Page 22 of My Fallen Saint

I can do that.

Absolutely, I can.

I’m breathing hard but I’m feeling more settled when I reach the crest of the hill. I turn the corner and walk the half-block to Brandy’s house. It’s a dark neighborhood. Quiet, with only a few streetlights and houses that sit back from the road.

As I reach her driveway, a light flickers on across the street, catching my attention. It’s the glow from someone looking at their phone inside a parked black Tesla.

Instantly, my resolve shatters. Alex isn’t just a source or a story, and no matter how much I try to spin that, he never will be. Hell, my heart is skittering, and I don’t even know if it’s him in that car. And though I try to make out the occupant, it’s no use, the light’s gone, and the street’s too dark.

Still, I’m certain it’s him, and a tiny spark of something suspiciously like hope sputters in my belly. I tamp it down. For one thing, I’m not sure what I’m hoping for. That he cares enough to see I get home safe? That he doesn’t really want me to go back to New York? Something else entirely?

All I know is that I spent ten years walking a tightrope of anger and hurt mixed with fear that he was dead—because who in my life wasn’t?—topped by fantasies that he’d return to me with a perfect explanation. Alien abduction or amnesia both ranked high on my fantasy list.

Mostly, I tried not to hate myself. Tried not to spend every single day remembering that I was the only living member of the Holmes family. That I’d survived and they hadn’t.

Tried not to believe that the cosmos was punishing me, and that’s why Alex had gone.

I know that’s not true. I know it’s survivor’s guilt doing the talking. But knowing’s nothing special. I know that E=mc2, but I still don’t have a clue what that means. And, honestly, I don’t know what it means that I’m the only one left, either.

So, no. That’s probably not Alex. God knows this town is dirty with black Teslas. But I’m not going to walk over there to look.

Because so long as I don’t know, the lonely, teenage girl inside of me can still believe.