I nodded into the headset. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t touch her, but I could hold the space for her.I can hold the space for him, too,I thought.For Elliot.
The next call came quickly—a teenager, voice taut with fear and anger. Every story, every word, dug into me, brought the sweat prickling along my spine. My hands gripped the headset, knuckles white, and I spoke slowly, carefully: “You don’t have to face it alone. We can work through this together. One moment at a time.”
By the time I hung up after the third call, my back ached, my shirt was damp with sweat, and my chest felt hollow and full all at once. My body was raw. My mind buzzing with the fragments of lives I’d touched, even for a minute.
I let my forehead fall into my hands.This is what it means to care without taking. This is what it means to love without destroying.
I realized, in that moment, why I could never fully trust my own impulses with Elliot before. I had tried to fix him by absorbing his pain, by pretending my presence would shield him from the world. But that only scared him. Only left him broken. Now, sitting here, offering my full attention to strangers in crisis, I understood how tohold without hurting.
When the shift ended, I pulled off the headset, running a hand over my face. The neon light of the center flickered through the rain-streaked windows. I let myself shiver, exhausted, and finally—finally—I felt a spark of hope that I could be what Elliot deserved. Not someone who ran. Not someone who took. Someone who stayed steady, and gave space to heal.
I took out a notebook I’d kept tucked in my bag, the one with the blank pages I’d never filled but always kept just in case. My hand shook at first, but then the words began to flow.
I’ve learned to love you without taking pieces of you. I hope someday you’ll let me offer pieces of me. If you’re ready to try, meet me here. Find me in the place where we used to hide. Come if you’re ready to stop running from the past and face our future.
I paused, breathing deep, letting the ink dry as the rain hammered against the roof. My fingers trembled over the page.
I don’t want you to need me to live. I want you to want to live.
The letter felt heavy and light at the same time. The guilt and fear still lingered, yes. But beneath it, a fierce, unshakable love. One that could finally be patient, careful, and real.
CHAPTER 27
ELLIOT
The road out to the peninsula was sun-warmed and bright, the kind of warmth that soaked into your skin and stayed there long after you left it.
The sky stretched endlessly above me, a soft, impossible blue brushed with high, lazy clouds that looked like they had nowhere urgent to be. With the windows down, the wind threaded through my hair, lifting it off my neck like gentle fingers reminding me I was still here. Alive. Breathing. The salty air poured into the car, tangling with the faint lavender of my shampoo and the lingering scent of coffee on my clothes.
My hands were steady on the wheel as I hummed along to a tune on the radio. My chest wasn’t tight. Instead, for once, it was full of butterflies. That alone felt like a miracle.
I slowed when the road narrowed, when asphalt gave way to gravel, tires crunching softly beneath me. I rolled past low scrub grass and clusters of wildflowers pushing stubbornly through dry earth and cracked stone—yellow, purple, white—their stems bent by salt wind but unbroken.
They shouldn’t have been able to grow here. They did anyway. Something about that lodged in my chest.
I parked where the gravel thinned into dry earth, cicadas humming lazily in the heat. When I opened the door, warmth wrapped around my calves and the low electric hum vibrated faintly through my bones.
The lighthouse rose ahead of me. Pale. Weathered. Steady. Its salt-stained white paint glowed softly in the midday sun like it was holding light instead of reflecting it.
It looked the same.
I didn’t.
I didn’t even feel like the same person anymore.
Now I actually looked in the mirror. Not just glanced, flinched and turned away. I looked. I let myself exist in my own reflection without apology. I looked forward to watching the sunrise every morning—something I’d started doing with Mia and Dix. Meeting up on the beach, wrapped in hoodies and quiet, watching the world come alive.
A few months ago, I would’ve hidden from mornings like this. Now I drove toward one.
Inside the lighthouse, the air was cool and still, thick with salt and stone and dust. Sunlight streamed through the tall, narrow windows in warm columns, illuminating floating dust motes that drifted like they were unbothered by time.
When I stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind me. The sound echoed softly as I dropped my bag by the wall and breathed. Really breathed. Filled my lungs all the way in. Let the exhale go slowly.
No pacing. No spiraling. No pressing my thumb into my wrist until it hurt. That, too, felt like growth.
I walked along the interior curve of the lighthouse, fingers trailing across the rough wall. The texture grounded me. The solidity of the place. The way it had stood here through storms and seasons and years without collapsing in on itself.
Find me in the place where we used to hide.
