I’m broken. She broke me.
An ugly laugh rips from me, shooting ice straight to my gut. I was so fucking consumed with taking in her details in London that I missed the important ones. I saw the scars from her accident but missed the ones where she meant to take her life. Maybe I didn’t want to see them. Maybe I didn’t want to face that truth when there were so many lies between us.
“People can say what they want about Everly and Hudson,” Julia says from behind me. “Good or bad, they only ever wanted love, and I wasn’t enough.”
I wipe my palms against my trousers as I stand, listening to the gravel grind as Julia opens the door to go back down to the hospital.
“If you love Everly, don’t give up on her, Beckett.”
When I was blindfolded and kidnapped in Afghanistan, the man who held me at gunpoint used to count down before he squeezed the trigger to taunt me. I was stronger than that. I never flinched, not even when the shot hit the ceiling and plaster rained down on me.
I hear his girlish laugh while he did this. I hear his countdown start inside my head. I flinch now because he broke me and I thought I was getting better, but Everly broke me, too. She broke me in a different place altogether. I’m not sure if it’s worse to be broken in the head or the heart. The madness feels the same. It’s still the same raw hurt, the unbundled nerves, the intense panic.
Ten, nine, eight…
I look over Nice, at the lights, at the palms rocking in the warm breeze.
Seven, six, five…
I race down the steps two at a time, flying past her floor until I’m outside the main entrance.
Four, three, two…
I’m in a cab to the hotel, my head in my hands.
One.
I phone the only other person I know who can get me on a plane and get me the fuck out of here.
Everly
I sleep most of the next day. I have nothing else to do, really. So I sleep, and when I’m awake, I stare at the clock and wish I was sleeping again. The clock must still be broken because it takes ages for 3:45 to become 3:46.
I’m brushing out the sand still stuck in my hair when Beckett bursts into my hospital room, not looking at me as he closes the door. He glances over his shoulder, out into the hall.
I laugh because it seems like he’s being chased. “Robbed a bank?” I ask, setting down the comb. I brush the sand off my pillow and smile at him, though it wobbles before it catches.
My heart clutches when he finally meets my gaze. His face is pale, there are bags beneath his eyes, and he smells like stale cigarette smoke and Irish coffee. He stays slumped against the door, staring back at me, for the longest breath of my life.
“Beckett?”
“I haven’t been allowed to see you.” His voice is hoarse.
“I didn’t tell them not—”
He holds up his hand, shaking his head. “I don’t have time for your shit, Everly.”
I grip the blankets, cold again. Alone. “Sorry.” I can’t look at him now. I think I might start crying, and I’ve avoided that so far in here. Somehow.
“Tell me what happened.” Beckett pushes off from the door and stands beside the bed, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He’s studying me with those blue eyes. They’re bloodshot, exhaustion pulling heavy over his features.
I’ve done this. There’s a reason I’ve spent two days alone in the hospital. No one wants me. I’ve chased Beckett away, too. It makes me painfully aware of something else I’ve been trying to avoid by sleeping. I would do anything to have him hug me right now, to kiss me, to tell me that I’m going to be okay.
I need someone to tell me I’ll be okay because I’m really not sure anymore. I don’t trust myself to know.
“It was just an accident.”
He laughs, a dry bark that’s empty. His hands ruffle his hair as he hangs his head and draws in a deep breath. It’s pitched like a whistle, high, but it hits me in the gut like he just pulled out a gun and shot me. Finally—finally—he looks at me again.
“It’s always just something with you, Everly.” He shifts his feet, his voice rough. “You’re just a girl or it’s just a scratch. You fucking overdosed and you’ve been so sad—don’t tell me it was an accident.”
“They weren’t calming me down.”
“So you kept taking them? When? I was with you…”
He stops there, realizing that he hadn’t been with me the entire time. The hard line of his lips breaks me a little more.
I push up higher in bed, angry now. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Beckett. You have to believe me.”
