six months before the loneliness and the boredom and the sheer difficulty of this life drove her away.”
“I’m not her—”
“I know you’re not.” I spin back to face her. “You’re stronger, more stubborn, more capable. But that doesn’t change the fundamental incompatibility of who we are and where we belong. You belong in the city, in civilization, using your brilliant mind to argue cases and change lives. And I belong here, in the mountains, where I can breathe without panic attacks, where the PTSD doesn’t feel like it’s going to kill me.”
“What if we could find a compromise?” Her voice is desperate now. “What if I moved to Montana but not to the cabin? Got a place in town, worked as a lawyer there—”
“And visited me on weekends?” I shake my head. “That’s not a life, Sloane. That’s prolonging the inevitable. Eventually you’d get tired of the distance, of the difficulty, of having a boyfriend who can’t even go to a grocery store without potentially having a breakdown.”
“Don’t tell me what I’ll get tired of!” She’s angry now, and I prefer that to the hurt. Anger I can handle. “Don’t decide for me what I can or can’t handle! That’s my choice to make, not yours!”
“Is it?” I meet her gaze, and I’m being cruel now, deliberately cruel, because maybe if I hurt her enough she’ll leave on her own and I won’t have to watch her walk away. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re making this decision based on two weeks of playing house in a wilderness cabin. You don’t know what this life is actually like. You don’t know what it means to be with someone like me long-term.”
“Then let me find out!” She’s crying openly now. “Let me make that choice! Let me decide if this is what I want instead of making the decision for me!”
“I can’t.” The words come out quieter now, more broken. “I can’t watch you slowly come to resent me. Can’t watch this—” I gesture to the cabin, to us, to everything we’ve built “—turn into something you hate. I’d rather have the memory of these two perfect weeks than watch them sour into years of regret and bitterness.”
She stares at me, and I can see the exact moment she understands what I’m really saying—that I’m too scared to try, too damaged to believe that this could work, too broken to take the risk.
“You’re a coward,” she whispers, and the words land like a physical blow. “You survived four tours in Afghanistan, survived losing your entire unit, survived building a life from nothing in these mountains. But you’re too afraid to risk your heart on the possibility that maybe—just maybe—we could make this work.”
“Maybe I am a coward.” I force myself to hold her gaze even though it’s killing me. “But at least I’m a realistic coward. At least I’m facing the truth instead of living in a fantasy.”
“The truth?” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “The truth is that you’re pushing me away because you’re terrified of being happy. Terrified that if you let yourself have this, it’ll be taken away like everything else you’ve ever cared about. So you’re self-destructing before I even have a chance to prove you wrong.”
She’s right.
God, she’s absolutely right, and we both know it.
But knowing something and being able to fix it are two very different things.
“The rescue helicopter will be here soon,” I say instead of acknowledging her truth. “Probably tomorrow or the day after. You should… you should start preparing. Mentally. Emotionally. For going back.”
“And what about us?” Her voice breaks. “What about what we’ve built here?”
“We knew it was temporary from the start.” I’m retreating behind walls now, putting distance between us even though we’re standing just feet apart. “We agreed—physical only, ends when the blizzard ends. The blizzard’s over, Sloane.”
“That was before—”
“Before what? Before we fell in love?” The words come out harsh, angry, and I see her flinch. “We were stupid to let it happen. Stupid to think this could be anything other than what it was always going to be—a brief moment of connection before we go back to our separate worlds.”
“Jackson—”
“I think you should sleep in your own bed tonight,” I say, cutting her off. “Start getting used to sleeping alone again. Make the transition easier.”
She stares at me for a long moment, tears streaming down her face, and I have to clench my fists to keep from reaching for her, from taking it all back, from begging her to forgive me for being exactly as broken as she just accused me of being.
“Fine,” she says finally, her voice cold. “If that’s what you want.”
It’s not what I want. It’s the opposite of what I want. What I want is to pull her into my arms and promise her that we’ll figure it out, that love is enough, that we can make this work no matter what obstacles stand in our way.
But I’m too scared.
Too damaged.
Too convinced that hoping for a future together will only lead to more pain when reality inevitably tears us apart.
So I watch her walk to her old bed—the one she hasn’t slept in since that first night we made love—and I stay in my chair by the fire, and the distance between us feels like miles instead of feet.
Bear whines, looking between us with confusion in his yellow eyes, clearly not understanding why his pack is fragmenting.
“I know, buddy,” I mutter. “I don’t understand it either.”
That night, I don’t sleep.
I sit in my chair and stare at the fire and listen to Sloane crying quietly in her bed, and I hate myself more with each muffled sob.
But I don’t go to her.
Don’t take it back.
Don’t tell her the truth—that I’m falling apart without her already, that the thought of her leaving is tearing me up inside, that I’d give anything to have the courage to ask her to stay.
Instead, I just sit there in the darkness and destroy the best thing that’s ever happened to me because I’m too afraid to believe it could last.
Because I’m exactly the coward she called me.
And I have no idea how to be anything else.
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