Beverly in the car, storming off, too stubborn to let me explain. Beverly standing in her pink-stained shirt, scowling at me as if she wanted to kill me, unaware that all I wanted to do was pull her close, bury my face against her neck, and tell her she could have every single shirt I owned if it meant she’d keep looking at me. Beverly slipping her fingers through mine that night at the police station, holding me as if I were something steady when I couldn’t even breathe right.

She became the echo in every empty room. The unfinished sentence at the edge of my tongue. The words I never spoke, always caught between thought and breath. She was in the tremble of my hands before I touched someone else, in the way my body still turned toward a warmth that was no longer there.

She was never just a memory—she was muscle memory, imprinted into me like a reflex I never learned to unlearn.

She was everywhere. In everything. In the stupid song that had been playing in Sydney’s car that night. In the damn pink shirt I’d shoved into the laundry on purpose—because I knew she’d come storming into my room when she found it ruined, scolding me as if I’d set her entire wardrobe on fire.

I hadn’t done it to mess with her.

I’d done it because I wanted to see her. Because I couldn’t take the space between us anymore—the way she kept slipping further and further away, like I was losing her in slow motion. And if starting some stupid fight was the only way to pull her back to me, then fine. I’d take that. I’d take her pissed off, shouting in my doorway, over this unbearable distance any day.

But I hadn’t fixed anything.

I hadn’t closed the gap.

I’d just messed everything up again.

And now, all I could see was her walking away as if she had made up her mind. Her face had twisted with something that looked too much like disappointment, as if she’d finally stopped waiting for me to be something I couldn’t.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Enough of this.

Enough waiting. Enough running. Enough pretending.

Enough pushing her away and watching her walk off like she wasn’t taking pieces of me with her. Enough of letting someone else take up space beside her, of pretending I didn’t see the way she still looked at me as if I had broken something inside her.

I was done being a coward.

I was done losing her.

I was going to make her mine again.

42

BEVERLY, 1999

17 years old

Because I was too busy loving you.

No. No, no, no, no.

I couldn’t get away fast enough.