CHAPTER 18
EDEN
The bottle was sweating by the time we got it open.
It was cheap champagne that we’d bought with crumpled bills from the gas station down the street because we’d wanted something that felt like a celebration and didn’t care that it wasn’t good.
Ryan wrestled with the cork while I sat cross-legged on the hood of our car, the desert night still clinging to our skin, Vegas glowing in the distance like a mirage.
“Careful,” I laughed. “You’re gonna take an eye out.”
“That would be a terrible way to start a new life,” he said, grinning, his hair falling into his face the way it always did when he was excited. “First night in Vegas, and I immediately maim myself.”
The cork popped anyway, ricocheting off into the dark. We both froze for a beat, then burst out laughing like idiots, the sounds spilling out of us loudly.
We didn’t even have cups. Ryan handed me the bottle first, and I took a sip that made my face twist immediately.
“Oh my gosh,” I said, “that’s awful.”
He took it from me and drank anyway, wincing just as hard. “I think it’s perfect,” he decided. “Exactly what this moment deserves.”
We wandered into the park with the bottle swinging between us, the grass still damp from sprinklers, the swings creaking softly in the warm night breeze. The place was quiet and empty except for us and the distant hum of traffic, and it felt like we’d stumbled onto something secret.
Ryan climbed onto one of the swings and pushed off hard, the champagne sloshing dangerously. “Okay,” he said, suddenly serious, dragging his feet until he slowed and looked at me. “Toast time.”
I raised an imaginary glass, smiling despite the tight feeling in my chest. “To not dying in the desert.”
He rolled his eyes. “No. To us.” Ryan cleared his throat dramatically. “To getting out,” he said. “To never going back to the people we were stuck being. To a place where nobody knows our mistakes and nobody expects anything from us except to keep going.”
I swallowed, emotion pressing behind my ribs.
“To a place where we can be loud,” he went on, gaining momentum now. “Where we can mess up and start over, and it won’t haunt us forever. Where we get to be everything we are without apologizing for it.”
He lifted the bottle toward me, earnest and unguarded. “To our new life, Eden. Whatever the hell it turns out to be.”
I clinked my invisible glass against his bottle and smiled, even though I strangely felt like crying. “To all of it.”
We drank under the Vegas sky, sitting side by side on the swings, legs brushing, and hope so thick between us it felt tangible. For that moment, it really did feel like we’d made it. Like the hardest part was already behind us.
That was the last time I remember us being that happy.
The park looked grungier than it had then, more worn and stripped down.
The grass was thin and patchy, trampled down to dirt in places, the green dulled by years of sun and too little care.
Rust crept along the swing chains, flaking into orange dust. The paint on the seats had faded to a tired blue, chipped and peeling at the edges.
I stood just inside the rusted gate with the urn pressed to my stomach and let the place settle into me. Las Vegas hummed beyond the fence, loud and indifferent, the city unchanged by my loss.
It seemed right that I would come here for this.
Not a cemetery. Not somewhere quiet and meant for endings. This park had never been about endings for us. This was where we’d toasted beginnings. Where we’d said the words out loud and believed them.
This was when we were happy.
The swings were still there, one hanging slightly lower than the other, and my chest tightened as I walked toward them, memory closing in fast and familiar.
I sat on the left one without thinking because Ryan always took the right.
The urn was heavier than it looked as I settled it into my lap, the cool metal stark against the heat of the day. I stared at the shallow trench worn into the dirt beneath my feet, carved there by years of kids dragging their shoes, slowing themselves down because flying forward felt like too much.
I pushed off gently, just enough to sway.
“It seemed fitting,” I said quietly, “to come here.”
The chains whispered with each movement, the sound pulling at something deep and tender inside me. I leaned back, letting the pale sky fill my vision.
“This was before everything,” I went on. “Before we got tired. Before hope started costing more than we could afford.”
The breeze rattled the empty swing beside me as though it was waiting for him, and I could almost see him there again, lanky and bright, swinging too high, laughing like the future was a promise instead of a gamble.
