Page 46 of Until Forever Falls

It’s too much. The diner, the way she’s looking at me, saying my name like it’s something sacred. My stomach twists so violently it’s a wonder I don’t get sick right here on the diner floor.

I glance past her, scanning the space for something—an excuse, a way out, a vase, anything. But there’s nothing.

“I’ve thought of you every single day since you left. How are you? Are you in town long? Do you have time to talk?”

I should’ve expected this, but nothing could have prepared me for the way her words snag against old wounds, stirring up the very things I’ve spent years trying to bury.

“Um,” my response stumbles, leaving my mouth in pieces. “I…don’t know.”

It’s a lie, a weak patch over something splitting at the seams. I know it won’t hold, but letting anything else show isn’t an option.

Wet trails carve through her cheeks, tracing the hills and valleys that age has gently sculpted in my absence. Time has reshaped her in ways I wasn’t around to witness. My eyes drop to her hands, searching for steadiness in the small details: the slight shake of her fingers, the fine lines etched into her palms. Feeble distractions. Anything to keep myself from breaking down in front of her.

She steps back, hands disappearing as if the contact now burns her. Another pass over her cheeks, her eyes scanning mine, hoping for something I can’t give.

“Okay. I understand.” Her voice falters, cracking with emotion. “You look…absolutely beautiful, Dylan.”

It doesn’t make sense. Beautiful?She’scalling me beautiful? It feels absurd, a mistake in a narrative I don’t recognize. Not after everything that’s happened Not from her.

“Thanks.”

“I’d really love to talk…even just for a minute.” She presses forward, insistent, needling her way through my defenses. My focus darts to Brooks, a wordless plea for him to intervene.

As if on cue, he stands, the slight shift of his weight making the stool creak beneath him. “We should get going,” he says smoothly, offering me his hand. “Don’t want to be late.”

His palm presses against mine, his hold unwavering. He doesn’t rush to pull away, offering Ruby and unspoken sentiment only she seems to catch.

She breathes out slowly, her eyes holding mine. “Dylan, honey, make sure to come back to the diner before you go.”

I try to smile, but it falters before it fully forms. Relief hovers just beyond reach. The door is right there, an escape waiting to be taken. But just as I move, cold fingers catch my wrist, tugging me back. I swivel, unsteady facing the one person I was sure would have no problem letting me go.

“I ne—” The sound she makes isn’t quite a word, more a fractured attempt at one. “I need to say I’m sorry. I did…saidthings I can’t justify, and I regret them all. If you never want to see me again, I get it. But I—” She squeezes her eyes shut, and when they open again, she looks like she’s afraid of what I’ll do with her words. “I love you. I always have, even when I could never show it.”

It’s a bomb to the part of me that still remembers, still aches—no matter how much I’ve tried to forget. Time folds in on itself, and suddenly I’m not here anymore. I’m years behind, small hands gripping the edge of a hope that always felt just out of reach. Love? After everything she put us through, the word feels like a cruel joke.

She clings to me for a moment before her grip weakens and falls away. “I’m still at the old house. If you decide you’re open to talking, there’s a lot I’d really like you to know.”

I make my exit without another word. One foot in front of the other until I’m outside, the truck ahead of me. The click of the door unlocking is the only sound I focus on as I climb in and close myself off.

Brooks doesn’t ask if I’m okay, and I’m grateful for it. I rub my palms against my legs, but no matter how much friction I create, I can still feel her there.

I thought I was stronger than this—that years away would’ve given me enough distance to make this bearable. But being here now, in Rockport, with the past pressing in from all angles, I realize how naïve that was. My mom’s voice, her apology, the ghosts I’ve never invited back—they claw their way up, and suddenly, I can’t stop it. And just like that, I lose the fight.

When the truck eases to a stop, I don’t need to ask where we are. I know. Washburn Heights. As I take in the view that once felt like everything, I realize Brooks brought me here for a reason—it’s the one place that might still hold the illusion of escape.

The view hasn’t changed—the town still sprawls toward the ocean, the beach still sits where it always has—but the feeling is different. Depleted. The trees that used to shield this place, that made it feel like our own private world, have vanished. The last time Brooks and I were here it felt like a promise. Now, it feels like a reminder of everything we lost.

At seventeen, I hadn’t been searching for a place to belong, but that night staring out at the endless sky from Brooks’ truck, I found one. I didn’t know it then, but he planted something deep—an all consuming feeling I wouldn’t name until much later.

“Rockport was supposed to be a closed chapter,” I say, more to the wind than to him. “But then I saw you, and it hit me—I’ve never really left any of it behind.. I ran as far as I could, pushed it down so deep I thought it was gone. Now I’m here, and I don’t know how to put myself back together.”

His fingers skim the truck’s hood, tapping out in a slow, uneven rhythm. “Have you visited him?”

The question is a match to a room soaked in gasoline. “No. ” My confession sears through me as I admit it out loud, a merciless fucking wildfire that leaves nothing untouched. It doesn’t just wound, it annihilates, charring the truth into the marrow of my bones. My heart was never meant to hold on, only to burn itself to ash with the things it was stupid enough to want.

“Dylan.” It’s not a suggestion. It’s not a plea. It’s a verdict. “You can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

His statement unearths something feral, something gutted and left to rot in the ruins of a life I once hoped for. “Then tell me Brooks—what the hell am I supposed to do instead? Lay down and let the pain eat me alive? Pretending is the only reason I’m still fucking standing.”

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