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A single sob escapes and I try, again, to somehow get closer. But the closer I get, the farther she goes, and I know… I know she’s out of my grasp. She wipes at her tears with the back of her hand, her chin lifting, her eyes on mine: a show of strength while I’m drowning in weakness. “Remember that time in your truck, when you told me that you did everything for me?”
I nod, wait.
She swallows. “I got into Duke, Connor.”
I whisper a “What?” because it’s the only thing that forms in my mind.
“There’s a residential treatment facility near there that has a program for people in our situation, but there’s a waitlist, and I was doing everything I could to get my mom there. Miss Turner was helping, too. We’d been writing and calling and pleading our case, and I… I just needed time.” More tears flow, and this time, she lets them free. “I kept telling myself that if I could just wait, then everything would fall into place. But I can’t wait anymore, Connor. Because she’s getting worse, and so am I. I’m falling apart, and I can’t…” She breaks off on a sob, her hands covering her face, and there’s an intolerable ache in my chest that won’t fucking quit.
“Ava…” I breathe out.
“I did it all for you, too, Connor.” She sniffs once. “I should’ve left a long time ago, but I just thought… if I could get through this…” She inhales deeply, her eyes back on mine. “But maybe it’s for the best, you know? Maybe following you to Duke wasn’t what you wanted, and—”
“Ava, please. Just give me two minutes to explain everything and—”
“There’s a place in Texas that can take her right away,” she interrupts again. She’s made up her mind, and nothing I say or do can fix things. “I’m going to move in with Peter until I can find my own place.”
My eyes drift shut as the world around me closes in, and the fragments and happiness of a life I once pictured begin to crumble around me.
“I wasn’t going to tell you I was leaving at all,” she says, “but that wouldn’t have been fair to us. And I just came here to say goodbye, and to thank you for loving me, even if—”
Peter honks his horn. “Ava, we have to go!”
She glances at the car and then back at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t enough, Connor.”
I’m experiencing it all over again. The moments right before my first death. My body starts to shut down.
To give in.
Give up.
Until I’m drowning in nothing but anguish and despair.
She’s at the car now, opening the door, but it’s too little, too late. She closes the door on us, and I slam my palm against the window, again and again. “Please, Ava! Don’t leave!” I kick at the fucking car when Peter revs the engine. “Please.”
I see her mouth move, see her say a single word that puts the final dagger in my heart: “Go.” I watch the car take off, follow it through the night until the lights disappear, and then I run into my house, my heart racing. I grab my phone, dial her number. It doesn’t even ring. The automated voice tells me the call can’t be connected.
“Two fucking minutes!” I grind out. I just need two fucking minutes to explain everything. My legs take me, as if on their own, down the same path I’ve taken hundreds of times before. I slam my palm on her front door. “Trevor!”
He opens the door, and I’m ready to fight him. To beg him to call her. But the tears in his eyes show the same devastation that’s coursing through my bloodline. “She needed to do this, Connor,” he says, his voice cracking. “She needed to do this for her. And if you love her… you have to let her go.”
There’d be no happy ending to our story, she once told me. There’d be an intense beginning, a shaky middle, and then heartache.
This is the heartache.
This is The End.
THIRTY-NINE
connor
I watch the night sky outside my window turn to dawn, turn to day. The sun rises, just like it does every day. But today isn’t like every other day. There’s no warmth that comes with it, no light, nothing. Nothing but a reminder of every new day I’ll have to live without the person I planned on spending forever with.
Dad comes home, and I don’t get up from my place on my bedroom floor. I lean against my bed, stare at the wall opposite. There’s a patch of paint a lighter color than the rest of the room from when I put my fist through it the first time she left me. Punching the wall didn’t take away the pain then, and it sure as hell won’t now.
Dad knocks, and I don’t respond, knowing he’s going to open the door anyway. I hear the knob turn and the door open, and then Dad’s quiet gasp. He’ll know—without me having to say a word—that something’s wrong… something’s changed. “Connor, what happened? Is Ava—her mom—”
“They’re gone.”
