“I don’t want to let you down either.”
“El…”
“I’m tired. I’m so tired, Mom. I used to want this more than anything. Now, I don’t even know what this is.”
“You’ve done enough. You’ve given more than enough. You can’t keep chasing a dream you don’t believe in. It doesn’t mean any of it wasn’t worth it. That doesn’t stop being true just because the dream looks different now.”
“Then why do I feel like I’m failing?”
She chuckled. “Because it’s the only life you’ve ever known, but letting go doesn’t erase it. It makes room for something new, something that makes you happy.”
“And how do I know what that is?”
“Well, something tells me it’s a very handsome football player.”
I smiled, even though it hurt. “Yeah…maybe it is.”
Maybe I wasn’t ready to jump. Maybe I never would be. But maybe I didn’t have to be perfect to take a step forward.
Because, for the first time, I wasn’t alone on that cliff.
After we spoke for a while longer, she caught me up on their travels, and we hung up. The hotel room was too quiet without her murmured words of assurance, and my mind was spinning, so I got up and pulled the old journal out of my suitcase.
The one I’d been avoiding since the moment he handed it to me. I wasn’t sure I was ready to read the last few pages, but I missed him. And this, the mystery, the mess, the truth, was the only part of him I still had.
So, I turned the page.
I found the drawer empty this morning. It was a small thing, a photo I kept folded in the back beneath old bills and receipts. I shouldn’t have kept it. It was foolish. Dangerous. But it was the only proof I had of a time when I felt like myself.
Now, it’s gone, and he hasn’t said a word. Not at breakfast, not over supper, not in the way his hands rested too still on the table.
The silence is worse than any accusation. It’s a door waiting to slam.
I’ve thought about running, but there’s nowhere to go where he wouldn’t follow.
My eyes burned as I read her words. I blinked hard and turned the page, finding the final entry but quickly closing the journal. I was unsure if it was a weird loyalty, but it felt wrong enough to read it without him, let alone break our other rule of only one at a time.
Instead, I opened it back up and stared at the page I had just read. I read it again. Then again. Then, I went back and read all of them. My thoughts scattered in a hundred directions. None of it made sense.
I sat there for hours, flipping back and forth through the pages and retracing Lauren’s words like they might lead me somewhere new for once. The longer I reread, the more questions began to rise.
Who was the real father? Why hadn’t she named him? And why did it all still feel unfinished—like a door half-open, waiting for someone to step through it?
I didn’t know what I was looking for, but when I typed her name into the search bar for the thousandth time, I knew this wasn’t about a little mystery anymore. It was about the boy. The one who never got to grow up. The one who still didn’t have a voice.
And the woman who still had one.
FORTY-FIVE
Sawyer
Sweat dripped into my eyes,but I didn’t stop. The ground blurred in front of me. The pounding of my feet against the track was easier to deal with than everything else.
Practice had ended over an hour ago, and Bronx and West stuck around without asking why. They didn’t need the details. They could sense I was upset and needed to work out all this shit from my body.
Ellie walked away.
She said she needed time, and I told her I understood. Meant it too. It had still hurt like hell, even if I saw it coming.
