27
Dylan
N ow
I’ve been wandering aimlessly for hours. Tonight everything I’ve built the last ten years has completely unraveled, abandoning me in the middle of a life I barely recognize. And now, finding out I have a sister I didn’t know about? It means my short visit to Rockport just turned into something more permanent.
I stop in front of the old house, and time hasn’t touched it. It’s still as run down and forgotten as the day I left. Weeds crawl through the cracks in the sidewalk, dandelions scattered like an afterthought. It’s eerie how every detail remains unchanged, yet the very soul of it feels alien to me.
I know why I’m here, or more accurately, who brought me here. Blake .
Motionless, I stare ahead. My hands fidget, fingers twisting together as if the movement might steady the uncertainty curling inside me. Part of me wants to bolt—vanish into the night, leaving everything and everyone behind. This wasn’t the plan; I wasn’t supposed to care. I was perfectly fine locking the door on this place and everyone in it. Or at least, I thought I was.
A new thought digs in—Blake deserves more than a half-present stranger orbiting her life. She deserves a sister who shows up, even if I’m still learning how.
The yard is still, the only sound is the soft rustle of leaves in the breeze. Every window in the house is dark, making me wonder if anyone’s even awake. It’s late. Too late for a reasonable visit. I should probably just come back in the morning. But my feet stay rooted in place, defying every instinct to turn and go. I can’t walk away. Not yet. Not without trying.
“Um, do you need something?”
I spin around, heart lurching, and there she is—a girl no older than ten, standing on the sidewalk with a tiny dog at her feet. Her dark hair skims her shoulders, and her eyes—so vividly blue they steal the breath from my lungs—resemble a ghost of my own staring back at me. It’s disorienting, like I’ve stumbled into a mirror where my younger self is staring back at me.
“I’m sorry,” she stammers, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just walking my dog Zoey.”
Her dog, some scruffy little thing with too much energy, tugs at the leash, and she tugs back absentmindedly.
“No, you didn’t scare me.” My pulse kicks up as I step forward, hands twitching like they don’t know where they belong. The last thing I want is to spook her. “I didn’t know anyone was out here. I was about to knock.”
She glances down at her sneakers, scuffing one against the pavement before meeting my gaze again. There’s caution in her eyes, but also a reluctant curiosity. “If you’re here for my mom, she’s not home.”
“Oh.” The word feels insignificant, weighted with too much expectation for something so small. I don’t even know what I was hoping for, showing up like this. Of course she assumes I’m here for our mother. What kid wouldn’t when a stranger shows up unannounced on their doorstep? A lump rises in my throat, my chest constricting until I have to force myself to breathe. Because that’s all I am to her right now—a stranger on the sidewalk.
“And your name is?” I want to hear it, need to hear it—but the second it leaves my mouth, I regret it. She’s going to think I’m some freak lurking outside her house, not someone grasping for proof that she’s real.
Her lips press together, and I can tell she’s debating whether she should answer. Then, finally, she says, “Blake.”
Hearing it from her directly shatters whatever distance I’d tried to keep. Chloe’s words felt like a rumor, something too big to grasp. But this? This makes it undeniable. I keep staring at this little girl like I’m willing her to recognize me, to say my name like it means something. Like I maybe mean something. But she doesn’t.
“Do you know how to reach your mom?” My voice scrapes out rough and uneven. I’m not sure I even have the right to ask.
She’s considering, her fingers curling around the leash of her tiny dog, eyes scanning me for something—danger, familiarity, a reason to bolt? I’m unsure. “Um, yeah. But she’ll probably be back soon.”
Soon. I nod, but the thought of standing here, waiting for my mother to just…appear, is too much right now.
I dig into my bag, pulling out a scrap of paper and a pen. The numbers come out in quick, harsh lines, my hand unsteady like my body’s fighting against what I’m doing.
“Here.” I hold it out. “Can you…have her call me when she gets home?”
Blake takes the note like it’s made of glass, handling it with the kind of care reserved for fragile things. I nearly convince myself that she understands that this is more than just a scrap of paper. Maybe she knows exactly who I am and is too nervous to admit it.
I look back at the house, and it feels like I’m seeing it through two sets of eyes. The seventeen year old who used to live here and the uncomfortable stranger standing on the sidewalk now.
“It was nice meeting you.” My words barely scratch the surface of what this moment is—of what it could change.
Blake’s voice is soft as she agrees, and I force myself to turn away, my legs wobbling like the earth beneath me is about to crack.
My steps don’t falter as I push everything down, but the moment she’s no longer in view, the floodgates open, and all of it comes crashing down. A sister. A whole person I should’ve known, should’ve loved. How the hell do you make sense of something like that?
