Chapter 23 Elliot
ELLIOT
The door slammed shut behind Anthony with a finality that hit my sternum like a shockwave. I couldn’t move. I just stared at the place he’d been like my will alone could bring him back.
My chest felt too big for my ribs, like my heart was trying to escape through my throat. My hands tingled, pins and needles racing down my arms, my fingers useless at my sides. I tasted the salt of my tears and blood. Metallic and wrong.
Then I felt it. The weight of being watched. I turned slowly, heart hammering so hard it made my vision pulse and headed back into the house.
Dad was still standing exactly where I’d left him when I chased after Anthony. He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t pacing. He just stood in the middle of the kitchen, arms crossed, watching me with a look I’d never seen on his face before.
It was disgust. Not anger. Not grief. Disgust. My stomach clenched violently..
“So,” he said slowly, like he was tasting the word. “That’s what you are now.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. My throat felt sealed shut, like my body had decided words were too dangerous.
“Don’t,” I managed finally. The sound barely resembled my voice.
“Don’t what?” he asked, tilting his head. “Look at you?”
His gaze dragged over me—Anthony’s clothes, my damp hair, the way my hands were shaking.
Heat crawled up my neck, my skin buzzing uncomfortably, like I wanted to peel out of it.
“I feel sick when I see you like this,” he continued flatly. “Do you know that?”
Something splintered in my chest. My ribs felt too tight, like they were closing in around my heart.
“She would’ve hated this,” he said. “Hated what you’ve become.”
The words tunneled straight past my ears and lodged somewhere deep. My knees weakened. I had to lock them to stay upright. “You don’t get to use her like that.”
“Oh, I do,” he snapped. “She was the only reason I ever tried with you.”
The room went quiet except for the roaring in my ears. My vision blurred at the edges. My hands curled into fists without me telling them to.
“I stayed for her,” he continued. “I pretended for her. And now she’s gone. And all that’s left is you.”
Something folded in on itself inside me. My chest burned. A hot, acidic ache spreading outward like my heart was dissolving.
“You’re weak,” he said. “You always were. Too sensitive. Too needy.”
Each word landed with dull, repetitive force, not sharp enough to cut—just heavy enough to crush.
“And now you’ve fallen for him,” Dad sneered. “Letting him replace the spine you never had.”
My breath started coming shallow and fast. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to ground myself.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered.
“I know exactly,” he said. “Every time I look at you, I see what should still be alive.”
The air vanished.
“I wish,” he said quietly, “that it had been you.”
The sentence hit, and something snapped.
My ears rang. My heart stuttered, then raced, then felt like it dropped straight through my body. For a terrifying second, I thought I might actually lose consciousness.
“I wish you’d died instead of her.”
The pain became unbearable. Not emotional—existential. Like my body was screaming that existing itself was the wrong choice.
My vision tunneled. The edges of the room dissolved. I could feel my pulse in my throat, my wrists, my teeth. Every breath scraped on the way in, like my lungs didn’t want the air anymore.
This—this—was why I’d jumped. Because living inside this kind of pain felt impossible.
“I didn’t ask to live,” I said, my voice breaking apart. “I didn’t ask to stay.”
Tears spilled unchecked now, hot and humiliating. “You don’t get to punish me because you couldn’t survive loving her,” I choked out.
For a split second, something flickered across his face. Not remorse. Recognition.
I wiped my face with my sleeve, hands shaking so badly it barely helped. “Anthony stayed,” I said. “He didn’t make me earn oxygen.”
Dad scoffed. “He stayed because you cling. Because I told him to.”
“Then why does it scare you?” I shot back. “Why does it make you so angry that someone chose me?”
I was met with silence.
“I won’t stay here,” I said finally. “Not where I have to justify being alive.” As I grabbed my jacket, my limbs felt distant, like they didn’t fully belong to me anymore. “This will be the last time I ever see you.”
“She would be ashamed of you.” His parting shot found me with the precision of a sniper.
I froze midstep. Turned one final time to look at the man who used to be my dad. “No,” I said, my voice steady despite the wreckage inside me. “She would be ashamed of you for turning her love into something poisonous.”
Then I walked out already knowing I couldn’t survive another hour in that house. A piece of me snapped away so cleanly it felt surgical. A weight lifted off me that I didn’t know I’d been carrying for years.
