A dog barks behind me. Children scream and play, and I’m pretty sure there’s someone surfing several yards out. The waves are strong enough for it, I guess. I don’t really know. I don’t know much about surfing.

I don’t know much about anything.

I sigh and sit up, brushing the sand off my hands so I can hug my knees. Isn’t it crazy how one person can burst into your life and alter absolutely everything about it? The thought that one tiny, seemingly insignificant person in the grand scheme of the universe, can shake up your life so you have no idea which way is up.

My poles have switched so much that I think they’ve gotten mixed up with east and west. And as for my own personal axis—well, Aidan Burke successfully tilted that and cemented himself as the center of my world, complete with an irresistible gravitational pull.

And the worst, the absolute worst, thing about this?

It’s supposed to end.

Today. Tomorrow. Next week. I don’t know. I just know that someday, somehow, this will end. Really, does it matter if I tremble whenever he trails his fingers down my back? Or that his smile is almost impossible not to return? Or that I know there are tattoos on his body that I haven’t traced over yet? Or that the idea of all those things being taken away from me makes me feel a little sick?

Fuck, I’m a twenty-four-year-old woman but he makes me feel like a sixteen-year-old girl anticipating her very first kiss. He makes me feel butterflies that flutter until they’re fairy elephants. Everything about him, even when he pisses me off, makes me feel.

I’d rather argue with him every day than not speak to him again.

I sigh heavily, my mind drifting to the flowers he handed me two days ago. I wanted to punch him and make out with him simultaneously, because one look at those flowers and I knew exactly what they meant. He knew that, too.

He knew I knew.

But it’s one thing to send messages like that as an apology. To put so many emotions into one bouquet of flowers.

Another thing entirely to mean it. And when you mean those things, they need to be said, too. The language of flowers is a strong one. My tattoos can attest to that.

But nothing is more powerful than words. Words have the ability to wrap around you and embrace you with their truth and warmth. They can ring out in your mind for years to come, whereas flowers will always die.

Words are timeless.

And I hate myself for it, but I want to hear Aidan say the words out loud. Because then maybe I’ll be convinced of their reality.

For all the lies we’ve told each other, for the lies we’ve portrayed to the rest of the world, a thousand truths have been intermingled. If the lies are black strands woven together to create a path of darkness, the truths we’ve kept inside are stunning silver, blinding sparks of brightness, and everyone is fighting for the moment when the truths all come out.

Let’s face it though—it’s far easier to hurt yourself with a lie than it is to risk someone else hurting you with their truth.

It’s easier for me to keep my truths to myself and walk away from this than it is to open myself to him and risk his unsaid words staying just that—unsaid.

Emotion churns my stomach. I swallow down the regret as it crawls up my throat in the form of bile, but I know I’m right.

It doesn’t matter how much it hurts, or burns, or how badly the thought makes me want to vomit, or how much imagining my life without that contagious smile and playful touch makes me want to cry.

I know I’ll have to walk away from him and the rest of his family, because we’re too different.

Yeah, too different. That’s it. If I tell myself that enough times, I’ll believe it. That’s how that works, right?

Even if it doesn’t, the facts don’t change. I know that in the end I will have to say good-bye to Aidan Burke and this unpredictable magic we’ve created.

So I won’t let it get to the end.

I’ll bring the end to us, no matter how much it hurts.

I braid my hair over my shoulder and secure it with a band. I don’t know if I slept last night. I don’t think I did, and if I did, my sleep was riddled with nightmares that wrenched me awake. Maybe I even woke up crying once. The wet patch on my pillow would attest to that, and it makes me rethink.

Is ending this before it’s too late the right thing to do?

I know the answer is yes. I’ve tried it before, but he’s always rejected it.

What makes you think it’ll be different this time, Jessie?

Yeah, Jessie. What makes you think it’ll be different, huh? What makes you think that now that the media sees him as the country’s newest sweetheart, he won’t turn around and say “see ya!”?

After all, the relationship has done its job: made Aidan Burke the newest nice guy in town, leaving every photographer in the country with their beady eyes on his twin brother to see if he screws up next.

I’m still torn though. Not over the do I or don’t I—I know I have to end this—but over the when. Tomorrow is the opening of the waterpark he told me about, which is exactly why I’m up at five a.m., ready to haul my ass to the airport and hop on a jet down to Miami. I’m expected to be there, but maybe it would be easier if I weren’t.

Maybe it would be easier if I told him now. But then the waterpark’s publicity would be overshadowed by the media fallout caused by our breakup, and that isn’t fair to the owners who’ve worked to open it.

Oh my God.

I knew this was a bad idea. This was the worst bad idea in the history of bad ideas ever, but Jesus, it’s also been the best bad idea.

After all, not all lies are bad.

It’s the truth that’s a fucking bitch.

I zip up my makeup bag and throw it into the overnight bag resting on my bed. My eyes follow its journey across the room to its final destination. I can see a bikini and a hairbrush and shampoo and underwear, as well as the shorts and sandals he insisted I bring.

I want to empty the bag, but I just can’t do it. So I throw my wallet into it, grab my phone, and take a deep breath before heading downstairs silently.

I pause at the bottom of the stairs. A single calla lily is standing in the vase on the shelf beneath the mirror. White, with that lone, perfectly curved petal. I once again take a slow, deep breath, and step down the final stair. I drop my bag and reach out for the flower, stroking my thumb along the gentle sweep of the stark white softness. Leaning in to smell it, I smile when my nose nudges its center and a smidgen of yellow comes off onto me.

Beautiful.

Literally. Calla lilies mean beauty.

For a second time, I stroke the flower, then pick up my bag and unlock the front door. I step out into the chilled morning air, the stars still twinkling in the inky night sky above me. The air is fresh and clean. The salty scent from the sea barely even a mile away is stronger in the darkness, and I pause, just breathing it in, because I can.

Because it’s the scent of home, of comfort and clarity and everything else that makes up what it is to be home. Then—wood, and cinnamon, and thick fir trees. They mix with the salty air, and I turn toward the gate.

“Is it wrong that I want to take a picture of you right now?”

His words rumble through me in a way deeper than I’d care to admit. “Why?”

“You look so peaceful,” Aidan admits. “I’ve been watching you for the last few minutes. You’re just taking in the darkness. And honestly? You’re standing there all beautiful and all I want to do is kiss you.”

His words are the balm to the burn of saying good-bye, and I exhale slowly, meeting his eyes. They’re blazing bright blue, a true beacon in the fading darkness and so impossible to miss. “I can’t say I’d mind,” I admit, “but maybe we need to talk first.”

He unlocks the gate and walks up the path, his eyes intent on me always. His gaze is so powerful that I know it doesn’t matter what he says or what I do, because, holy crap.