Chapter 1

For months, Ethan’s father, Robert, and his stepmother, Debra, had obsessed over every detail of their first ski vacation as a blended family, poring over brochures of snow-capped mountains and rental cabins, booking lift tickets and comparing prices until they finally secured a secluded A-frame nestled in the pines, and marking the calendar with a bold red circle around their departure date.

His father had met his new stepmother on a dating website almost three years ago, and they were married shortly after. Debra’s daughter, Katie, was a permanent fixture in the new family arrangement, strikingly beautiful with blond hair and a perfect body, whose revealing outfits seemed calculated to make her mother wince and Ethan’s dad squirm.

At home, Ethan maintained a careful distance from Katie. When their paths crossed, they were civil enough to prevent parental intervention but never close enough to form anything resembling actual siblinghood. However, four hours crammed in the backseat of Robert’s leased SUV, with Katie’s perfume atomized over the stale funk of the rental and his own unwashed hoodie, forced an intimacy he didn’t want.

As usual, Katie was wearing tight athletic leggings that hugged her hips and thighs, paired with a white ribbed tank that was snug across her chest, the fabric doing nothing to conceal the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra, her nipples pressing against the cotton in two distinct points. She was scrolling through her phone, earbuds in, drum-and-bass so loud she might as well have not been wearing them, pointedly ignoring Ethan. Every time he glanced over, he could sense her half-secret satisfaction, the way she’d meet his gaze once in a while and then slightly sneer, as if to say, “Don’t look at me, loser.”

Ethan sank deeper into his seat and forced his attention to the window, where snow accumulated on pine boughs until they sagged with white weight. His mind wandered to their soon-to-be-shared cabin, to having to be cooped up in close quarters for days, to Debra’s strained attempts at family bonding activities and his father’s insistence that they all participate, to the knowledge that tonight, once they all went to bed, Katie would masturbate. He knew it would happen. Their bedrooms at home shared a thin wall, through which he would hear her late at night, insistent, a muffled tension mounting and then releasing, sometimes eliciting a tiny gasp or a low moan, and he always felt a twinge of guilt at perving on his stepsister. He shifted his position, knees pressing together, a tingling blooming in his crotch. God, he needed to think about something else, anything else.

The road twisted hard, switchbacks steeper and tighter. Katie looked up from her phone and yawned, arms overhead, arching her back until her half-shirt hiked, revealing the bottom curve of her breasts. She caught his reaction, a wicked little crescent smile forming on her lips. Ethan pretended he hadn’t seen, glared out at the frozen landscape, but he felt the flush at the back of his neck and knew she’d noticed. She always noticed.

The cabin came into view, its peaked roof and dark wood siding stark against the blinding white of the mountainside. The SUV’s tires crunched through the fresh snow as they rolled to a stop.

After they hauled bags inside, Debra’s designer luggage, Katie’s overstuffed pink suitcase, his father’s ancient ski equipment, the family fractured into their separate orbits: Debra immediately disappeared into the kitchen, unpacking groceries and muttering about meal planning; Katie looking around the living space, wrinkling her nose at the mounted deer head with one antler missing, the water-stained pine paneling, and the bearskin rug sprawled on the floor in front of the fireplace, its massive head still attached with glass eyes and a mouth frozen in a permanent snarl revealing yellowed fangs; his father launching into a self-important tutorial about “fireplace safety” while tossing in logs and fumbling with the iron dampers.

Ethan lingered in the entryway, snowmelt seeping from his boots, forming slushy puddles on the worn pine. The interior of the cabin was nothing like the brochure. Rather than noble woodsmoke and chalet sophistication, everything smelled like musty dog and old coffee. The mismatched furniture was threadbare, and the only artwork was a yellowed print of wolves howling at the moon. He took a second to remove his snow-crusted boots before grabbing his duffel and camera bag and making his way to the tiny bedroom he’d be sharing with Katie for the next three nights, two twin beds, two cheap comforters, the whole place dusted with the smell of unwashed fabric.

Katie came in right behind and pushed past him, flinging her suitcase onto the left twin bed, the one without the suspicious stain on the comforter. “Mine,” she announced, not bothering to look at him for confirmation. She unzipped her bag and started unpacking directly onto the mattress, tossing tiny thong panties and bralettes onto the threadbare quilt. Ethan tried to look anywhere else, but the movement kept snagging his focus. The last item she removed before sliding her luggage under the bed was a vibrator, which she casually plopped on the nightstand located between the two beds, as if it were a tube of toothpaste. It was bright purple and ribbed and, when set down, rendered the room immediately smaller.

“Seriously?” Ethan said, gazing at the thing, then at her.

She grinned, unfazed, then kicked off her Uggs. “What?” she said, voice syrupy with innocence. “Grow up, Ethan. It’s just a vibrator, geez.”

Ethan muttered something under his breath as he unzipped his own bag and unpacked. He stacked his t-shirts and jeans into one of the splintered dresser drawers and realized he’d forgotten to bring pajamas. He jumped when Katie let out a high-pitched yelp. “No fucking way,” she cursed, her fingers frantically swiping and tapping at her iPhone screen. “Zero bars. Zero! And this shithole doesn’t even have wi-fi.” She stomped toward the door in her fuzzy socks, the floorboards creaking beneath each step as she stormed out to find her mother.

Ethan waited until he was sure she was gone before he let out his breath, staring over at the vibrator. She’d done it to fuck with him, to shake whatever equilibrium he’d built up since the last time she’d humiliated him. Memories of last summer flashed into his mind; Katie and her friend, Jill, sunbathing in the backyard wearing tiny bikinis. She asked him to bring her a towel, then yanked down his trunks when he handed it to her. His half-hard penis exposed to their laughter and taunting before he could cover himself. Fucking bitch.

He piled the remainder of his clothes into the dresser and jammed the drawer shut. He could hear Katie yammering to her mother, “What am I even supposed to do? I literally cannot use my phone,” and Debra’s response about being “unplugged” and “family time.” Ethan sighed, dreading going back into the living area and having to deal with Katie’s bitchiness and Debra’s attempts at warm-and-fuzzy “memories in the making.” He braced himself and left the bedroom, hands jammed into hoodie pockets, trying for an air of unobtrusive invisibility.