MILES
Six years earlier
Lisa loves Clayton.
My dad loves Clayton.
Clayton fixes families.
He's already my hero, and he's only two days old.
Shortly after my dad and Lisa leave, Ian arrives. He says he doesn't want to hold Clayton, but Rachel makes him. He's uncomfortable, because he's never held a baby before, but he holds him.
"Thank God he looks like Rachel," Ian says.
I agree with him.
Ian asks Rachel if I ever told her what I said to him after I met her.
I don't know what he's talking about.
Ian laughs.
"After he walked you to class that first day, he took a picture of you from his seat," Ian tells her. "He texted it to me and said, 'She's gonna have all my babies.' "
Rachel looks at me.
I shrug.
I'm embarrassed.
Rachel loves that I said that to Ian. I love that Ian told her that.
The doctor comes in and tells us we can go home now. Ian helps me take everything to the car and pull it up to the exit.
Before I go back to Rachel's room, Ian touches my shoulder. I turn around and face him.
I get the feeling he wants to tell me congratulations, but instead, he just hugs me.
It's awkward, but it's not. I like that he's proud of me.
It makes me feel good. Like I'm doing this right.
Ian leaves.
So do we.
Me and Rachel and Clayton.
My family.
I want Rachel in the front seat with me, but I love that she's riding in the back with him. I love how much she loves him. I love that I'm attracted to her even more now that she's a mom.
I want to kiss her. I want to tell her I love her again, but I think I tell her way too much. I don't ever want her to get tired of hearing it.
"Thank you for this baby," she says from the backseat. "He's beautiful."
I laugh. "You're responsible for the beautiful part, Rachel. The only thing he got from me was his balls."
She laughs. She laughs hard. "Oh, my God, I know," she says.
"They're so big."
We both laugh at our son's big balls.
She sighs.
"Rest," I tell her. "You haven't slept in two days."
I see her smile in the rearview mirror. "But I can't stop staring at him," she whispers.
I can't stop staring at you, Rachel.
But I do stop, because the oncoming traffic is brighter than it should be.
My hands grip the steering wheel.
Too bright.
I've always heard your life flashes before your eyes in the moments before you die.
In a sense, that's true.
However, it doesn't come at you in sequence or even in random order.
It's just one picture that
STICKS
in your head and becomes everything you feel and everything
you see.
It's not your actual life that flashes before your eyes.
What flashes before your eyes are the people who are your life.
Rachel and Clayton.
All I see is the two of them--my whole life--flash before my eyes.
The sound becomes everything.
Everything.
Inside me, outside me, through me, under me, over me.
RACHEL, RACHEL, RACHEL.
I can't find her.
CLAYTON, CLAYTON, CLAYTON.
I'm wet. It's cold. My head hurts. My arms hurt.
I can't see her, I can't see her, I can't see her, I can't see him.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
DEAFENING SILENCE.
"Miles!"
I open my eyes.
It's wet, it's wet, there's water, it's wet.
Water is in the car.
I unbuckle my seat belt and turn around. Her hands are on his car seat. "Miles, help me! It's stuck!"
I try.
I try again.
But she needs to get out, too.
She needs to get out, too.
I kick my window and break the glass. I saw it in a movie once.
Make sure there's a way out before there's too much pressure on the
windows.
"Rachel, get out! I've got him!"
She tells me no. She won't stop trying to get him out.
I'll get him, Rachel.
She can't get out. Her seat belt is stuck. It's too tight.
I let go of the car seat and reach for her seat belt. My hands are underwater when I find it.
She slaps at my arms and attempts to push me away from her.
"Get him first!" she screams. "Get him out first!"
I can't.
They're both stuck.
You're stuck, Rachel.
Oh, God.
I'm scared.
Rachel is scared.
The water is everywhere. I can't see him anymore.
I can't see her.
I can't hear him.
I reach for her seat belt again.
I get it off her.
I grab her hands. Her window isn't broken.
Mine is.
I pull her forward. She's fighting me.
She's fighting me.
She stops fighting me.
Fight me, Rachel.
Fight me.
Move.
Someone is reaching in through my window.
"Give me her hand!" I hear him yell.
The water is coming in through my window now.
The entire backseat is water.
Everything is water.
I give him Rachel's hand. He helps me get her out.
Everything is water.
I try to find him.
I can't breathe.
I try to find him.
I can't breathe.
I try to save him.
I want to be his hero.
I can't breathe.
So I just stop.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
DEAFENING SCREAM.
I cover my ears with my hands.
I cover my heart with armor.
I cough until I can breathe again.
I open my eyes. We're in a boat.
I look around. We're on a lake.
I bring my hand up to my jaw.
My hand is red.
Covered in blood as red as Rachel's hair.
Rachel.
I find Rachel.
