He kept staring. I kept breaking.

“And then she has the nerve to spray my pillow?! As if she misses me?!” I huffed and puffed, my face heating up. I pounded my hand against my chest. “Gabby was my twin! If anyone should have fallen apart, it should’ve been me!”

I was both furious and nervous. Furious because Mom had turned to alcohol when she could have turned to me. And nervous because I was afraid to see her broken.

Moving over to Gabby’s bed, I started ripping her comforter off, tossing her pillows to the side, tossing her sheets to the ground. “She’s not coming home, Mom!” I cried into the air.

Next, I hit Gabby’s posters, tearing them down. I reached for the photos and started tearing those to the ground, too. Daniel wrapped his arms around me and pulled me off of the bed.

“Ashlyn, stop,” he ordered.

I couldn’t. My mind had been taken away from me by the sadness, by the memories. How dare Mom order me to leave. How dare Henry take care of me. How dare Gabrielle get cancer. How dare Ryan kill himself!

“I gave Ryan a place to stay. We were supposed to sleep it off and figure things out in the morning. Rebecca calmed down. She wanted him to come home. Hailey needed him… What an asshole. He’s an as**ole for dying!”

It wasn’t fair. They’d all left me when I would have done anything to stay with them. I would have given them all the love they needed.

Why wasn’t I enough?

He was holding me around my waist, yet I kept kicking and screaming. “Let me go!” He held on tighter. I started kicking my legs around, clawing my fingernails into his arms, trying to rip his hold of me away. My howls grew deeper and the pain only intensified. “Let me go!”

“No.” He held on and placed me against a wall to control my kicks. My body landed against the cold wall and I cried. “I’m never letting you go, Ashlyn. I’m never letting you go.”

“You will! You will let me go.”

My stomach twisted and I felt like I was going to vomit. He wasn’t trying to, but he was lying to me.

Because everyone always let go.

My vision began to blur over and I felt lightheaded.

“You’re having a panic attack,” Daniel whispered against me as my breathing started to increase. My insides tightened. “Calm down for me, sweets. Steady your breathing.” He turned me around so I was facing him. I yanked on his shirt, pulling him closer to me.

I lost it.

Completely lost it.

But he was still there.

We sat on the couch, facing toward the front door. When I heard keys jingling, my heart pounded against my ribcage. The door opened slowly and I saw Mom walking in with Jeremy behind her.

I stood to my feet and heard Mom gasp. Tears built up in her eyes and her shoulders slumped.

I was supposed to be mad.

I was supposed to hate her.

But all I could do was hug her, pull her to me, and cry into her. I didn’t know what to think of the exchange between the two of us.

And maybe tomorrow, I would be mad again.

And maybe when I went back to Wisconsin, I would hate her once more.

But right now? On Christmas afternoon?

Right now, we were just two people made to screw up, f**k up, and learn new things. We were made perfectly imperfect.

Chapter 38

Snow falls soft.

I love you slowly.

~ Romeo’s Quest

Those few days in Chicago, Mom and I didn’t figure things out. We didn’t work on our issues.

We mourned the first Christmas without Gabby. On New Year’s Eve, we cleaned out the bedroom, too. Mom lifted up Gabby’s guitar and smiled toward Daniel. “You can have it.”

He frowned. “I can’t.”

“Please,” Mom whispered, running her fingers over the guitar strings. “It deserves to be played.”

Daniel looked over to me and I smiled, nodding.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the guitar into his hands. As Mom and I folded up the last of the clothes to send the Goodwill, Daniel played Gabby’s guitar.

“Do you know any Beatles?” I asked him. Mom looked up toward him and smiled, waiting for his answer.

He played Let It Be, singing quietly. His voice was smoother than I’d ever heard it before. It gave me the best kinds of chills. Outside the window, snow fell at a tamed speed, falling against the tree branches, falling against every inch of Chicago.

And when the clock struck midnight, everyone cried.

“What do you think?” I asked Daniel as we arrived back at the train station in Edgewood. “Do you think she’ll be able to stop drinking?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I hope she does.”

“Me too.” I looked around and smiled at Daniel. We stood in a hidden corner by the payphones in the Amtrak station. “She wants me to come back to live with her…to work on our relationship.”

He nodded slowly. “I know.”

My voice whispered with the next topic. Mom had given me the letter from the college of my dreams on the way out. “I got into the University of Southern California.”

“I know,” he repeated. “Of course you did.” His head lowered to the ground. “No matter what, no matter how hard we try…why do I feel like I’m going to lose you?”

I felt it, too. But I couldn’t voice it. “Okay, well, Henry is going to pick me up soon. I’ll call you later? Otherwise I’ll see you at school this week.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him on his lips, trying to give him ease to his doubt. He lightly tugged on my bottom lip and I sighed against his mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

As I watched him walk toward the door, my heart tightened. After our final exams in a few weeks, there was a whole new semester where Daniel and I would have to pretend to not be in love. Only this time, I wouldn’t be in his class. The idea of going through that again was painful. I wanted to be selfish. I wanted him to quit his job. I wanted him to run away with me, but I knew he couldn’t. He loved teaching. He loved his band. His home was here in Edgewood.

