Of course I did.

What I had done to Flynn wasn’t something you could just get over because he had chosen to forgive me.

Forgiving myself was proving to be the greatest challenge I had ever faced.

Our history was horrible and beautiful and complicated. It was brutal and life changing.

We shared a love that had blossomed under the most impossible of circumstances. It was rough. It was imperfect.

It was ours.

How could I question my salvation? How could I deny what held me together?

Goddamn Leonard for making me wonder. To question whether the absence of guilt would mean the destruction of us.

I got up out of my seat and left Leonard’s office without a word. The therapist looked up as I made my hasty exit but he didn’t stop me. Neither did Flynn, who watched me with a blank expression.

I pulled on my coat and left the building, the cold air cutting my skin with icy fingers.

I stood there, on the sidewalk choking on twisted thoughts.

I found myself thinking about our time at the beach, all those years ago. On our broken journey to each other, it had been one of the few moments of total connectedness. Absolute simplicity.

I remembered sitting close to the ocean, watching the machines out in the water hauling up sand and dumping it on the shore. Flynn and I had wondered about their purpose, only to realize they were reclaiming the beach. Putting it back the way it was before time and erosion had obliterated it.

Back then, I had been that beach. I was lost.

And Flynn had scooped up the tiny, damaged pieces of myself and gave them back to me.

Here I was, years later, still not whole. I was healing. I could feel it but I couldn’t help but wonder whether I would have to live the rest of my life with parts of me missing.

I felt as though Flynn and I were forever chasing the tide. Hoping that just this once, we’d finally be able to catch it. That we could hold it in our hands and breathe a sigh of relief because all the battles, all the wars, were over.

That we could finally be content in this…our happily ever after.

Because if we couldn’t catch it, what would that mean? For Flynn? For me? For the life we were trying to build?

What would I be left with?

Giant holes and forgotten pieces where a girl used to be.

“Why did you leave?” Flynn asked suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

I shrugged. “I needed some fresh air,” I dismissed, not wanting to admit out loud the horrible insecurities that wouldn’t go away.

You don’t deserve him. My inner voice said nastily. And maybe that voice was right. Because who would purposefully sabotage what this amazing man was trying so hard to give me?

Ellie McCallum would.

Because she had never learned to do anything different.

Flynn pulled out his keys and we started walking towards his car.

“We can do this,” he said and I looked over at him questioningly.

“We can do what?”

“Go to New York. Be together. Get married and have kids. We can have everything.”

I stopped walking and turned to face him. His uncanny ability to read my unspoken doubts, shaking me.

“Do you really think that?” I asked, my voice small.

Flynn rubbed his forehead with his hand and looked tired. “I want to be with you forever, Ellie. I only ever feel good when I’m with you. When you left to go to college, I hated it. I was lonely. I wanted you to do go but I didn’t like it.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

“I thought that when you graduated, you’d come back here. I never thought you wouldn’t,” he continued, glaring at the passing cars. He seemed angry.

“But since you’ve come back, things have felt strange. I don’t understand why. You make it so hard to be happy with you when you seem so sad.”

His words echoed those he had spoken to me once years before when I had cut him out of my life for stupid reasons.

You make it so hard to love you!

He had yelled those words and I had hated how true they were. I made it difficult for anyone to care for me. To be close to me.

He was right. Loving me was hard.

“I’m sorry, Flynn,” was all I could say.

Because I was sorry.

For so many things.

Flynn bit down on his bottom lip, looking oddly conflicted. Then he reached out and took my hand. We walked the rest of the way to his car without saying anything else.

That was the way of Ellie and Flynn.

We spoke more in silence.

It’s where we communicated best.

Chapter Nineteen

-Ellie-

I missed Flynn.

I hated that I missed Flynn.

I shouldn’t miss Flynn.

Not considering that right now I was sitting in my cell in juvenile detention because of him.

It was all his fault.

If he hadn’t made me care about him, I wouldn’t have needed to prove to myself that he didn’t matter.

Sure, I had lit the fire but Flynn had been the match.

I hated him.

I had to. It’s the only way I could survive life without him.

But I missed him too.

I wasn’t strong enough to push him away completely. He had burrowed deep and I wasn’t sure I could ever get him out.

I pulled out the well-worn piece of paper I kept hidden beneath my mattress where no one could find it.

I unfolded it and looked at the drawing of my face, touching it ever so gently with the tip of my finger.

The Ellie that looked back at me from the paper was a girl I barely knew.

This Ellie, the one who stared at the simple drawing from her perch on a thin mattress in a cement block cell, had nothing left but grim acceptance that this was her fate.