By the time I make it to town, I’m muttering a string of curses about Aaron ditching me without his rental car back at the high school. I can’t fault him for it. Why wouldn’t he? If there’s one thing I’ve mastered, it’s being the one left behind.
The streets are nearly deserted as I move through the old downtown neighborhood, the quiet broken only by the occasional passing car. I follow the same worn path I used to take years ago, past leaning fenced and rusted mailboxes that haven’t changed. The first day I walked this route, I was trying to distance myself from that house. Now, I’m tracing the same steps, wishing I could just turn back. For her.
By the time I see Ruby’s diner in the distance, my head is pounding, and my body feels like it’s running on fumes. The neon sign flickers slightly, and for a moment, I consider walking past it. But my feet betray me, drawn toward the familiar red glow as if they know something I haven’t figured out yet.
I stumble through the front door, my eyes darting for an empty table—anywhere to take a moment to breathe—but Ruby sees me first. She’s behind the counter, mid-conversation with a customer, but the moment her gaze locks onto mine, her focus snaps to me instantly.
“Good lord, child. You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
Ruby abandons her customer without a second thought, her hands already reaching for me as she steers me toward a booth. Her voice dips, wrapping around me like a worn quilt. “What happened?”
Collapsing into the seat, my limbs are useless. I press my hands against the cool table, like contact alone might pull the words from where they’re stuck in my throat.
“I—” How am I supposed to explain everything that’s happened tonight? How am I supposed to make sense of it when it still feels like it doesn’t belong to me?
Ruby slips in beside me, her presence comforting. “Take your time.” She leans in, close enough to remind me I don’t have to say a damn thing until I’m ready. Maybe not even then. I try to shove the emotions back where they can’t reach me—but they refuse. Ruby doesn’t wait. She just pulls me in, arms holding me tightly, like she knows I’m coming apart at the seams.
And I let her.
I stay there, pressed against her, until the shaking stops and my breath comes easier. Until the tears finally loosen their grip.
When I was younger, working here was one of the few things that kept me afloat. Now, after all these years, walking in and breaking down feels like ripping open a wound I no longer have the right to bleed from.
When I finally pull away, Ruby studies me with a gaze so heavy it feels like it could press me straight through the worn vinyl seat.
“Did you know my mom had another daughter?”
Ruby doesn’t answer right away. She doesn’t need to. The slow drop of her shoulders, the downcast flick of her eyes—it’s enough.
She knew. Of course, she knew. Everyone did.
“Yeah. It wasn’t long after you left.” I can tell she’s trying to gauge how much of the truth I can handle. And I hate it.
“Dylan, when you left, your mom changed.” A pause, as if she’s bracing herself to continue. “She’s sober now, sweetheart. Far as I can tell, completely sober. The way she treated you…it wasn’t right, wasn’t fair, and I knew it. Lord, did I know it. But I didn’t know how to step in.”
She exhales, her relief evident—like this truth has been sitting in her chest for too damn long. “But losing you after losing your brother? That was her reckoning, honey. It was like all the ghosts she’d been outrunning finally caught up.”
I sit there, struggling to process what she just said. My mom? Sober? It lands like a foreign language, something I should understand but can’t quite translate. The person Ruby’s describing isn’t the woman I knew.
Ruby doesn’t slow down. “I don’t know what you’ll want to do with that, and I’m not implying you have to do anything. That choice is yours, always will be. But, sweetheart, Blake didn’t ask for any of this. She’s just a kid. So, whatever you do, don’t let your mom’s mistakes keep you from getting to know her.”
I know Ruby’s right. Blake didn’t choose to be born into a story already stained with loss. And no matter how much anger curdles inside me, how much of it is aimed at the woman I ran away from, none of it belongs to Blake. Even if I can’t forgive my mom, I owe it to my sister to try.
I glance at ruby, and the tears I’ve been forcing down start to rise again. I hope she knows how much this means to me, her being here, even if I can’t quite find the words to say it. She gives my hand a single, reassuring squeeze before drifting away, leaving a sense of comfort in her wake as she tends to another customer.
I sink into the booth, head tipping back against the faux leather, eyes tracing the ceiling like it might split open and hand me an answer. It doesn’t. Just leaves me stewing in the mess of it all—Brooks, my mom, this town that clings to me like a second skin, thick with memories I’ve spent years trying to scrub off. I don’t want to be here. Don’t want to face any of it. But that past has teeth, and no matter how fast I run, it always knows how to bite back.
And now there’s Blake.
The last few days feel like an eternity, and all I want is to hit pause. Or rewind. Just to escape for a little while. But that’s not an option, not with my sister’s name now stitched into my heart, tugging at my guilt, at the longing of what could have been if only I’d stayed.
