“This is your fault, isn’t it?” he accuses. “You stole her from me! Well, we’ll see who gets to have her now.”

Damien lunges toward me, a chunk of the dirt beneath my feet falling away as I recoil, and I gasp, seizing a nearby tree trunk to keep myself from tumbling downward. But before Damien can touch me, Mason springs forward, shoving the other boy with great force.

Terror in his eyes, Damien yells, his arms flailing, before he disappears from view, catapulting to the forest floor far below.

23 | Finale

Everything, all at once.

I black out for what feels like an eternity but must really only be a handful of seconds. For a brief, blinding moment, I’m transported out of the forest and into the deepest of recesses in my brain, revealing my previously unrecoverable memory bank. And, like the persistent rushing of a waterfall, my memories wash over me, hitting me square in the chest and making it hard to breathe. It feels like a remarkable phenomenon, but at the same time, it feels unceremonious.

I remember everything.

Growing up with Audrey, fighting over trivial things like dolls and candy when we were little and then things like boys and clothes when we were older. I remember laughing with her, sharing secrets in the latest hours of the night. I remember drifting apart as we grew older, our conversations quickly dissolving into screaming matches as all of us fumbled through our unresolved problems and abandonment issues.

I remember my dad.

The way he was always the parent I was closest to, how he was my confidant and best friend. Until he betrayed us all in the worst way, choosing a younger woman over the three of us, packing up and disappearing out of our lives without so much as a good-bye. And I remember how my heart still breaks every year on my birthday when all I receive from him is radio silence.

Images come flooding back, as if I’m recalling them one by one, and I remember bursts of different life stages: My drunken kiss with Parker in the middle of the night, the pounding bassline of a distant party as our soundtrack. The night I ended up falling into bed with Damien and being unable to rid myself of him for the next two years. My camaraderie with James. My curiosity about Mason, the mysterious figure from my childhood who’s always had my heart. My ever-growing and dangerous feud with Zoe.

Then there are the more haunting memories. The horrible night of the accident returns to me in flashes I’d rather not dwell on, bearing striking similarities to my current circumstances.