The rain started as I hit the end of the drive—cold, sudden—soaking through my clothes. Within seconds my hair was plastered to my face, my shirt clinging uncomfortably to my skin under my jacket, every step squelching and loud in the quiet road.
The sky was a low, choking gray, the kind that pressed down on the world instead of opening over it.
The wind came off the water hard and unforgiving, carrying salt and something sharp with it.
The ocean to my right was no longer rhythmic or calm—it churned violently against the rocks, waves slamming into the shoreline like they were trying to tear it apart.
I felt that way too.
My chest burned with every breath, lungs pulling in air that felt too cold, too thin.
My heart wouldn’t slow down. Just kept battering against my ribs like it was trying to escape my body altogether.
My hands shook uncontrollably, fingers numb and stiff, useless when I shoved them into my jacket pockets.
I carried on walking anyway.
Each step felt unsteady, like the ground might give out beneath me at any second. My legs were heavy—uncooperative—but stopping wasn’t an option. If I stopped, I’d feel everything at once. If I stopped, I might turn back.
I couldn’t survive another word from him.
The road curved along the coastline, slick and dark, reflecting headlights when they passed. Cars rushed by without slowing, tires hissing against wet asphalt.
I lifted my arm anyway, thumb out, muscles trembling with the effort. Soaked through to the bone, my teeth began to chatter—not just from the cold, but from the adrenaline bleeding out of me now that there was nothing left to fight.
Please, I thought—not to the cars. Not to anyone specific. Just—please.
The ocean roared louder as I walked, waves crashing hard enough to send spray into the air. It sounded angry. Unforgiving. Alive in a way I wasn’t sure I still was. I understood it.
I kept moving, breath ragged, chest aching with that deep, familiar pressure—the one that said I was too much, that I was wrong for wanting, wrong for needing, wrong for still hoping someone would choose me even after everything.
Anthony’s face rose unbidden in my mind. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. The way his hands steadied instead of gripping. The way he stayed.
My vision blurred, rain and tears mixing until I couldn’t tell which was which. My foot slipped on the wet pavement and I stumbled, catching myself just in time, palms scraping against the rough surface.
Pain flared bright and sharp. It grounded me.
“Okay,” I whispered hoarsely into the wind. “Okay. Just—keep going.”
Beacon Ridge wasn’t close. But it was his. And right now, that was the only place in the world that didn’t feel like it wanted me gone.
A pair of headlights slowed behind me. I didn’t turn at first. Didn’t trust it. My shoulders stayed hunched, my body braced for disappointment.
The car rolled to a stop. A window slid down. “You alright there, kid?” a man called out over the rain. “You headed somewhere?”
My breath hitched painfully. My heart slammed so hard it made me dizzy. “Beacon Ridge,” I said, voice cracking. “Please.”
There was a pause—long enough for panic to bloom again in my chest.
“Get in before you freeze.”
I nearly collapsed with relief. As I climbed into the car, water dripping onto the seat, my hands shook so badly I had to grip my knees to steady them. The door closed, cutting off the roar of the waves, but the storm still lived inside me—raw and relentless.
“I’m Mack, by the way.”
As the car pulled back onto the road, the coastline blurred past, dark and violent and beautiful.
“Elliot,” I murmured in response.
I pressed my forehead to the cool glass and let myself believe—just for the length of the drive—that if I could make it to Anthony’s door, I might still be allowed to exist.
That maybe love didn’t always mean disappearing.
That maybe, tonight, it would mean being let in.
The car slowed as it turned onto Anthony’s street.
Beacon Ridge looked different in the rain—quieter, softer somehow. It had been years since I’d been here, the last time had been with mom. The houses sat back from the road, lights glowing dimly behind rain-streaked windows. Everything felt hushed, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Mack pulled up in front of a dark truck I recognized immediately. My chest tightened.
“That’s fine,” I said quickly, fingers already fumbling for the door handle. “Thank you. Really.”
“Take care of yourself,” Mack said, gentle but unsure, like he knew he’d just dropped something fragile back into the world.
The rain hit me again the second I stepped out—cold and sharp—but I barely felt it now. My focus tunneled forward, locked on the front door. My legs trembled as I crossed the drive, each step uneven, my body running on fumes and stubbornness alone.