16
Dylan
N ow
My mother’s once bottle blonde hair has been replaced by her natural mousy brown, but there’s no mistaking her. She looks different—healthier. Her skin, once ashen and lined with depletion, now has a glow to it. Her dull, hollow eyes I remember now shine, a striking blue that mirrors my own. She looks…well, tired, but undeniably well.
Noticing the diner around me feels impossible—blurred faces, the clink of silverware, none of it matters. She’s the only thing that feels real. Resentment curdles beneath my skin, guilt threading through it like smoke, but I smother them before they can take shape. She doesn’t deserve anything from me—not my excuses, not my forgiveness, not a single piece of who I am now.
Denise moves like she’s forgotten how to walk, uneven, her body jerking forward like instinct pulled her to me before her mind could catch up. She doesn’t dare blink, as if expecting me to dissolve before her eyes.
Her arms hover before she finally pulls me in. I don’t move at first—my arms just hang there because I don’t know what else to do. It’s awkward.
Then, just as quickly as it started, it’s over. She steps back, searching my face like she’s trying to etch the changes into her mind. Tears stream down her cheeks, but she doesn’t wipe them away.
“Oh my God,” she breathes. “It’s you. You’re really here!” Her voice shakes, and I can tell she doesn’t know where to start. I wonder if maybe she won’t. Perhaps we’ll just stay here, staring at each other while she tries to silently bridge the years between us.
But to my dismay, she speaks again, and the moment shatters. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I tried—I um, searched—prayed. And now…” She lets out a laugh, but it breaks halfway through, turning into something else entirely. “You’re back.”
She announces it like that changes anything between us. That my return fixes the past and erases all the reasons I left in the first place.
She wipes at her face, her breathing labored, but the tears don’t relent. “You’re all grown up now. Look at you. Oh, Dylan, my sweet girl.”
Her hands reach for mine, and every muscle in my body screams to pull away, but I don’t.
I can’t.
It’s too much. The diner, the way she’s looking at me, saying my name like it’s something sacred. My stomach twists so violently it’s a wonder I don’t get sick right here on the diner floor.
I glance past her, scanning the space for something—an excuse, a way out, a vase, anything. But there’s nothing.
“I’ve thought of you every single day since you left. How are you? Are you in town long? Do you have time to talk?”
I should’ve expected this, but nothing could have prepared me for the way her words snag against old wounds, stirring up the very things I’ve spent years trying to bury.
“Um,” my response stumbles, leaving my mouth in pieces. “I…don’t know.”
It’s a lie, a weak patch over something splitting at the seams. I know it won’t hold, but letting anything else show isn’t an option.
Wet trails carve through her cheeks, tracing the hills and valleys that age has gently sculpted in my absence. Time has reshaped her in ways I wasn’t around to witness. My eyes drop to her hands, searching for steadiness in the small details: the slight shake of her fingers, the fine lines etched into her palms. Feeble distractions. Anything to keep myself from breaking down in front of her.
She steps back, hands disappearing as if the contact now burns her. Another pass over her cheeks, her eyes scanning mine, hoping for something I can’t give.
“Okay. I understand.” Her voice falters, cracking with emotion. “You look…absolutely beautiful, Dylan.”
It doesn’t make sense. Beautiful? She’s calling me beautiful? It feels absurd, a mistake in a narrative I don’t recognize. Not after everything that’s happened Not from her.
“Thanks.”
“I’d really love to talk…even just for a minute.” She presses forward, insistent, needling her way through my defenses. My focus darts to Brooks, a wordless plea for him to intervene.
As if on cue, he stands, the slight shift of his weight making the stool creak beneath him. “We should get going,” he says smoothly, offering me his hand. “Don’t want to be late.”
His palm presses against mine, his hold unwavering. He doesn’t rush to pull away, offering Ruby and unspoken sentiment only she seems to catch.
She breathes out slowly, her eyes holding mine. “Dylan, honey, make sure to come back to the diner before you go.”
I try to smile, but it falters before it fully forms. Relief hovers just beyond reach. The door is right there, an escape waiting to be taken. But just as I move, cold fingers catch my wrist, tugging me back. I swivel, unsteady facing the one person I was sure would have no problem letting me go.