“I don’t have to do anything. I was breathing for you on that beach. I thought you were dead. You were…” His voices drops and shakes. His chest rises and falls before he whispers darkly, “I was holding you, and you were dying.”
“I’m fine now so—”
Beckett spins and slams his fist into the wall. I flinch, tears pricking my eyes. He rests his head against the dented plaster, his hands braced on either side of his face, and things go quiet again. I wait for a nurse to rush in from the noise, for another burst of anger, for anything but the eerie silence of the break that just split us apart.
“I’m sorry.” I slide down in bed and curl up. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes are wet when he drops into the chair beside me. He drags it closer, but I close my eyes, afraid I’m actually going to start sobbing. I can’t break Beckett, too, but I’m worried it’s too late for that. I know what has to happen now, but I don’t want it to. I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want things to be different. I want to be that other girl—the happy one who danced in the rain. I want the chance to have what we shared in London again.
He grabs my hand and softly kisses my knuckles. I open my eyes, and his lips travel over the faded scars on my wrist, over my hospital bracelet, pressing another kiss on the heart of my palm. And then he leans forward and pulls me tight against him, and the tears that have been building finally burst and I cry.
I cry for everything I’ve lost and my mistakes—the things I can’t take back. I cry for Nathan, for the ugliness between me and my parents, for losing Hudson. I cry for Michael and the lies he told me. I cry for the baby I lost when I was hopeless. I cry for the goodbye about to come because I can feel it in the way Beckett holds me. I should have expected this. Dominoes, right?
“You’re not just a girl, Everly. Not to me. Fuck, you’re—” His lips are wet with my tears. “I love you. You’re not just a girl to me. I promise it’ll get better. I promise you’ll be okay.”
I lean up on my elbows the best I can, and we kiss, the two of us crying. I fight back the burn from the IV digging into my arm and the clear tape pulling at my skin, unforgiving. I want the stupid thing out. I want to be out of here. I want to hear Beckett tell me he loves me again.
“Fucking Christ, I’ve done something stupid,” he says on a sigh against my ear.
I sniff back my tears and try to wipe them away, but they keep coming so I don’t stop them for once. I’m not fine. Not at all. But I think maybe now I can be one day.
“You’re preaching to the choir.” I expect to hear a laugh, but when I don’t, my chest knots up. He’s serious.
“I’m flying out in a few hours. I made a call and have a new freelancing gig. I was so mad at you.” Beckett clears his throat and sniffs. “I have to leave you today. I’m leaving.”
The idea that I won’t see him anymore is too big to comprehend, like space and its endless stars or the idea that we’re a speck on the long slip of infinity. I blink a few times, trying to pull back the hair stuck to my wet face, but it’s all tangles. I’m all tangles.
“Of course.” I try to sound understanding or happy, but it comes out sort of flat. I try to smile, but for once, that falters, too. I’m trying, but I’m failing more. “Okay.”
“No, you can’t do that with me now,” he says, his chin resting on top of my head. “You can’t tell me you’re fine with it
and lie to me and pretend things are fine, Everly. It sucks, so fucking say it.”
“Tell me again.”
He draws back, not understanding.
“Tell me that you love me again.”
Beckett climbs onto the bed and tugs me against him, covering me with the blankets, careful of the IV. He presses soft kisses over my eyes, my tear-stained cheeks, my lips—so soft, so patient—until I relax against him. “I love you, Everly.”
I laugh into his chest, my fingers curling over his shoulder. I don’t want to let go. “Then this all fucking sucks.”
“That’s the truth, pet.” He rubs his hand over my arm, warming me up.
“What are we going to do?”
He takes out his phone, and Otis Redding begins to play. I smile again, sniffing back more tears.
“We’re going to lie here together until the nurse pries me out of this bed.”
Beckett
I leave her with the promise that I’ll call. I tell her that we’ll figure us out. But on the plane, staring down at the clouds below, I’m not so sure .
