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Elena

I had been home for weeks. It didn’t feel like home anymore. Everything was too normal. Too loud. Too… city. In the wilderness, there was only silence and an expanse of hopelessness. It didn’t feel that here. I had food. Water. Clothes. Heat. But it was almost too much.

The walls were the same pale blue, my couch was still the overstuffed, soft piece in the center of my living room, and my bed was still the same thick, coziness it had always been. Even the air had the same scent of fresh flowers and linen as if nothing tragic had happened.

But I had happened.

The crash had happened.

Dean was dead.

I was not the same person who left here months ago, even though I was doing everything possible to reclaim that role. It was slowly killing me.

I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. Knowing that I’d consumed human flesh, that I’d used his body to survive, that I’d been lied to in order to do it, my choice was taken from me.

I sighed. Deep down, I knew I could have said no to the “food,” but I was told it was a fucking deer. I believed. I trusted. The way my blue eyes were hollow now, the way my body moved and felt, the way everything just felt so goddamn wrong with every breath.

It was overwhelming.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Dean. I couldn’t stop seeing him in my dreams. In my nightmares. I couldn’t stop feeling Troy’s hands on me as he touched and whispered sweet words to me. Or Adrian’s lips and the way he held me and pushed into my body.

Remembering the way their hot, muscular bodies felt pressed against mine, the way they could make me moan their names with just a breath, the way they made me finally feel loved and wanted. I had believed it all.

I had fallen so damn hard.

My therapist said it came from years of being ignored. Adding the trauma of the accident to it had been a recipe for all this turmoil I was feeling. Then the lies. Eating Dean. I thought they only let it happen because they’d always hated me. There was confusion at them saying they loved me. My therapist suggested it wasn’t their intent to hurt me, but trauma needs comfort, and I was what was familiar and available to them. It wasn’t love. It was human nature and would have happened with any woman they were stranded with.

I wasn’t special.

It was trauma.

FUCKING TRAUMA.

Did I believe that? I wasn’t sure. It felt real, but I was confused now that we were free. It was more of a me problem than a them problem. I knew they were trying to reach out to me. Steve told me they were. I just couldn’t. I wasn’t in the right headspace to deal with it all yet.

I continued to see my therapist, but I honestly didn’t know why at this point. Her words always felt hollow, like she was going through the motions and regurgitating her DSM manual back at me.

I was going to cut ties with her, too. Pills and bullshit aside, I was done. The pills made me feel even more hollow, but they also put me in a daze that helped me cope easier. It didn’t stop my negative thoughts from intruding from time to time.

Was I the girl on the plane who survived, or was I the girl in my living room staring out my window into the busy city streets ?

I didn’t know who I was anymore; that was where all my problems started.

Zara had been checking in constantly, but I barely spoke. I barely existed these days.

I just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on me. There was no way to escape the inevitability of everything.

I didn’t have the answers. Maybe I never would.

Zara came over again today. She had been pushing gently, waiting for me to divulge everything to her finally. Today seemed like the perfect day to do it. Everything was piling up, and I felt like I was losing my damn mind.

I stared into her eyes, my heart cracking all over again as we sat on my couch, eating pints of ice cream.

“I loved them,” I choked out. “Gave myself to them. I still love them, and it’s killing me inside. Knowing they lied about Dean.” I gave her a desperate look. She stared back at me with so much compassion and love on her face before I continued. “I would have died before I’d have-have eaten him. I’d have died. They took that choice from me. I-I did unspeakable things because of their lies. I-I would ha-have never…” My voice cracked, and that was it. I was done for.

She wrapped me in a tight embrace, rocking me as I sobbed.

“It’s OK. You’re loved, you know that, right? What happened out there doesn’t change who you are on the inside. You’re a good person. Dean knew you were. He loved you for being who you were. If you’re worried about what he thought, don’t be. You knew him, Elena. He’d have wanted you to survive by any means necessary. Don’t forget that.”

I shook against her, trying to log her words away so I could retrieve them later when I felt the guilt killing me.

“You didn’t kill him, babe. The crash did. You did nothing wrong,” she whispered. “You didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Please don’t think you did. As for the guys, they wanted you to live. They did what they had to, just like you did. Don’t harbor anger, Elena. You’re too good for that. You’re loved. You’re so damn loved.”

I expected disgust from her. Judgement. But she just continued to hold me as I sobbed into her shoulder. Telling me I was still Elena. I was still me. I was a good person, and I was a survivor.

And for a moment, I almost believed her.

Then, she said the words that destroyed me all over again once I had my wits about me and had calmed.

“Troy and Adrian are coming back.”

I stilled, my stomach twisted into knots. I knew they’d be back. They lived here, but I guess I hadn’t prepared myself to see them again.