“I ne—” The sound she makes isn’t quite a word, more a fractured attempt at one. “I need to say I’m sorry. I did… said things I can’t justify, and I regret them all. If you never want to see me again, I get it. But I—” She squeezes her eyes shut, and when they open again, she looks like she’s afraid of what I’ll do with her words. “I love you. I always have, even when I could never show it.”
It’s a bomb to the part of me that still remembers, still aches—no matter how much I’ve tried to forget. Time folds in on itself, and suddenly I’m not here anymore. I’m years behind, small hands gripping the edge of a hope that always felt just out of reach. Love? After everything she put us through, the word feels like a cruel joke.
She clings to me for a moment before her grip weakens and falls away. “I’m still at the old house. If you decide you’re open to talking, there’s a lot I’d really like you to know.”
I make my exit without another word. One foot in front of the other until I’m outside, the truck ahead of me. The click of the door unlocking is the only sound I focus on as I climb in and close myself off.
Brooks doesn’t ask if I’m okay, and I’m grateful for it. I rub my palms against my legs, but no matter how much friction I create, I can still feel her there.
I thought I was stronger than this—that years away would’ve given me enough distance to make this bearable. But being here now, in Rockport, with the past pressing in from all angles, I realize how na?ve that was. My mom’s voice, her apology, the ghosts I’ve never invited back—they claw their way up, and suddenly, I can’t stop it. And just like that, I lose the fight.
When the truck eases to a stop, I don’t need to ask where we are. I know. Washburn Heights. As I take in the view that once felt like everything, I realize Brooks brought me here for a reason—it’s the one place that might still hold the illusion of escape.
The view hasn’t changed—the town still sprawls toward the ocean, the beach still sits where it always has—but the feeling is different. Depleted. The trees that used to shield this place, that made it feel like our own private world, have vanished. The last time Brooks and I were here it felt like a promise. Now, it feels like a reminder of everything we lost.
At seventeen, I hadn’t been searching for a place to belong, but that night staring out at the endless sky from Brooks’ truck, I found one. I didn’t know it then, but he planted something deep—an all consuming feeling I wouldn’t name until much later.
“Rockport was supposed to be a closed chapter,” I say, more to the wind than to him. “But then I saw you, and it hit me—I’ve never really left any of it behind.. I ran as far as I could, pushed it down so deep I thought it was gone. Now I’m here, and I don’t know how to put myself back together.”
His fingers skim the truck’s hood, tapping out in a slow, uneven rhythm. “Have you visited him?”
The question is a match to a room soaked in gasoline. “No. ” My confession sears through me as I admit it out loud, a merciless fucking wildfire that leaves nothing untouched. It doesn’t just wound, it annihilates, charring the truth into the marrow of my bones. My heart was never meant to hold on, only to burn itself to ash with the things it was stupid enough to want.
“Dylan.” It’s not a suggestion. It’s not a plea. It’s a verdict. “You can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
His statement unearths something feral, something gutted and left to rot in the ruins of a life I once hoped for. “Then tell me Brooks—what the hell am I supposed to do instead? Lay down and let the pain eat me alive? Pretending is the only reason I’m still fucking standing.”
Brooks doesn’t answer, letting me turn back to the cliffside, my fists curled so tight my nails could draw blood. The ocean sprawls below, all soft shimmer and open arms, like it hasn’t swallowed far worse things than me. The storm isn’t out there—it’s inside, clawing up my ribs, gnashing its teeth against my throat, begging to be let loose.
“I’m sorry, Dylan.”
“You’re sorry? Yeah, well, I’ve had plenty of time to choke it down.”
“Stop,” Brooks says, voice taut with regret. “I don’t mean just that. I’m sorry for leaving you alone in it. I should’ve been there. You were the most important person in my life, and I convinced myself that leaving was protecting you.” His throat bobs, and when he speaks again, it’s quieter. “That staying away was what you needed.”
His words settle in, fueling the fire already licking at my insides. I’m burning alive, heat riots in my veins, an untamed, vicious thing that refuses to stay ignored. Protecting me?