All I can picture is our hands pulling apart, the look on her face when the nurse insisted I leave, the quick kiss we shared, my flimsy reassurances that things will be okay.
I hope they’ll be okay. I hope Everly will be okay. I don’t know if it’s realistic to believe I’ll ever be okay, though.
You can’t love somebody whole again. You have to love their pieces, their rough edges. The ugly and bad along with the best bits. You can love them for what they are and mourn what they’ve lost, but you can’t love them and wish they were something other than the person you hold tight. You have to love their smiles, their tears, their silences. The way they yell or snap when you get too close to their hurt. You can be there when they fall apart, but they’re the only ones who can put themselves back together. You have to love them enough to fight for them and be patient and believe that they will come through the dark, but you can never love them in hopes your love will fix them. Love is a powerful thing, but it’s not superglue.
The guy next to me is snoring and there’s a baby crying in the back, but all I can think of is having to let Everly go.
Everly
Julia visits me after Beckett leaves. I can’t say things are better between us, but at least we’re talking again. She stays with me until I officially check myself into the hospital’s rehab, something I should have done a long time ago.
When I was in that car accident with Hudson, I was ripped out of the passenger seat, and my life flew past me in the dark while shards of glass filled the air. The silence in the aftermath was the deepest I’d ever known, bottomless. It didn’t matter that we were both bleeding out, that our words were rough from the shock, or that the absence of our screams meant we might have succeeded in killing each other. It was the searchlight that broke through the shattered windshield and the hands that carefully pulled my body out of the wreckage—those mattered.
I’ve woken up alone in a hospital bed too many times now.
That thought drives me through my month of rehab. I can’t stand group or having to talk about everything, but I know it’s helping, too—that, despite the pain and discomfort, I’m slowly putting myself back together.
My counselor even helped me submit a few applications for graduate school for the winter semester. He said it would be good to focus on the future, to have a goal instead of setting off into the world aimlessly. Maybe someday I’ll pack my things up and travel around like I want, but strangely, I agree with the guy. I was never traveling—I was running, and that made all the difference. The world never felt like a big place before. I always felt shoved in a corner, desperate for an escape.
So it might be Oxford next winter, all things considered. Or Harvard or Emory. But before then, I have other plans. Julia called with an opportunity to work in London for a few months at a nonprofit which helps refugees. She said her flatmate had moved out and offered me the room. I’m not sure yet about that, if I’m ready to race through fixing that relationship, but I accepted the job offer and start in September. It’ll give me something to do, something to keep me busy and distracted until I find my way again.
In the meantime, I don’t really have a place to go now that I’m out. Part of me wants to stay in rehab because I’m not sure I trust myself in the outside world yet. I’m not sure I won’t make a mistake, and that nagging thought is constantly in my head. I spend my days volleying between hope and panic. I’m unsure about things more than ever, and it’s terrifying.
I’ve talked to Beckett a few times, but that’s strange, too. Beckett says he loves me before he hangs up, but for whatever reason, the words get stuck and I can’t say them back, even though I do. I love Beckett more than anyone in my life. I thought it would be easier to say it when you finally mean it, when you believe it wholeheartedly, but it’s not.
Maybe it’s because he’s gone now. He doesn’t talk about his new assignment. He wouldn’t even tell me where he was at first, but eventually he slipped and told me he’s reporting in Syria. Whenever we talk, he sounds worn-out and anxious, and a few times, I thought I heard gunfire in the background, though he told me it was just street noise and nothing to worry about. Except I do. I worry about what he’s doing because I know he’s not telling me everything. I worry that I’ll wake up to find out that he’s dead or kidnapped again. The weight of that threatens everything I’m trying to build back up for myself.
My old apartment is gone now. I don’t want to go home to New York, and I don’t want to see my parents. I decide to stop by the café in Paris and pick up my things from Beckett’s apartment. Nadine and I meet over coffee, avoiding the awkward conversation for the most part until she brings me up to his place.
