Try as I might, I can’t seem to feel sorry for the things that happened between Micah and me that night or any of the moments before or since. Every second is dear to me. Full disclosure, I meant what I said to Vada. I absolutely felt like dirt after James talked to me. But that feeling is fading. My knee-jerk conditioned response is slower to come the more I think about it. Mrs. Sanderson probably wouldn’t approve of a lot of what I’ve been up to since I moved here. My tattoo, my language, my sporadic church attendance, my friendship with the irreverent Duke, my tiptoeing into underage drinking, my two-piece bathing suit, my gay stepdad. My unmarried biological parents. My teen mother. My worship-team-leader-of-a-dad who died in a drunk-driving accident.

The list goes on and on, and a girl could drown under all her transgressions when you lay them all out like that.

The rink is mostly empty since classes ended for the night. Which finds me gliding slowly in circle after circle on the ice, my earbuds in and my brain busy. The chill of the rink air frosts my cheeks, but the rest of me is burning in exertion and warmth as I cross ankle over ankle. The rhythm soothes all my aching pieces.

Vada left me with a playlist, and I’ve been testing out the music on the ice. Twenty One Pilots’ “Addict with a Pen” comes on, and my eyes slip closed. Sometimes it’s the songs about faith that aren’t written explicitly for believers that can be the most meaningful—the most deep-down, gut-felt. There’s a time for worship and a time for wondering. I can’t help feeling like it’s a lie to pretend otherwise.

I spread my arms wide, spinning myself backward and letting my broken heart lead me. The singer speaks of his pain, his desperation for water in the desert—his need for someone to fill his brittle, gaping inequities and coming up empty. Except I don’t feel empty. I feel patched up. Refined. In Ann Arbor, I was this fragile Fabergé egg. My faith was pretty, but untested. And once it was tested, it shattered into a million little pieces that felt impossible to put back together.

Meeting Micah has glued my pieces back together. Betty and James and Duke and Dani. Micah’s dad, even. I’m not the same girl I was, and I’m not sure the woman I am now is the kind who apologizes for something she didn’t do.

A warm hand reaches for my arm, and I startle, my eyes shooting open. Micah’s deep brown eyes watch me, and it takes me a second to realize he’s skating alongside me and keeping up as if he were born for the ice.

Because of course he is.