Clayton.
I don't find Clayton.
I push up on my hands and move to the edge of the boat.
I need to find him.
Someone stops me. Someone pulls me back.
Someone won't let me.
Someone is telling me it's too late.
Someone tells me he's sorry.
Someone tells me we can't get to him.
Someone tells me we went over the bridge after the impact.
Someone tells me he's so sorry.
I move to Rachel, instead.
I try to hold her, but she won't let me. She's screaming.
Sobbing. CRYING. WAILING.
She hits me.
She kicks me.
She says I should have saved him instead.
But I tried to save you both, Rachel.
"You should have saved him, Miles!" she cries.
You should have saved him.
You should have saved him.
I should have saved HIM.
She's screaming.
Sobbing. CRYING. WAILING.
I hold her anyway.
I let her hit me.
I let her hate me.
Rachel hates me.
I hold her anyway.
Rachel cries, but she's quiet. She's cryin
g so hard her throat can't even make a sound. Her body is crying, but her voice is not.
Ruined.
Ruined.
RUINED.
I cry with her. I cry and I cry and I cry and I cry and we cry and we cry and we cry.
Ruined.
The water is everything now.
I look at Rachel. I only see water.
I close my eyes. I only see water.
I look up at the sky. I only see water.
It hurts so much. I never knew a heart could hold the weight of the entire world.
I don't make Rachel's life better anymore.
I ruined you, Rachel.
My family.
Me and you and Clayton.
RUINED.
You can't love me after this, Rachel.
chapter thirty-three
TATE
My hands are on him, rubbing his back, touching his hair. He's crying, and the only thing I can do is tell him never mind. I want to tell him to forget everything I said tonight. I want to do whatever I can to take this pain away from him, because whatever happened shouldn't matter. Whatever happened, no one deserves to feel the way he's feeling right now.
I move his arms from his face, then slide onto his lap. I hold his face in my hands and tilt it to mine. He keeps his eyes closed. "I don't have to know, Miles."
His arms wrap around my back, and he buries his face against my chest. His labored breaths come faster as he tries to push back his emotions. My arms are wrapped around his head, and I kiss his hair, then trail kisses down the side of his head until he pulls back and looks up at me.
No amount of armor in the world and no wall no matter how thick could hide the devastation in his eyes right now. It's so prominent, and there's so much of it, I have to hold my breath so I don't cry with him.
What happened to you, Miles?
"I don't have to know," I whisper again, shaking my head.
His hands move to the back of my head, and he presses his mouth to mine, hard and painfully. He moves forward until my back is against the floor. His hands pull at my shirt, and he's kissing me desperately, furiously, filling my mouth with the taste of his tears.
I let him use me to get rid of his pain.
I'll do whatever he wants me to do as long as he stops hurting like he's hurting.
He slips his hand beneath my skirt and begins to pull down my underwear at the same time as I hook my thumbs onto the hips of his jeans and push them down. My panties make it to my ankles, and I kick them off, just as he takes both my hands and pushes them above my head, pressing them to the floor.
He drops his forehead to mine but doesn't kiss me. He closes his eyes, but I keep mine open. He wastes no time pushing himself between my legs, spreading them wider. He moves his forehead to the side of my head, then slides into me slowly. When he's all the way inside me, he exhales, releasing some of his pain. Taking his mind away from whatever horror he just went through.
He pulls out, then thrusts inside me again, this time with all his strength.
It hurts.
Give me your pain, Miles.
"My God, Rachel," he whispers.
My God, Rachel . . .
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.
That word gets put on repeat inside my head.
My.
God.
Rachel.
I turn my head away from his. It's the worst pain I've ever felt. The absolute worst.
His body immediately stills inside mine when he realizes what he said. The only thing moving between us right now are the tears falling from my eyes.
"Tate," he whispers, shattering the silence between us. "Tate, I'm so sorry."
I shake my head, but the tears won't stop. Somewhere deep inside me, I feel something harden. Something that was once liquid completely freezes, and it's in this moment that I know this is it.
That name.
It said it all. I'll never have his past, because she has it.
I'll never have his future, because he refuses to give it to anyone who isn't her.
And I'll never know why, because he'll never tell me.
He begins to pull out of me, but I tighten my legs around his. He sighs heavily against my cheek. "I swear to God, Tate. I wasn't thinking about--"
"Stop," I whisper. I don't want to hear him defend what just happened. "Just finish, Miles."
He lifts his head and looks down at me. I see the apology, clear as day, hiding behind fresh tears. I don't know if it's my words that have just cut him again or the fact that we both know this is it, but it looks like his heart just broke again.
If that's even possible.
A tear falls from his eyes and lands on my cheek. I feel it roll down and combine with one of my own.
I just want this to be over.
