“Chase.”

I’m on autopilot in my mind as I drive down the highway but am dragged from the past to see Tori’s lip quivering. I glance in the mirror again and my cheeks are wet with tears. My eyes bloodshot behind my glasses.

“Do you want me to drive?”

I shake my head at her. “No. We’re almost there.”

She takes my hand and squeezes it. “I’ll carry you. Just like you carry me. We’re in this together, okay?”

I nod and flash her an appreciative smile.

“She’s a goddamned ghost.” I growl. “It’s like she disappeared off the fucking planet!”

Penelope pats my shoulder. “Chase, it’s time to move on. You’ve been searching for her for over a year now. Maybe she needed to get away. Maybe she changed her name. You know Mom would be pissed if she knew you were trying to find her.”

I slam my laptop closed and run my fingers through my hair. “I just want to talk to her. Explain how sorry I am.”

Penelope’s eyes water and she nods. “I know but sometimes things work out how they’re supposed to. Maybe you aren’t meant to find her. What if she’s finally found some peace and happiness? Would you want to disrupt that?”

Guilt, always fucking a part of me now, surges through my veins. “I want her to be happy.”

My sister nods. “Then let her move on. Don’t bring all this back to her, especially not now. It’s been a year. She’s probably married with a kid on the way. Let her find her peace.”

“Tori,” I blurt out, as I turn on my blinker for the exit. “I tried to find her.”

She narrows her eyes and jerks her head over to me, realizing I’m telling her something huge about my past.

“But she fucking disappeared.” I slam my fist on the steering wheel.

“Who?”

“Her. The one I broke. The one I stole everything from.”

Her tears spill over her cheeks. “Chase, calm down.”

I’m angry. At her. At me. At the whole fucking unfair world.

“I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. That I tried so hard not to hit them.”

She pales as we turn down the road to the cemetery. “Who did you hit? Ashley?”

Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I slam my car into a parking spot. “Them. Both of them. I don’t remember him. All I remember is her. She haunts my dreams with her innocent smile and wide eyes. And that dress. Goddammit, I’ll never get that fucking wall the color of her dress.”

“Chase, why are we here?”

I reach into the back and snatch the flowers. The door swings open and I climb out. She’s already scrambling out of the passenger seat.

“Chase, who? Dammit, tell me who!”

When I round the car, I pull her into my arms and kiss the top of her head. “This is so fucking painful, Tori. Please don’t hate me like Ashley did. I didn’t mean to. I tried not to hit them. I did. There was a car in front of me, it spun out and I swerved the truck but it wasn’t soon enough. They came out of fucking nowhere.”

She’s crying in my arms and struggling to get out of my arms. “Chase, no.”

I clutch her wrist and pull her along with me. Through the path I know so well. To the grave that always has flowers on it, no matter what.

“Chase, no.” Her feet drag but I keep tugging. I’m on a mission. She needs to see the pain I bear each day.

“Tori.”

We stop at the grave and she wails.

I pull her into my arms. “Her name was Sarah.”

The world shifts under my feet.

A silver truck behind the SUV, the sound of screeching breaks pierces the air as the truck spins and the next time I blink, there are three vehicles twisted together in the center of the thoroughfare.

There is ringing in my ears, a sound so loud that my head is splitting open from the pain.

A figure lays unmoving on the ground three feet away from the wreck. The large frame of a man, wrapped around a tiny lump of sunshine yellow fabric.

The sound grows louder, my throat feels as though it is being ripped to shreds, and I realize that the sound is screaming.

It’s me, screaming.

My bare knees hit the ground hard and I barely register the sharp pain of glass digging into the flesh. The only thing I feel is numbness. There is blood, it’s all over the ground, all over them. Someone pulls on my arms and I think they tell me not to move them, but how can I stay away. My heart is on the ground in front of me, and I need to know that it is still beating.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.” I’m pleading, pleading for this to not be real. I feel arms trying to surround me but I fight them off with all of my strength. “No, this can’t be happening, God, please don’t let this be real.”

“Tori! Baby, please don’t do this, please. I can’t lose you.”

Chase’s anguished voice floats around me, but I’m so lost in the pain, the sobs heaving from deep in my soul. How could the universe be so fucking twisted?

I fell in love with the man who killed my family.

There is an ugliness that is surfacing, feelings so black that they frighten me. “You—you can’t be the one who hurt me. Y—you healed me. Now you’ve destroyed me, again!” I’m screaming at him, my world once again falling to pieces around me. Only this time, I know I’ll never recover, because Chase is the love of my life. I was tied to Ben by my heart, but I’m tied to Chase with my whole fucking soul.

“Baby, I don’t understand.”

My shoulders are jerking, Chase shaking me frantically. I look at him through the tears falling from my eyes, and I see desperate, panicked fear on his face. “What do you mean again?” He’s yelling now, his voice coated in fear and despair. Good. Let him feel the pain he has caused me.

“You killed my family!” I scream, thrashing out at him with my fist, nails, anything that will get him away from me.

Chase scrambles back in a crab walk, and falls to the ground. His face goes ashen, all the color draining from him, just like the color drained from Ben and Sarah. I attempt to get up off of the ground and end up on my hands and knees, panting hard, trying regain my breath. But, I’m crying so hard I can’t get a decent amount into my lungs. The pain is excruciating. There is no molecule on my body that isn’t burning with anger, with pain, with the utter fucking disaster that is this world.

It’s not just Chase, it’s the realization that that my life is meant to be filled with nothing, or with pain. There is no option number three. When it came to passing out happiness, apparently my bucket was already too full of misery. Only this time, this time I opened myself up so much that I don’t know how to close the wounds again. There is a searing fire that is down deep in the depths of me, breaking me beyond recognition.

I’m finally able to regain my feet and I grab the flowers that Chase brought from where he’d dropped them before following me to the ground. Daffodils. How did I not put it together? Every week, I lay the purple flowers next to bouquets of yellow daffodils. I crush them in my hand.

“Tori, I tried—you disappeared. I wanted to—”

“Stop!” The tears are drying up, and the ice is working its way through my body. Slowly, I become like stone, the woman who everyone sees, the viper, Ice Queen, bitch, take your pick. “I went back to my maiden name,” I say matter of fact. “I left it all behind. Then you came along and forced me to face it all, to relive the pain, share it, fucking fall in love again! Only to have it be the final straw in the sick joke that is my life. I’m done.”

“Are you happy now?” I’m screaming at the sky now, asking anyone, whomever, whatever is out there, “I’m fucking done! You can’t hurt me anymore, because I have nothing left to lose.”