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I pull away from him and stand, feeling trapped and panicked. I think I need my pills. “I should go…,” I say, looking around for my backpack. “Where is my backpack?”

He jumps up from the chair. “You’re not leaving like this.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “I’m all twisted up, Holly. But I’m not letting you run out of here when you’re this upset. You’re staying here with me.”

One… two… three… four…

I swipe my hand across my wet nose. “I’m all twisted up, too. Where the hell is my backpack?”

“You’re not leaving. And I don’t think you brought it today. Stop looking for it.”

I run my hands through my hair. How could I leave the house without my backpack and books? Is that why all this bad stuff is happening? “I feel sick.” I try to pull away from him, but he holds on to me.

“You’re okay,” he says softly. “I think you’re having an anxiety attack.”

My heart races rapidly as I stare back into his eyes. “I’m so glad you killed him, Tyler,” I whisper. “I know I shouldn’t say that… but I hate him so much… even more now than I ever did. I hate him! I hate him!” I scream.

He pulls me into a hug and holds me tight, stroking my back, hushing me.

I hate the bad man. I hate myself. I hate my parents. I’ve never felt so much sheer anger in my life. I feel like it’s ripping me apart from the inside out. “I’m scared,” I sob. “I don’t want this to be true.”

“I know. Neither do I.”

We hold on to each other in the dim room, the shroud of reality enveloping us. We can’t escape this. No matter what, this is us. We’re tied together by this awful course of events, unknowingly walking the same path.

What’s next? Where do we go from here?

I look up at him, searching his eyes, but all I can see is the hue of the purple and blue bruising around his eye and cheek and blood trickling from his nose. All evidence of his need to self-punish because ofme.

“Maybe we just need some time,” he says a little too hopefully. “To let it sink in. It’s all fucked up.”

Time. Everything in life comes down to time.

His eyes lock onto mine, endless pools of blue sucking me in. “I meant what I said earlier.”

“I did too,” I whisper.

Nothing could ever change that.

“Then that’s what we have to focus on, right?”

I want to believe him… but his entire life has been built aroundfocusing on the bad things that have happened to him. It’s why he hides out here, ostracizing himself from his friends and family. How is he going to move past that awful night, now that we both know what happened? How will I?

I wait on the couch while he showers. I accept that I’m going to need to talk to Dr. Reynolds first thing next week to discuss all this. I’ve always felt regret over the boy being pushed into the fire, but now that I know it was Tyler, it adds a whole new level of insurmountable guilt. I’ll probably be in therapy for the rest of my life trying to come to terms with this, but no matter what, I won’t let it come between us.

“What are you thinking about?” Tyler asks when he comes back to the living room in a pair of black gym shorts. I’m relieved to see him without blood all over his face, not to mention that terrible mask.

“Everything… how so many bad things happened to you in your life because of that one moment… I want to go back and undo it. I want to somehow change all of it for both of us.” I shake my head and try to fight back tears. “What did we do to deserve this?”

“I wish I knew. I just stood in that shower ’til the water turned ice cold trying to get my head around this… because if I don’t, I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind. And you. I won’t let that happen.” He stares at the floor for a few moments, chewing the inside of his cheek nervously before he continues. “If those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been living out here. I never would have found you in that hole.” He sits on the couch next to me, our legs touching. “It happened the way it had to happen. I guess I was given a second chance to save you, and I didn’t fuck it up this time. It was worth it. You’re safe. And we found each other.”

I shake my head, still filled with so much guilt I feel nauseous. I can’t stand the fact that anything I did, accidental or not, has caused so much pain in his life.

“I don’t know, Ty,” I reply with tears spilling onto my cheeks. “I would rather have never been found than have you ever get hurt.”

A deep sigh pushes his chest up and down. “And I would fall into that fire a thousand times to be able to save you.”

An ache soars from my heart and lodges in my chest. “In my books, love doesn’t come with such awful repercussions. It makes everyone happy.”

He flips his damp hair out of his face and turns to me, his eyes filled with determination. “I think you have to let those books go, sugar. This… what we’re dealing with right here is reality. It’s ugly and it fucking hurts like hell, but it’s real. Life ain’t no fairy tale. If we want this to work, we have to accept that.”