I wrap my hand around the back of his head and pull his mouth to mine. He's not moving inside me anymore, so I arch my back, pressing my hips harder against him. He moans in my mouth and moves against me once, then stops again. "Tate," he says against my lips.
"Just finish, Miles," I say to him through my tears. "Just finish."
He places a palm against my cheek and he presses his lips to my ear. We're both crying harder now, and I can see that I'm more than this to him. I know I am. I feel how much he wants to love me, but whatever is stopping him is more than I'm able to conquer. I wrap my arms around his neck. "Please," I beg him. "Please, Miles." I'm crying, begging for something, but I don't even know what it is anymore.
He thrusts against me. Hard this time. So hard I scoot away from him, so he wraps his arms under my shoulders and cups his hands upward, holding me in place against him as he repeatedly pushes into me. Hard, long, deep thrusts that force moans out of both of us with every movement.
"Harder," I beg.
He pushes harder.
"Faster."
He moves faster.
We're both gasping for breath between our tears. It's intense. It's heartbreaking. It's devastating.
It's ugly.
It's over.
As soon as his body is motionless on top of mine, I push against his shoulders. He rolls off of me. I sit up and wipe my eyes with my hands, then stand up and pull on my underwear. His fingers wrap around my ankle. The same fingers that wrapped around the same ankle the first night I met him.
"Tate," he says, his voice riddled with everything. Every single emotion wraps itself around each letter of my name as it comes out of his mouth.
I pull away from his grasp.
I walk to the door, still feeling him inside me. Still tasting his mouth on mine. Still feeling the stains of his tears against my cheek.
I open the door and walk out.
I close the door behind me, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done.
I can't even walk the three feet back to my apartment.
I collapse in the hallway.
I'm liquid.
Nothing but tears.
chapter thirty-four
MILES
Six years earlier
We went home. Not to our home.
Rachel wanted Lisa. Rachel needs her mother.
I kind of need my father.
Every night I hold her. Every night I tell her I'm sorry. Every night we just cry.
I don't understand how it can be so perfect. How life and love and people can be so perfect and beautiful.
Then it's not. It's so ugly.
Life and love and people become ugly.
It all becomes water.
Tonight is different. This night is the first night in three weeks when she's not crying. I hold her anyway. I want to be happy that she's not crying, but it scares me. Her tears mean she feels something. Even if that something is devastation, it's still something. There aren't any tears tonight.
I hold her anyway. I tell her I'm sorry again.
She never tells me it's okay.
She never tells me it's not my fault.
She never tells me she forgives me.
&nbs
p; She does kiss me tonight, though. She kisses me and takes off her shirt. She tells me to make love to her. I tell her we shouldn't. I tell her we're supposed to wait two more weeks. She kisses me so I'll stop talking.
I kiss her back.
Rachel loves me again.
I think.
She's kissing me like she loves me.
I'm gentle with her.
I go slow.
She's touching my skin like she loves me.
I don't want to hurt her.
She cries.
Please don't cry, Rachel.
I stop.
She tells me not to stop.
She tells me to finish.
Finish.
I don't like that word.
Like this is a job.
I kiss her again.
I finish.
*
Miles,
Rachel wrote me a letter.
I'm sorry.
No.
I can't do this. It hurts too much.
No, no, no.
My mother is taking me back to Phoenix. We're both staying there. It's all too complicated, even between the two of them now. Your father already knows.
Clayton brings families together.
Miles rips them apart.
I tried to stay. I tried to love you. Every time I look at you, I see him. Everything is him. If I stay, everything will always be him. You know that. I know you understand that. I shouldn't blame you.
But you do.
I'm so sorry.
You stopped loving me with a letter, Rachel?
Love,
I feel it. All the ugly parts of it. It's in my pores. My veins. My memories. My future.
Rachel.
The difference between the ugly side of love and the beautiful side of love is that the beautiful side is much lighter. It makes you feel like you're floating. It lifts you up. Carries you.
The beautiful parts of love hold you above the rest of the world. They hold you so high above all the bad stuff, and you just look down on everything else and think, Wow. I'm so glad I'm up here.
Sometimes the beautiful parts of love move back to Phoenix.
The ugly parts of love are too heavy to move back to Phoenix. The ugly parts of love can't lift you up.
They bring you
D
O
W
N.
They hold you under.
Drown you.
You look up and think, I wish I was up there.
But you're not.
Ugly love becomes you.
Consumes you.
Makes you hate it all.
Makes you realize that all the beautiful parts aren't even worth it. Without the beautiful, you'll never risk feeling this.
You'll never risk feeling the ugly.
So you give it up. You give it all up. You never want love again, no matter what kind it is, because no type of love will ever be worth living through the ugly love again.
I'll never let myself love anyone again, Rachel.
Ever.
chapter thirty-five
TATE