I took the phone and looked at the pictures. “I started playing soccer. And that took over. I found that I didn’t really have time for anything else. Sports became my new passion.”

Corin frowned. “You can have more than one passion, Beckett. And I think you gave up on something incredible.” Her voice was tight with an emotion I didn’t understand.

I reached out and took her hand. Once again, just needing to touch her.

“You’re right. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned since almost dying, it’s to hold onto the things that matter. To the things, the people, that make you happy.”

She didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell if I had made her uncomfortable yet again. She averted her eyes and stared out over the water.

Suddenly a pure white butterfly flittered down and landed on Corin’s shoulder. She was completely unaware.

“Don’t move an inch,” I warned her. She stiffened but the butterfly didn’t move. I once again lifted my phone and zoomed in on her profile, the butterfly’s wings lifting in the breeze.

Corin pushed her hair behind her ear and the butterfly took off.

“What was that about?” she asked.

I showed her the picture and she gave me a strange little smile.

“I think this one is my favorite,” I said.

She never replied.

And I was okay with that.

Chapter 11

Corin

I had been lying in bed for hours, my mind spinning in a million different directions.

I was thinking about things I wished I wouldn’t. Things I couldn’t stop obsessing over no matter how hard I tried. I was thinking about the past. Things I could have done differently. Stuff I should have said when I had the chance.

My parents.

Not as the vibrant people they had once been, but the weak, miserable invalids who had withered away into nothing.

I would give anything to remember the good things. But my brain didn’t seem to work like that. It focused on the negative. The horrible.

No reprieve. Constant. Unyielding. My memories were my worst enemy. They invaded my present and wouldn’t let me move on.

I was immobilized with thinking about them.

I went to the dark places I tried so hard to forget.

Dad’s cough sounded wet and I remembered his physician saying the cancer had moved to his lungs.

He was having trouble breathing, his skin ashen from being deprived of oxygen. The tube the nurse had put in his nose stood out starkly against pale skin.

His eyes were open but they weren’t looking at me.

They were looking through me.

And I imagined dying this way. In pain. Barely lucid.

It wasn’t the first time I felt the fear.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

I had seen my fair share of counselors to try and get a handle on my grief and anxiety. Most of them had been after my mother had died because my dad had insisted on it. I would talk about stages of grief and coping with my feelings in a healthy way.

Blah, blah, blah. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Not to say that their points weren’t valid. I’m sure there was a reason they had gone to school for so many years. They had to know what they were talking about. But I hadn’t wanted to hear it.

Nope.

No way.

I had been way too numb to take any of it in. The counselors would open their mouths and all I heard was static. Nothing they said would make the horrible hole in my chest close up and disappear. I didn’t care how long they went to school or how fancy their degrees were.

Finally, after a few months my father had stopped making me go. Not because he picked up on my resistance, but because he had just been diagnosed with his own terminal illness.

Then my life became consumed with caretaking. I didn’t have time to take care of me and my emotional well-being.

Now here I was, years later, stuck in that same headspace I had inhabited as a teenager. In so many ways I still felt like that messed-up girl who had just lost her parents. I felt stunted. Unable to move on.

Stuck.

During the day I could go about my routine and almost think about other things. The pottery studio. Doctor’s appointments. Support group. These things filled my hours.

But at night I only had my thoughts for company. My scary, irrational thoughts that threatened to undo me completely.

After hours, I finally willed myself to sleep only to have my dreams take me places I didn’t want to go.

I was buried under six feet of dirt. Enclosed in a coffin I couldn’t escape from.

I scratched at the wooden lid, fingers bloodied, nails pulled from their beds. I screamed and screamed hoping someone would hear me.

But no one heard me.

I was alone.

Trapped.

In an unyielding death.

I couldn’t wake up. I was stuck. In the nightmare. It wouldn’t let me go.

And it didn’t end when I woke up, drenched in a cold sweat, my body shaking.

Being awake was worse than the terror of my dreams.

I wanted to cry. To let these terrible feelings out somehow. I felt like a bottle of soda that had been shaken up but the cap was still securely in place. The pressure in my chest was unbearable.

I hardly ever cried. I kept it inside. Mixed up with the pain and misery that had become the most familiar and constant thing in my life.

I felt the ache in my chest resume and I had a hard time breathing. Now there was a ringing in my ears that was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else. The room started to tip and spin and I was getting nauseous.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, barely getting to the toilet in time before I emptied the contents of my stomach. Bile and acid because I hadn’t been able to eat dinner.

Cold sweats. Thumping heart. Endless dark thoughts that left me spiraling.

My ever loyal cat, Mr. Bingley, came into the bathroom and curled up on the mat beside me as I lay out on the cold, hard tiles. I pressed my cheek into the floor and shivered uncontrollably.

They had come for me again.

The butterflies.

My once benevolent protectors now my sadistic torturers.

The panic attack took on the form of this beautiful childhood memory and made it something ugly. Something scary.

The fluttering in my chest, the suffocating weight of fear. The buzz in my ears that drowned out my ragged breathing.

It was my own personal hell.

The one I had been living for almost eight years.

I thought of the butterfly that had landed on my shoulder at the bridge with Beckett.

He had no idea how perfect the picture he took had been.

Not because of its seeming innocent beauty.

But because the butterflies were always there. Threatening to drown me.

And I could never escape.

—

“This can’t be right.” The numbers blurred and floated in front of my eyes. I put my pencil down and rubbed at my temples, willing the headache to go away.

I took a couple of deep breaths and looked once again at the ledgers open on my desk.

The numbers didn’t lie.

Stupid numbers that couldn’t be wrong.

I hated math. I hated that it was absolute and unchanging.

Because the numbers in front of me let me know one important thing. I was in serious trouble.

“Hey, everything okay back here? I can feel your shitty mood all the way out front.” Adam put a bottle of water on the desk and sat down in the worn chair.