And what about college? I’d gotten into the University of Southern California. My dream school. That would be four years away from Daniel—four more years of separation.

We had gone one semester with being surrounded by each other and it had almost been the end of me. A raw truth was settling into my head as I studied him outside the building. I’d fallen in love with the right guy at the wrong time.

“Hey, Ashlyn.”

Jumping out of my skin, I turned around at the sound of my name. “Jake, you scared me. What are you doing here?”

“Just got back from my grandparents’…” He gave me a grimace look. “Were you just kissing Mr. Daniels?”

My mouth dried up and I coughed. “What?”

“You were just kissing Mr. Daniels.” He said it as a fact, but it hit my ears as a question.

I studied him intensely as he rotated his body toward the exit, pointing to Daniel, who was standing outside waiting for a taxi. I could feel the vomit climbing up my throat.

Laughing nervously, I yanked up my suitcase handle and started to roll it away from him. My legs felt like Jell-O. My mind felt like mush. “I gotta meet Henry…” I muttered.

We messed up.

We’d gotten too comfortable. We’d touched too much. We’d slipped.

Footsteps were following me, and I frowned at the sound of them. “Ashlyn! Listen, you’re a smart girl. But hooking up with your teach—” Jake’s mouth was yapping and yapping.

My hand flew to his lips, shutting him up. “Shut up, Jake! Shut up!” I was going to cry. No, correction—I was crying.

“Oh my gosh, it’s true,” he muttered, stepping back. “He’s the guy?! He’s the one?! Oh my gosh, Ashlyn!”

He was pacing back and forth. I looked toward the exit and saw Henry’s truck parked in the front of the station. My fingers ran across my eyes, and I tried my best to pull my panicked self together.

My entire body shook, my hands trembling.

“Don’t say anything…” I whispered.

Jake gave me a harsh look of disbelief.

I walked away, not looking back once. But I could feel his eyes still staring at me. Judging me. Losing all respect for who he thought he could someday love.

Chapter 39

I’m not afraid of losing you.

I’m more afraid of losing me.

Don’t make me choose. Because I’ll choose you.

~ Romeo’s Quest

First-hour chemistry was something I feared on the first day back to school. I didn’t want to come face to face with Jake. I didn’t want him to look at me with disappointment glowing in his eyes.

When I stepped into the classroom, I heard everyone whispering. I wasn’t sure if it was because Ryan was dead or because I looked like death, but they whispered along. Jake was sitting at our lab table, and when he saw me, I gave him a small smile.

His lips curved up a bit.

Only a small, tiny hair, but it was enough for me right now.

“Hey,” I said, taking my seat.

“Hey, Ashlyn,” he chuckled, stressing my name. “I panicked…when I saw”—he cleared his throat and moved in closer to me—“what I saw. I understand completely though.”

My heart pounded aggressively. “You do?”

“Of course, Ash. You lost your sister. Then you lost Ryan. You were an easy target for the asshole.”

“He’s not an asshole!” I cried, seeing that Jake definitely didn’t understand.

He took my hand in his and held on to it. I wanted to rip it from his grip, but I didn’t. Jake didn’t know the history of Daniel and me. I couldn’t expect him to understand.

“I’ll make him regret using you though,” he whispered with order in his tone. “He’ll regret hurting you.”

“Jake! No, please. You don’t understand.”

He didn’t reply. His mind was already made up.

And I saw it happening. My life was once again falling apart.

It never even had a chance to fall back together.

I walked down the hallways after chemistry feeling as if my heart were resting underneath my shoe. I wished I’d had Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, which would make me disappear right then and there. Hailey hadn’t made it back to school yet, and I understood completely.

The looks of pure sadness that were delivered my way were intense and forced my eyes to water every now and then. When I reached my locker, I looked down and saw Daniel standing in his doorway, staring directly at me. His cool eyes held a wicked amount of guilt and hurt, and I tried my best to crack a smile. He must have heard the whispering crowds, too. He stepped forward toward me and I shook my head back and forth.

The only person who could comfort me wasn’t allowed to. The only person I wanted to run his fingers through my hair and hold me against his chest had to stay at a distance.

“I don’t care,” he mouthed, and my heart was breaking into a million useless pieces.

I shrugged my shoulders and the tears started to pour from my eyes. “I do,” I mouthed back to him before I lowered my head. I cried into my locker and gasped for air as the overwhelming memories of death proceeded to surface in my soul.

Why were Gabby and Ryan dead? And why in the hell did I deserve to be alive?

I choked on my tears when a reality set in.

I ruined lives. I was certain I did. I’d ruined Gabby’s life. I’d ruined Ryan’s. I’d ruined Henry’s and Mom’s. And I was on the pathway of ruining Daniel’s, too.

Before I knew it, two arms were wrapped around me and pulling me closer to their body. I looked up and saw Daniel still standing at his classroom door, tears fighting to escape his eyes, but I was thankful of his choice to keep his distance.