“I left her,” he says quietly.

“You left her?”

He glances down at my haphazard suitcase then back to me. “She tried to take her life one day when I was at work. I came home and found her laying in the bathtub with an empty pill bottle in her hand.” His voice breaks as he stares up at the ceiling. “I got there just in time. I’d never been so scared in my life.”

He takes a deep breath. I’ve never seen him more vulnerable. It reminds me that there’s a beautiful soul inside him . . . one I fell for. “She was in the hospital for a few weeks while they worked on her meds, trying to make everything right. When I took her home, things were better, but I wouldn’t leave her side. She was my responsibility, you know? I’d made a promise to always keep her safe when we said our vows.”

My hands ache to touch him—to comfort him—but the crazy cocktail of emotions I’ve felt today holds me back. I’m to the point where I’ve felt so much that I feel nothing at all. “So you saved her?”

He stands, pacing once again. “That time I did. I spent every second with her. For a few weeks, it felt like when we first met. That’s when I painted that picture of her . . . the one you saw in the studio. She was the Aly I fell in love with, and I wanted to capture it just in case . . . fuck. It was two days before it happened.”

“What happened?” I ask. My fingers run along the edge of the suitcase to keep from reaching out to him.

“There was this concert I’d been talking about for months. I wasn’t going to leave her, but she wouldn’t let it go. She told me she was going to crawl into bed with a book. She said I deserved a break. Fuck, I had no reason to doubt her. She was my Aly.”

So captured by his words, it doesn’t dawn on me that he’s crying. He’s hunched over, tracing circles on the hardwood with his foot. “I came home that night. God . . . I remember it. Every fucking detail of it. “Blood Bank” by Bon Iver was playing loudly. Until that night, it was my favorite song. The one I could listen to over and over.”

“I love that song,” I reply. It now plays in my head, a backdrop to the story he tells. The one that I know locked the demon inside him.

“I hate it.”

Silence falls over us again. The shell he’s enclosed himself in cracked . . . I cracked him. Only I can put him together. Slow steady steps. Left foot then right. I hesitantly place my hand over his heart, feeling the heavy weight of his past in my palm. “What ruined the song?” I know the answer, but I need to hear it, and I think he needs to hear himself say it.

“It was the one that played when I found her lying dead on our bedroom floor. The one that played when I realized the best thing that ever happened to me wasn’t mine anymore.”

His tears mix with mine, a manmade lake forming at our feet. You think you know a person, but then you really don’t. Turns out, they’re a better person than you ever could be.

“Sorry doesn’t sound like enough,” I whisper. “Not when it can’t change anything.”

His arms pull me in, holding on for dear life. I want to be wrapped in him, to know he’s still here . . . that maybe everything will be okay.

“They all blame me . . . I should have been there.”

I bury my face in his chest; I swear I hear his heart breaking. “Sometimes love just isn’t enough.”

For seconds, minutes, hours, we stay like that, holding onto each other. His tears soak my T-shirt. Mine soak his. I never knew the version of Blake that lived before all this, but it defines this version so clearly. He’s guarded because it’s who he needs to be to protect himself. He’s a jerk to keep girls like me away; the clingy type who fall too easily. He’s not an asshole by nature, but by nurture. Life and its shitty circumstance made him this way, but I fell for him anyway.

And now, I’m embedded to him. I never want to let this beautifully broken man go.

Without warning, he loosens his grip on me. “That’s true, isn’t it, Lila? Love isn’t always enough.”

“It can’t be,” I admit, remembering every bad relationship I’ve ever had. Every one that led me here.

“Kiss me.”

I stare, not sure how we got back here.

“Kiss me,” he says again.

Without another thought, I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to his salty, tear-stained mouth. What’s meant to be a taste turns into so much more. Our bodies pressed together, singing a soulful duet while our tongues dance. He’s my air, my water . . . everything I need is right here.

He pulls away slowly, tugging my lower lip between his teeth. When he done, he stares at me like I’m the window to something he’s been waiting his whole life to see. “You were right. Love isn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to make you believe the best in me.”

“Blake—”

Holding his hand up to stop me, he says, “No. I love you, Lila, and sometimes when I look at you, I think you feel the same. It just wasn’t enough.” Anger replaces sadness in his voice.

I swallow hard. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you deserve better than me. You deserve someone you can believe in.”

“I don’t want anyone but you,” I cry, doing my best to hold on.

He steps back, leaving me cold. “I’m going to accept the contract in Europe.”

“No.” Panic. Fear. Sadness. I feel it all.

The back of his finger brushes my wet cheek. Small, sweet caresses. “Someday, you’ll look back at this and thank me, or maybe you’ll just realize that we fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“Stop!”

“No, don’t you get it? Love isn’t always enough, but trust is, and it’s gone now. I left for a few hours, and you ran straight to him. You made your choice, and this is mine.” His finger drops as he slowly backs away. We all have that one moment in our lives we wish we could take back, and this is mine. This will always be mine.

“Stay,” I beg, following him to his bedroom.

He ignores my pleas, picking up a duffel bag from the floor and throwing clothes inside. He walks to the door, wrapping his hand around the door handle that’s going to take him right out of my life. I can’t let him . . .

“Blake . . . please. If you’d just told me—even just a little bit of it—I wouldn’t have had to search for the truth. This can’t be the end.”

He turns back around one more time. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. “It can be, because it is. Have a nice life, Lila.”

And just like that, he’s gone. I don’t run after him because deep in my heart, I know he won’t stay. If I’ve learned anything at all about Blake, it’s that I can’t win around him, and this is my worst loss.

For the second time tonight, the dam breaks and tears fall. For the second time, I fall to the floor because my legs can no longer hold me. Self-induced misery is suffering in its worst form. If I could go back to when I woke up this morning, I would wait for him. I would have enough faith to know he’d come back. Now I’m left with nothing, unless you count a shredded heart.

Wiping my cheeks, something across the room catches my eye. From the outline, it appears to be a canvas . . . one that wasn’t here just hours ago. I stand back up, flipping the light switch by the kitchen table. My breath catches. It’s my home—the one I grew up in—covered in a sheet of snow. Golden light shines through the front picture window, the one I used to stare out as a kid, watching snowflakes fall for hours, and just inside is the colorful Christmas tree my family put up every year. It’s the same one I told Blake about last night . . . the one I missed.

And it hits me, while I was out thinking the worst—thinking he’d left me again—he was doing this. It makes everything inside me twist a little more, and then I notice an envelope at the bottom of the easel with my name scribbled on it. I hold my breath and rip it open without giving much thought to what’s inside.