I snap toward him. “Are you actually standing there saying that to me? Like it’s supposed to mean something?”
Brooks recoils, momentary guilt flashing across his face, but it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. I close the gap between us, every restrained, suffocated, gut wrenching emotion I’ve kept hidden flooding to the surface. “Do you have any idea what you fucking did to me? What you left me with?”
“I—”
“Don’t,” The word rips from my throat. “Spare me the bullshit. Do you even hear yourself? You’re talking to a ghost, Brooks. I trusted you once. And it fucking ruined me. So don’t stand there and pretend I owe you anything.”
His eyes drag over me like he’s trying to pick apart the damage. As if he doesn’t already know, like he didn’t fucking cause it. Maybe he sees the fury splintered beneath my skin, the way it’s festered into something unforgiving. Or maybe he just feels it, the repercussions of his decisions looking back at him.
His hand lifts, hovering—because he knows I should rip away. But I don’t. Not yet. His fingers graze my cheek, the touch a fucking contradiction—too cold against the inferno pulsing beneath my skin. It teeters on the edge of soothing. Then, it fucking sears like a cigarette crushed into bare skin.
I finally manage to pull away, the absence of him both a mercy and an open wound. My breath snags, throat tightens, and I’m shaking my head before I even realize. “You don’t get to do that.”
My words cut, deep enough that I can see the moment they sink into flesh. He clenches his teeth, stiffens, but doesn’t give me the satisfaction of a response. He just bears it, lets it stew in his silence. And I should hate him—I want to—but all I see is the boy I once loved so catastrophically it shattered me. The truth doesn’t bleed from my mouth—it pours.
“You looked me in the eyes and promised me you’d be there. You fucking promised.” The break in him is quick but vicious, a glimpse of ruin before he locks it away.
“And then you left me alone in the wreckage,” I say, my voice catching like a blade to the throat. “You didn’t even have the fucking decency to look me in the eye when you decided I wasn’t worth it. I had to crawl to you—beg for answers, only for you to cut me down where I stood, like I never fucking mattered.”
“It nearly fucking killed me” he says, his voice stripped down to nothing. “I thought—” He pauses, like he can’t bear to finish. “I thought you deserved more than what I could give you. It wasn’t that simple.”
I let out a dry, brittle laugh. “What I needed was you, Brooks. Not some fucked up version of nobility. Just you. But you didn’t care enough to stay, did you?”
He doesn’t argue. Just stands there, spine bowed under the weight of my words.
“Sure, I may have ran from Rockport. But you? You left me to fucking drown first. You let me break, let me bleed out alone . Not a call. Not a text. You knew, and you just fucking watched.”
I spin on my heel, each step away a battle, dragging the corpse of what we were behind me. “I screamed for you, Brooks. Cried for you. You don’t get to be sorry now.”
When I glance over my shoulder, the sight nearly takes me to my knees. His face is streaked with tears, and for the first time, I see it. What’s left of him. Something torn apart and haphazardly stitched back together. “If I could go back, Dylan, I would tear myself open before I ever let you go. But I can’t. I can’t fucking change any of it.”
He doesn’t reach for me this time. Just moves toward the truck with desperation. The passenger door creaks open. An invitation. A surrender. I climb in, my jaw clenched so hard my teeth ache, the taste of iron thick on my tongue. The stillness between us is suffocating. Choking. A gaping wound neither of us dares to touch.
Brooks doesn’t meet my eyes when we arrive back at The Drift. Doesn’t speak when he steadies me, his hands caught between holding on and letting go. He already knows it’s too late, but I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want him to do it anyway. To grip my waist, to drag me back into something that doesn’t exist anymore, and feel anything other than this all consuming pain.
The door to my room clicks shut behind me, and the moment it does, my ribs splinter, my chest caves in, and I finally let myself break.
Because today, I let things slip free that I never thought I’d say. I cracked myself open and let the mess spill out. I meant every single word—every razor-sharp, venom-laced syllable. But now, I see the truth. The heat of my anger burned everything in its path—except the one thing that truly deserved to go up in flames.
Me.