She hesitated before pulling out her phone and opening social media. She scrolled for a moment.

“I didn’t want to tell you before,” she said carefully. “But since they’re coming back, you should know.”

She turned the screen toward me.

I stared.

Pictures of Troy and Amanda together. Amanda crying on the news, begging for her fiancé to come home. Her engagement ring flashing in every photo. Every word in her caption felt like a knife to my chest.

"Please bring my Troy home. We’re getting married. He asked me to marry him just weeks before he left. We didn’t even get to announce it to family and friends properly. I can't live without him."

Fiancé.

Not ex-fiancé. Not ex-boyfriend. Not a friend.

He had told me she didn’t matter. I had believed him. I hadn’t even asked or pressed the subject.

I had simply blindly believed, just like I’d done with the deer situation. My therapist’s words came back into my head.

It was a trauma bond. You are special, Elena, but at that moment, you were comfort, not love. Only once you learn the difference and accept it will you be able to move past it and heal. Now, about Dean…

I felt sick.

Zara must have seen it in my face because she wrapped her arms around me, holding me tight again.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “You don’t deserve this. I didn’t want you to be blindsided when they returned, and Amanda was all over Troy.”

But I did. It was punishment for being such a damn idiot. For believing in more when there simply wasn’t anything there but survival and basic fucking human instincts.

That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

My therapist was right. It wasn’t real. It had never been real. She repeated it so much and kept pointing things out to me that I began to believe her.

I had been hurt and scared. I’d needed comfort and companionship. It was human nature at its finest. And that was OK. It was OK to need that.

It wasn’t OK to let those feelings turn my life upside down because deep down inside, I wanted to believe it was real. That I hadn’t been a necessity in a moment of desperation. Maybe I wanted to believe I was special and mattered to them. My therapist kept saying these things to me.

They made sense.

At least on paper, but damn my heart.

I breathed out, accepting this wasn’t something I could deal with. Not right now. Not face to face because I knew they’d come to my house and demand I talk to them.

Why if they didn’t love me, and it was a trauma response?

Because they were just as confused as I was, that’s what my therapist told me when I asked that question. She continued that they were my brothers, and sex with them bordered on something incredibly unhealthy. It was something we’d be addressing in my next session with her .

The thought made me sick.

I wanted to keep that memory intact that it had been simply sweet lovemaking, even the night Adrian fucked me for the last time. When he knew I was crying and didn’t want him. He’d fucked me anyway, coming deep inside my body, tears on his face.

I should have left all these memories behind when I left the mountain.

That was impossible; the only way to escape those memories was to escape them . Troy and Adrian.

I had to. I couldn’t be here when they arrived.

There was no way I could look into Troy’s face and pretend I wasn’t dying inside.

I wouldn’t be able to see Adrian and think there wasn’t anything more there than he was my brother.

I wouldn’t stick around to be their second choice. Troy had Amanda. A fiancée. I wouldn’t be a goddamn home wrecker on top of everything else I was.

As much as I disliked Amanda, she deserved better than me hanging around and ruining things for her. In the big scheme of things, I was doing this to help all of us. This needed to happen if they were just as confused as I was.

So I would go.

I would leave everything behind and get myself right in the head. If, in time, my heart still felt the way it did, so be it. I’d accept that I had fallen in love, and it was more than a mountain sickness and trauma. If they still felt that way, and our paths crossed someday, we’d cross that bridge when we got there. For now, I would set fire to that bridge and hope I was doing the right thing.

I swung my legs over the bed and grabbed my crutches, my ankle throbbing with every movement.

I limped to the dresser and grabbed my clothes before stuffing them into my suitcase. I took everything of value I had, leaving behind the big things. I’d call Zara in the morning. She could have everything else. I wanted to start over, and seeing all my old stuff wouldn’t be helpful. I’d even get new clothes and pitch out my old ones once I was far away from here.

I made my way to the garage, pulling my suitcase behind me as I tried to limp to my car. It took several trips to get everything down, but I finally made it.

I opened the trunk and stuffed everything that would fit into it before tossing the rest into the backseat. Then I got behind the wheel and stared at the cement wall in front of me, my hands clutching the steering wheel.

My hands shook. My heart pounded.

I had no idea where I was going or what the hell I was even doing.

All I knew was that I had to go. I needed to be free of everything, and staying behind wasn’t helping me heal and get my head sorted.

I took a deep breath and turned my car on before I put it into reverse, thanking God my left ankle had not been injured. I could at least still drive.

I pulled out of the garage and made a right, away from the city, away from the campus, away from the girl who died on the plane that day.

Here was to new beginnings. Here was to… me.

And hopefully, us.