“I believed you,” I told him. “Every word.”
The swing slowed beneath me until it barely moved at all, my toes tracing faint lines through the dirt without really meaning to stop.
I let it settle there, my body heavy, my chest tight in that familiar way grief took when it wasn’t sharp anymore, when it hurt because something precious had existed and then slipped out of reach.
“I don’t miss the end,” I said quietly, staring at the empty swing beside mine. “I think you know that.”
The breeze nudged the chains, warm and dry, and I closed my eyes.
The memory didn’t arrive all at once. It seeped in, the way memories always did, sound first and then sensation, pulling me under before I realized I was gone.
I was sixteen again, sitting on a swing with my shoulders curled inward and my breath coming apart in uneven pulls.
My arm throbbed with every heartbeat, a deep, spreading ache that had already bloomed purple and blue beneath my skin.
I’d pushed my sleeve up without thinking, needing air on it even though it didn’t help.
It hadn’t been meant for me.
She’d thrown it at my stepdad. I couldn’t even remember what it was now, only how it had left her hand and hit my arm instead, the impact knocking the breath clean out of me.
My mother hadn’t said anything afterward. She’d just turned away, already done, and I’d stood there for a second too long before realizing my hands were shaking.
Ryan found me here.
I heard him before I saw him, his footsteps quick and uneven as he crossed the park. When he dropped in front of me, his face was tight with a kind of anger I’d never seen turned outward before, not at me.
“Eden,” he said, breathless, like he’d been running. “What happened?”
I shook my head automatically, a reflex I’d learned early. “I’m fine.”
He knelt in front of me and gently took my wrist and turned my arm so he could see the bruise. “Fuck,” he muttered, quieter now. Not angry at me, but at the world . . . at them.
I started crying, and my vision blurred as I tried to swallow the tears back and failed. “She didn’t even apologize,” I said in a halting, breaking voice. “She just . . . walked away.”
Ryan didn’t say anything at first. He pulled his hoodie off instead, wrapping it carefully around my arm, cushioning the bruise like he could protect it from getting any worse. His hands were warm, and it made the shaking in me finally start to ease.
“I’m gonna get you out of there,” he said finally. “I promise.”
He’d said it before, and like all those times, I savored the promise.
Ryan leaned in, and his forehead rested gently against mine. “You shouldn’t have to be tough all the time. You shouldn’t have to get hit for someone else’s mess.”
I cried harder at that, at the way his voice cracked just enough to give him away.
“I won’t let this be your life forever,” he whispered. “I swear.”
I opened my eyes, the present rushing back in around me, the park worn and quiet and empty except for the promise I was still holding.
That was the boy I missed.
Not the man he became. Not the years that followed.
The boy who wrapped my arm in his hoodie and believed that love could be armor if you meant it enough.
The boy who looked at me like I was something worth protecting, even when we had nothing but cracked sidewalks and secondhand shoes.
The boy who swore he’d build me something better one day and actually believed he could.
Somewhere along the way, he’d slipped out of that skin.
It wasn’t on me who he had become. I’d done everything to try to keep us together. You can’t save someone who’s determined to unravel.
But the boy had been real.
And so had the promise.
I stood, the urn heavy but steady in my hands, and walked toward the tree at the edge of the park. The bark was rough beneath my palm, the roots pushing up through dirt that had always been uneven.
“That’s who I’m saying goodbye to,” I whispered as I knelt beneath its branches. “The promise. Not the failure.”
My fingers rested on the lid, and I realized I felt calmer now.
“You meant it then,” I whispered. “And I know that.”
I would hold on to that part. The sincerity. The way he’d loved me when we were still small and fearless and certain the world could be bent to our will.
The wind brushed against my skin again, tugging at my hair like it wanted this over with. I twisted the lid free, and the ash shifted softly inside the urn.
“I hope you finally found some peace,” I murmured.
The breeze caught my first handful and carried it outward, scattering it into open air.
And I let the boy go.