Levi, a voice in my head reminds me. Levi’s the one you want. Even if you’re angry at him. Even if the two of you can never be…

“I can’t,” I whisper to Ollie, wrenching my hands from his and reacting with the force of a freight train barreling into me. “I’m sorry.” I take one last look at his familiar face before turning in the grass and running, away from him, away from everything that just happened. And everything he said.

I gun it back to main campus, my mind whirling, my heart thumping against my rib cage. I remind myself I’m not that carefree girl who could see myself with him. Loving Ollie, the way he should be loved. I can’t be that girl. I’ll never be that girl.

I feel like I’ve cut off my own right arm. If Ollie’s hurting right now, if he’s angry, and if he feels betrayed…it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have let him kiss me again. I should have pulled away. I should have been clear with him, that we can’t be an us. That he deserves someone who isn’t in love with someone else. That he deserves someone without so many secrets and fears and demons.

On the two-hour car ride to the Burlington airport, the kiss plays on a loop in my mind, driving me close to madness. Desperate to banish from my head the image of Ollie’s stricken face as I left him standing there on the shore, I concentrate on what I’ll say to my father when I see him. How will I react? Will I cry? Will I be numb, like I feel now?

I work on my college applications the entire flight home, trying to be productive for eight hours instead of obsessing about Ollie, and about my looming confrontation with my father. Because that’s what it will be, isn’t it? There’s no having this conversation in a casual way.

Finally at my house, I let myself in the front door and make sure the security alarm’s not on.

“Genevieve?” I prompt our household bot. “I’m home.”

“In here, Emma,” a voice calls out from the kitchen. I park my rolling suitcase in the foyer and steel myself for what I’m about to do. My dad’s home. This is going to happen now. It has to. There will be no more putting it off.

I step inside our light-filled kitchen. Even close to twilight, the sun streams in through our floor-to-ceiling windows. My dad’s at the kitchen island, typing away on a tablet. Work, I’m sure. He finally looks up.