Chapter 4

"Slap!"

Zane hit me across the face.

I felt my mouth curve into a smile.

Idiot. Why was his hand shaking?

I twisted the knife deeper. "Zane, someone like you has no right to chase dreams. I burned all those paintings you hid. You're not going anywhere!"

My phone rang. Mom's voice boomed through the speaker before I could answer.

"I'm almost at the old house. Pack up and wait for me."

Zane snatched the phone from my hand before I could respond.

His voice shattered into something wild and unrecognizable. "Anna, I wish I'd never met you! Twenty years! I don't owe you anything anymore!"

His hands closed around my arm. He dragged me from the hospital bed.

The doctor's voice rose in alarm. "She's injured! She can't handle this kind of stress!"

Zane ignored him. He pulled me through the hallways and out the hospital doors.

We reached the apartment complex entrance just as Mom arrived. I hadn't seen her in ten years.

Zane shoved me toward her. His voice rang with twisted relief.

"Take her far away from here! I hope I never see her again for the rest of my life!"

His footsteps faded into nothing.

Mom stood at a distance. Disgust radiated from her posture. I could feel it even without seeing her face.

"I'm only here because we're family. Remember what you promised. I bring you with me and that's it. We're done. And those injuries? Not my problem. I don't have money to waste on medical bills."

I smiled. No sadness came. Today the person who loved me most in the world had thrown me away too. There was nothing left to lose.

"I won't forget, Mom. Can you take me to Central Park?"

The place where I'd first met Zane.

Mom drove in silence. The moment we reached the park, she abandoned me on the sidewalk. She practically ran back to her car like I was contagious.

Winter had emptied the park of visitors. Just wind through bare trees and dead grass crunching under distant footsteps.

I wandered slowly. My burned skin had gone numb in the cold. The pain faded into something distant and unimportant.

My feet carried me forward with no destination. Just moving through the place where a six-year-old girl had found a freezing boy and changed both their lives forever.

My guide dog's bark cut through the quiet. "Stop! There's a lake ahead!"

I kept walking.

My foot met empty air. Then I was falling.

The cold water hit like a thousand knives. It flooded into my nose and mouth and ears. The shock stole my breath.

I sank. The lake swallowed me whole.

Darkness had always been my world. But this darkness was different. This darkness was peace.

No more guilt. No more being a burden. No more watching Zane destroy himself to keep me alive.

My lungs screamed for air. I ignored them.

The cold stopped hurting. Everything stopped hurting.

This was better. Zane would finally paint again. Victoria would have him back. Mom could forget I existed.

Water filled my chest. My body went limp.

I thought of Zane's smile when we were children. The way he'd hold my hand and promise we'd be together forever.

I'm sorry, I thought. I'm sorry I couldn't be someone worth saving.

The water pressed in from all sides. Filling every space. Every sense.

My thoughts scattered like leaves in wind.

Then nothing at all.