Page 154 of All the way home

It’s not a mistake. It’s not.

This is exactly what had to happen. The fact that it feels like ripping out an internal organ doesn’t take away from that undeniable truth.

“I almost can’t believe I’m going to wake up tomorrow and you won’t be my girlfriend anymore,” he says faintly. “It’s really over, huh?”

“Yeah,” she replies, and realizes, with a pain like a toothache: He’s right. It’s over. This is the end.

But it doesn’t feel like an ending.

Rena’s not particularly worried about Lucas, not because she doesn’t care—she does, so much it’s a wound still weeping blood—but because he’s going to be fine. Without a fraction of a doubt, Rena knows that Lucas will find his happy ending. He’s tall and handsome and clever and Rena’s not blind. She’s seen how girls at MRU hang around him. One day, he’s going to find someone who really wants him. Who’ll say yes out of eagerness and not resignation.

Rena . . .

Rena doesn’t know what’s going to be next for her. She’s in the middle of thinking that she doesn’t know if she’ll find a happy ending when she realizes that she does know. She will have a happy ending. She’s just not going to find it. It won’t come out of the fog in the shape of another person. Rena’s never believed in soul mates—after all, isn’t love a choice?—but she understands, a little better, that she’s not going to stumble upon the one person who makes her life make sense. She will carve her happy ending out of sand. Her happy ending will be made of whatever she wants it to be, and she will build it herself, brick by brick.

And she’ll have help.

The thought is enough to make hot tears burn at the corners of her eyes. She’ll have as much help as she can ask for. Without a doubt, Kieran will be there next to her with a brick of his own. Oscar and Siobhan will be there, and Sahar, and all of the other people Rena hasn’t met yet.

“Goodbye, Rena,” Lucas says. He has a hand on the handle of his suitcase, body angled away from her.

She can’t say it back.

In this moment, she’d do anything to suspend the second before he turns away.

But he doesn’t wait for her to say it. After a moment, with a long, lingering look, Lucas heaves a sigh and wheels his suitcase away.

She stands, watching him go. Rena watches him until the green of his fleece disappears around the corner, until she’s made sure that he’s not going to look back, even though she already knew he wouldn’t.

For a long time after, she just stands there, her own suitcase in one hand, Kieran’s in the other, and heartache and hope twine with every heartbeat. Because even though this part, right now . . . Well. This part is terrible, but on the other end of it, there’s something better.

For both of them.

Chapter Fifty-One

Zach

“You guys are freaking me out,” Zach says, leaning forward in his seat as Tove takes an exit off the highway. “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Kieran is in the backseat with him. By rights, he should not be in the car at all, but Zach’s long given up on assuming they’re going straight home.

“I can tell you now,” Kieran says, grinning. “So, this evening, Mara and I found ourselves in the exact same predicament. And so we thought—”

“Wait.” Zach struggles, in his sleep-deprived state, to make sense of this. “You two have been talking?”

“He started it,” Mara says without a trace of defensiveness, twisting around in the passenger seat, grinning wide.

Zach remembers Kieran’s secretive messaging and lets out a half laugh of disbelief. “That’s who you were talking to?”

Abruptly, he remembers Kieran’s laughter at his echoed question—Girlfriend?—and feels, all over again, as though his smile is permanently pasted onto him.

Kieran runs a finger lightly across his palm, over his lifeline. “Who did you think I was talking to?”

“I don’t know,” Zach says, numbly. “So, wait—you had a predicament?”

“You missing the Ursids,” Mara says, rolling her eyes. “Duh.”

“You can’t solve that,” Zach says. “It’s over. We missed it.”