“He’s a good guy,” she tells me, her hand on the doorknob. “Beckett does stupid shit sometimes, but he’s a good guy and I hope you’re happy together. I hope you find yourself, Everly.”
I smile at the backhanded compliment, looking up from my boxes stacked on his dining room table.
“Leave it unlocked. I’ll come by later and lock it myself.”
I wave to her, only to hear the door shut instead. She leaves without saying goodbye.
It’s startling when I first notice it. The apartment is almost bare, except for a few boxes here and there. The furniture that’s left looks lonely without the rest. The books are gone. The stacks of papers in his room are missing. The photographs have been taken down.
It feels like he’s left me for real now. Like he’s decided to take his things and move out of my heart. I get nervous at that thought, at the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s taken twenty-one years, but I realize it now—the importance of waking up in the morning. I’m tired of breathing just to get through another day. I’m here because of him, and I need to be thankful for that. I need to be thankful for what he’s done for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss him. I’m not sure I’d be good for him now, even though I’m sober. I’m afraid I’m too much of a distraction.
I go through my boxes, trying to decide what to do with them and where to go next, and then I see my ticket to Naples from Hudson and the camera tucked down into the bottom of the box, a small brown envelope next to it. I open it and find the first photo I took of Beckett, standing surprised in his doorway. I’m surprised he went through the trouble of printing these. That was the start of everything, the first time I really, truly saw him without getting in my own way.
I miss him looking at me like he did in this photo. I miss everything.
I don’t look at the rest. I tuck them back into the envelope and grab the plane ticket. I don’t know a lot of things, but I know you can’t rely on someone else to fix you. I have to do this myself.
I make my way down his stairs without crying, whispering a long goodbye until I hail a taxi. Then it’s just me again, a girl with a plane ticket, in search of a new start.
Beckett
I thought I was in hell bef
ore, but no, Syria is fucking hell. I have Ollie’s uncle to thank for the invitation and my own stupid mouth for accepting.
It’s been two months since I’ve started freelancing for his new media company again, and I think I’m finally losing my fucking mind. I live each day like I’m being hunted because I am. I have no support, no one to fall back on. If I’m caught and held for ransom, I’ll either rot waiting or be killed.
I thought having deadlines again might help. I thought the adrenaline rush might piece my fractured mind back together, but I was wrong. So. Fucking. Wrong. I’m reporting in a place where madness permeates the foul air. There’s such a frantic desperation that gnaws at me, clawing me until some nights I’m too tired to care. I report about ghosts. If they’re not dead, they will be soon. Food is so scarce, people are salvaging for weeds.
My stomach growls at the thought. I haven’t had much to eat in the past few days, either. I’ve been on the move. The village I wanted to stop at last night asked me to leave. I’m a risk to them and their safety. I’m a risk to everyone here in Syria, including myself.
I know it in my gut that leaving Damascus was a mistake, but I couldn’t ignore this lead or turn down the assignment. This is a paycheck for me, and I’ve got to make it on my own.
I thought returning to what’s been familiar to me for five years would push me forward, but listening to the wailing, seeing the blood and bodies in the street, smelling death for two months…I might as well have jumped off that hospital roof. I’m helpless and alone. Words aren’t fixing this, and though I care, though my job has purpose, I’ve turned into a ghost myself.
Gunfire rings out, echoing between the buildings. My heart slams in my chest. I should be used to this, but it still makes me flinch, the surprise of it, the way the noise seeps into my bones until reality fades and I think I’ve been shot.
Bloody hell.
Voices carry through the barrage of fire—quick rounds being shot off, others incoming. I sweep the area, watching the civilians scurrying. I push up against the wall and peek around the corner. My body is on fire, my heart racing so fast I think it might finally stop and I’ll collapse. Fear is a powerful thing. So’s the fight to survive, too. My feet move before I can think better of it.
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