We shouldn’t have been here on these rocks at twilight. I knew that. And I knew that the rage rising within me was out of my control. It would choke out all the remaining light. I was rotten, I was wretched, I was bad. How stupid to think I could ever be good.

I thought Lee loved me, but he didn’t. I thought I was worthy of his love, but I had to turn from him and go.

So I didn’t let him say anything else. Instead I ran back up the rocks, the ocean loud behind me, the tide creeping ever higher. I expected Lee to catch me because he was such a fast runner, so I pushed myself to outrun him for his own sake. I was not to be trusted. I was a danger to him. I was a fourteen-year-old with a grievance and dry brush and a flame—the same girl I was then—falling for the same tricks.

But when I reached the top of the bluff, he still hadn’t caught up to me.

I didn’t hear his footsteps in the distance.

I stopped.

Still no footsteps behind me. And then I thought of how Lee had tried to run at first but hadn’t. How he had been standing strangely and so very still.

I turned and looked to where the bluff met the sky. I made my way to the edge. There he was, in the same place, the water up to his knees now, even when the waves were out. He was bent over, struggling.

He was stuck.

And that night at the skeleton house came back to me, once again. The flames creeping closer as I stood in the doorway. The choice that I made. For a horrifying moment atop the bluff, Lee wasn’t Lee to me at all. He was just another person who had tricked me on purpose, another person who’d hurt me. And I could make the same choice a second time and be rid of him, too.

But in the split second that I thought of leaving him there, a cry rose up from inside of me. I had made Lee a promise never to leave him. I had told him I’d protect him, whatever the cost. And, more than any of that, I loved him.

I moved as fast as I could back down the bluff. I almost flew. And then we were face-to-face again, the water up to Lee’s waist now, and he was saying, “Help me. My foot.”