Page 16 of Never Too Late

“Dylan, please,” I whimpered.

“Go, Sophie.” He didn’t even look at me. He was already halfway turned away, prepared to leave me.

“I’ll stay, I’ll do whatever you want,” I said through frozen lips. “But, please, don’t do this.”

“That’s the point, Sophie.” He stepped into me, bringing his face close to mine. His face was a mask of fury. He terrified me at that moment, and I didn’t get what brought this demeanor out. He was never like this. He gritted his teeth and snarled the words, “I don’t want you to settle. It will destroy you. Destroy us.”

“It won’t,” I yelled, grabbing his hand. I knew where this was coming from. It was just mere days after we put his mom into the ground. His beautiful mom who was full of life. Until his dad was gone. And then it was just as the lights were turned off. There was nothing left inside her. She was only a shell. Only an organism which had no other choice but to exist until she could be with her love again. No matter how much we tried, the hours we spent trying to bring her back, the therapy she got, it was over. Grief took her in its clutches, and there was no coming back. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be with her husband. Sadly, she found a way.

“It will, you know it will,” he repeated.

“Please,” I whispered, urging him to see reason and realize what he’s doing and why. “I’ll do whatever you need.”

“I need you to leave. Leave this town and never come back.”

He turned and stepped away, my hand falling from the tips of his fingers as he walked out of my reach. “You don’t belong here, not anymore,” he muttered as he walked away out of my life.

I thought I knew pain.

I once thought I would die from it.

I was wrong.

I walked unseeing where I was going. Each breath piercing my chest more, it was almost as someone was stabbing me over and over again.

My tears dripped hot from my chin, wetting my neck.

When hurt became unbearable and I was at the point of crumbling to the ground, I threw a hand and touched stone.

I blinked to clear the tears away and focused on where I was.

The well.

“God,” I moaned as my knees hit the ground. My forehead touched the smooth stone of it. “Dylan,” I whispered and closed my eyes.

I have never, ever felt a loss like this. And I was the girl who lost her parents at a young age.

It was as if someone was ripping half of my soul away from me.

I have no idea if it was out of pure desperation or what, but in that moment, I remembered the old tale about the well and its magic.

It wasn’t an unusual sight to see a young girl circling the well and mumbling to herself, her hands touching the stone and sporadically looking up at the moon, as if she was waiting for an answer from the bright shining moon. And in mere moments, as the tale goes, she would get the answer to her wish. A wish whispered into the well’s depths.

It was so popular that girls all over Colorado came to this very spot to make their wishes come true.

I always thought that was ridiculous. And on some level pitied those girls.

But karma was a bitch.

Because now the tables have turned.

With nothing else left to lose. When he took a step away from me, he took everything from me. I gripped the cold edge of the stone and hefted myself up.

And I begged.

“Please, please.” I watched as one of my tears slid down the smooth stone into darkness. “Please, make him come back.”

After a few minutes, nothing happened. My whole body sagged and I closed my eyes, fresh tears leaving a hot trail on my cold face. I slid down and in the end lying on the cold ground. My fingers touched the well and I chanted, “Please, please, please…”