Eventually, I drag in a breath, scrape together what’s left of my resolve, and shove myself out the door before I’m pinned down for good.
The walk back to The Drift is a blur, my feet moving on autopilot while my mind thrashes against itself. By the time I shut the door behind me, the static in my head is so loud it feels like it might crack through my skill. I need to talk to Beckett. He’s the only person I can call when everything feels too big to hold onto by myself.
I haven’t touched a paintbrush since the accident. The thought alone feels like pressing my palm against an open wound. Photography was the only thing I could stomach, the only creative outlet that didn’t tear me apart. But even that feels like a betrayal of who I was. It’s tangled up in Brooks, in the way he saw the world…saw me . And hating myself for it almost burns worse than the memories themselves. Especially here, where every shadow feels like it still belongs to him.
Before doubt can sink in, I pull out my phone and press Beckett’s name. The dial tone punches through my thoughts, calling attention to how desperately I need to hear his voice.
No ring. Just his dumbass joke, the one that fakes you out like he’s actually picked up. One second. Two. Then his laugh—carefree, familiar, gut wrenching. Leave a message , he says, and then the beep cuts through me.
“Hey, KitKat, I miss you.” The words slip out in a hush, like saying them too loudly might make it hurt more. My gaze skates over the room, but nothing sticks, like I’m floating outside my own body. “I went to the high school tonight. The reunion. Wish you were there. Wish everything didn’t feel so—” I press my fingers to my forehead, like I can physically hold myself together. “It’s just different without you here. Wrong.”
I want to rip myself open, let everything spill out. But the words are knotted tight, strangled before they can escape.
“I found something out,” I manage. Saying it feels like stepping into an alternative reality, one where the ground beneath me doesn’t belong. “We have a sister, Becks. Her name’s Blake.”
There. It’s real now. The truth, and with it, a slow, aching rip, fiber by fiber. The tears come, slow and unchecked. They’re not from sadness exactly, but from the sheer meaning of it all—the shift, the rupture, the way I suddenly don’t know what to do with my heart.
“She’s beautiful. You’d love her. Those bright blue eyes, that wild curl to her hair—she looks exactly like us. Like you . And for a second, it stole the air from my lungs. I wanted to tell her. I should’ve told her who I am. But I looked at her and saw everything I’d lost—I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. It felt wrong, like I’m trying to build something new with missing parts, like there’s a piece of this that only you were meant to hold.”
I pause, teeth sinking into the edge of my thumbnail until the sting cuts through the noise in my head—not enough to stop me, just enough to remind me I’m still here.
“And, uh…Mom’s sober now.” The words feel like they belong to someone else’s life. I roll them around in my mouth, waiting for them to settle, but they don’t. “It doesn’t feel real. I don’t know how to handle it, or if I even want to.”
The damn breaks. Words tumble out faster now, like I’ve lost control of the floor. “I just—God, Becks, I miss you. I want to stop dragging all this shit around with me, but I don’t know where to start. I’m scared. What happens when I finally move on? I’m scared that if I do…I’ll start losing pieces of you, too.”
The voicemail beeps, cutting me off and erasing the words I didn’t have time to finish—just like it always does.
I sit there, stranded on the edge of this stiff hotel bed, fingers locked around my phone like it’s some kind of lifeline. And if I hold on tight enough, I might pull him back through the static. Might hear his voice one more time, telling me what to do, how to make sense of all this. But the line is dead. And so is he. Waiting won’t change a damn thing.
My breath rattles out, and my eyes drift to the nightstand. Three letters, stacked too neatly, were somehow placed there. Staring at me like they know I’ve run out of places to hide.
Reality tilts as I stare at them. I blink, half expecting the envelopes to vanish, like some cruel trick of the light. But they’re still here, waiting. Then, it hits me—our letters from high school. The ones we wrote to our future selves, a lifetime ago. I’d forgotten they even existed.
My breath catches as I reach for them, fingers ghosting over the old ink and paper. My own scrawled mess of a signature. My brother’s rushed, uneven print. And the last one—deliberate. My name etched onto the envelope in handwriting I’d know anywhere.
Brooks.
He must have put them in here. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
I swear I can hear Mr. Lyons’ voice in my head. Seniors, take this time to write to your future self. When your reunion comes, see if you recognize the person you’ve become. It felt stupid back then. A waste of time. But now, I have the proof of who we were, pressed tightly between my fingers.
I don’t stop to question it—curiosity sinks its claws in, dragging my hands to the paper’s edge. The seal breaks. Instinct takes the reins..
And then, everything changes.