Page 171 of Catch the Sun

I blink, a sobbing breath catching in my throat.

Red brake lights flare. The RV jerks to a sudden stop up ahead.

I gasp again, this time with disbelief. My heart races and my legs start to move. A slow, cautious jog morphs into a full-out run when I see Ella spill out of the driver’s side and land on her feet, staring at me from a few yards away.

The door hangs open.

She cries out.

And she runs.

She jogs toward me with a partial limp and I dash forward with renewed strength, my adrenaline spiking, hope firing in my chest. “Ella!”

“Max,” she chokes, the space between us thinning. The distance dwindling.

“Ella.”

We meet in the middle and she throws herself at me, her legs coiling around my waist as I drop to my knees, my arms holding her tight. “Max…Max,” she weeps against my neck, gripping my hair with both hands. “I’m sorry.”

I kiss every inch of her tearstained face, crying with her. “God, Sunny. I thought you were gone.”

“I couldn’t… I–I saw you running and I–I thought about that day my dad drove me away. I couldn’t leave you without a goodbye. Not again.” A ragged, mournful wail is muffled by my neck as she trembles in my arms.

“Ella…I can’t accept this money,” I grit out, squeezing her tight. “I can’t. It’s too much. Don’t you dare leave me with this.”

“Take it,” she cries. “Please.”

“No…the money is nothing without you. My life is nothing without you.”

She shakes her head. “Your father needs you, Max. You need each other.”

“I needyou.”

We rock together in the middle of the road, both of us in ruins.

With her lips pressed to my collar and her arms wrapped around me, she breathes out raggedly, “I need you, too. I’ll always need you, b-but…I can’t stay.”

Pain.

Raw, violent pain crashes down on me.

Devastation competes with knowing, both funneling through me as I clutch her, feeling her soft hair sift through my fingers. “Sunny…”

“I can’t, Max,” she sobs. “I–I can’t stay. I have to leave. Even though it hurts, it hurts so bad, Ineedto do this. I need to figure out who I am outside of this town. Outside of all this tragedy.”

I think about everything she’s been through. How broken she’s been. How lost.

I think of her dreams, her precious, hard-fought dreams that shedeservesto live out.

A horse farm in Michigan. A starlit sky beaming down on her. A quiet, simple life in her RV with books at her feet and wind in her hair as she gallops bareback and free on her favorite horse.

A peaceful life.

A life away from all this pain, all these sad reminders.

She can’t stay.

And I can’t go.

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