Page 22 of Born to Run Back
The question hung in the air between us, thick, suffocating. What had I been grieving? The answer was so obvious, so shameful, I couldn’t even say it out loud.
I’d been grieving the end of feeling needed. The end of mattering to someone, even if that someone was a complete and utter stranger. I’d been grieving the return to my ordinary, empty life where no one’s survival depended on my actions, or even my presence.
“I think,” Delaney said very quietly, “you were grieving yourself. Your loneliness. And you used our trauma to build yourself a shrine to feel important.”
“That’s not—” But I stopped, because it was true. It absolutely was.
“The man,” she said, her gaze lifting to meet my eyes. “The one who tried to save Beck. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Because he was there. Because he witnessed you be brave for, what, half an hour?” Her smile was terrible, and horrifically empty. “But that’s not love. That’s just… grief wearing a disguise.”
We sat in silence for a long time, the weight of her words settling over me like a shroud. Around us, other visitors continued to speak in hushed tones to their own broken loved ones, but I could only hear the sound of my own shallow breathing.
“I need to go,” I finally whispered.
“Yes,” Delaney agreed. “You do.”
I rose on unsteady legs, looking down at this girl who’d survived what should have killed her, and somehow found a way to see right through me and my bullshit.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything.”
“I know you are.” For the first time, her expression slightly softened. “But being sorry doesn’t fix anything. And building shrines doesn’t bring the dead back to life.”
The drive home was a blur of tears and self-loathing, the kind of ugly crying that made driving dangerous, but all I wanted was to get back to my apartment so I could hide there. Still, I pulled over twice, once to throw up in a gas station bathroom, and once to sit in an empty parking lot and sob until my throat was raw.
By the time I arrived at my apartment, the sun was setting, painting my living room in shades of orange and red that reminded me too much of brake lights, of emergency vehicles, of everything I’d been trying so hard to forget.
I stood in my doorway, observing the evidence of my slow descent into madness. Accident reports scattered across my kitchen table. Printed photos of Delaney and Beck taped to my walls. Black charcoal sketches of twisted metal and broken glass covering every available surface.
And in the corner, a pile of smooth river stones I’d been painting, preparing for Tuesday nights that would never come again.
I’d turned my apartment into some kind of mausoleum, a shrine to trauma I’d confused for healing. But healing required facing the truth, and the truth was far uglier than I’d been willing to previously acknowledge.
I wasn’t grieving Beck Foster. I was grieving the version of myself that had finally mattered to someone, even if it was only for thirty-seven minutes. I was grieving the end of feeling needed, feeling significant, of existing outside the comfortable prison of my own loneliness.
And Theo.
God, Theo. I’d projected every romantic fantasy, every pathetic need for connection onto a stranger who’d been kind to me in the worst moment of my life. I’d confused the bond from that trauma for love. I’d confused his desperation for devotion.
The breakdown, when it came, was different from that night in Theo’s strong arms. This time, there was no one to catch me when I inevitably fell. No hard chest to sob against, no gentle, calloused hands to stroke my hair and whisper that everything was going to be okay.
This time, I fell apart completely and utterly alone, curled up on my living room floor, surrounded by the evidence of my beautiful, disturbed delusions. I cried for Beck, who’d died too young. For Delaney, who hadn’t, but had lost herself anyway. For Theo, who deserved better than becoming someone’s trauma response.
And finally… finally, I cried for myself. For the lonely woman who’d been so frantic for connection, she’d built an elaborate fantasy around thirty-seven minutes of a shared crisis.
The sun finished setting, leaving me in the darkness with my tears and my shame and the terrible, necessary work of figuring out how to be alone again.
How to be alone without building shrines or confusing kindness for love or using other people’s tragedies as an excuse to feel alive.
It was the hardest thing I’d ever do.
But for the first time in months, maybe even years, it felt like I was doing the right thing.
Chapter Ten
Unraveling
