“Don’t do anything stupid out of some fucked-up sense of loyalty. You don’t owe her anything. You don’t owe anything to anyone but yourself.” They were wrong, they didn’t know. Some debts you can never repay. Some things you can spend your whole life making up for and it still won’t be enough.

“And don’t trust whatever the police say. Don’t lie, but don’t give them anything they can use against you later, and you don’t know what that could be, so stick to short yes and no answers,” my dad finished.

Maybe they’d watched too many police dramas, but my parents were relentless. They drove fear deep into my heart. Glancing at them now, I can see that they’re terrified too.

And as much as I hate them, part of me knows I’m lucky to have people who worry about me, people who want to protect me.

But Elise is alone. And probably even more terrified. She doesn’t have anyone to warn her about these things, to tell her what to do. To protect her.

She has no one.

Only me.

You don’t owe her anything. But don’t I?

It’d always been just the two of us from the moment we met. The night Elise collided into my life was the night the world burst ablaze with color. Cameron and all the boys before him were just distractions, someone to make me forget about my parents, my life. An escape.

No one else could ever compare. With Elise, I didn’t need to forget. With Elise, I didn’t have to hide my wounds, because she had them too. Because we both needed love and discovered we could give it to each other. Together we reinvented our pasts and were reborn soulmates. Complete, whole.

Elise takes the terrible things I’ve done, takes the ugliest parts of me, and loves me anyway. She always forgives me, no matter what.

I don’t know if I deserve it.

• • •

My name is Remy.

I am seventeen years old.

This won’t last forever.

It feels like I’m crumbling from the inside out, but I have to be strong, I have to hang on.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Elise and I, we believed that, breathed it, lived by it. And I still believe—I have to believe—because there has to be meaning to all this pain and suffering.

There has to be a reason. There has to be.

“Remy?” Vera says, jolting me out of my thoughts, alarm in her voice.

Immediately, everyone’s eyes are on me.

“What?” Then I feel it and touch a hand to my cheeks, pulling back to see my mother’s foundation mixed with tears.

“Let’s—” She looks from me to my family, hovering over me like hawks. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Outside, I dry my face and try to breathe. We’re standing behind the station but I’m still skittish, afraid of what’s waiting for me just around the corner.

“What’s going to happen?” I ask. “To me, to Elise.” To us.