Page 63 of Moving Forward

“But she’s whole with you, isn’t she?” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I guess you don’t need to answer that. I already know it’s true. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.” She lets out a choked sob. “You of all people, Cain. You. That’ll never cease to amaze me. Of all the men in the world to move on with, she chose you. I’ve never liked you, not after what you’ve done, but after seeing you two together yesterday and how she’s been genuinely smiling and laughing and living . . . I started to see what she saw in you. This time I’m really and truly forcing myself to give you a chance. I’m telling myself to let the past go.”

I run my hand over my chin. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“But it does! You don’t get to walk into her life and just walk away. You have to stay and own the fact that you are a part of it. Letting her go . . . it would be your worst mistake. Please don’t act like a coward and pretend it’s what’s best for her. There’s nothing admirable about that. What I did was wrong too. I shouldn’t have said the things I did, because she should be the one who gets to decide what’s good for her and what isn’t. Not you. Not me. Only her.”

She points outward, toward the street. My eyes follow her arm, a glimmer of hope that Max might be standing there. Only I’m kidding myself. That would make the choice easy. Wrong, maybe. But easy. And I know if she’d been the one to show up today, I would’ve thrown caution to the wind to be with her.

Such a fucking stupid, selfish asshole.

I grit my teeth, itching to rip my scars open and let them bleed. To pay for what I’ve done. To remember I’m alive and Max almost wasn’t.

Ellie concentrates on my face, her expression intent. “Sometimes I worry there are things we can’t come back from.”

My brows furrow. That’s not what I expected her to say. “Your friendship with Max?” I ask.

She leans back, obviously surprised I’m not trying to shut down the conversation. “Maybe. Here I am calling you a coward, but I’m just as guilty of being one. I’m yelling at you for running away when I’m running forward—too fast, too hard—and that’s just as bad. It’s what I’ve been doing since Ethan died. I haven’t slowed down for a second, not even to breathe. And I’m dragging everyone along with me.”

She stops trying to wipe away her tears and lets them fall. All I can do is watch her, paralyzed. With Max, I instantly wanted to bring her into my arms. The second I saw her, I was connected to her. Ellie is a different story. She’s someone I can barely call an acquaintance, let alone a friend. I have no idea how to react, how to comfort her—if I even want to comfort her.

She sucks in her bottom lip. “Max just . . . she just stopped. Danny did too. And me? I kept going. . . . My twin died and I kept going. Who does that? That’s not healthy. It’s definitely not human.”

My instincts finally kick in and I crouch down in front of her. I should know what to do in this situation. If there’s one thing I know all too well about, it’s breakdowns.

“Everyone grieves differently.” I lift my arm and draw back my sleeve, allowing her to see a lifetime’s worth of damage. My skin is mangled and scarred by my own hand, just like I am. “There’s no way to know the right and wrong ways to react. What should work and what does work are not necessarily the same thing.”

She sniffles. “And what you do, does it work?”

“I’m consumed by my own grief. Does it look like it’s working?”

“No.”

“And is your way working for you?”

“No. I still miss him. I still hate him for leaving me. I still have so much blame inside of me. And sadness and . . .” She rambles into silence. “Does that mean we can’t come back from tragedy?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I admit. “I used to not think so. I thought once life took a turn, it didn’t take another. We were stuck on a continuous highway of suffering and devastation and destruction—or at least I was.”

“But you got off that highway, and you don’t believe that anymore,” she continues for me hopefully.

“There was an exit. I took it, but now I’m back on. It’s a cycle.”

“It’s a breakable cycle, though. Right?” Her thin eyebrows come together and the pleading look she gives me . . . I see Max in it. That look tells me just how close their bond is, that they’ve spent so much time together their personalities are interwoven.

At this moment, I can see why Max has fought so hard for this friendship and why she’s so afraid to lose it. Even I want to fight for it. So I do the one thing I never thought possible: I comfort Ellie. I cup my hand over her shoulder and lie. “Yes. It’s breakable.”

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