She’s not here. My heart picks up as I walk farther into the room. The first thing I notice is the photograph, which I haven’t actually seen myself until right now, lying on the bed. I pick it up and study it for a second. Camryn looks so happy. That’s the Camryn I used to know, the one with a beautiful, energetic smile. I remember that smile. I saw it dozens of times when we were on the road together.

Panicking inside, I look away from the photo and then go toward the window. I gaze out at the black ocean and see a few people walking along the boardwalk. With the photo still in my hand, I walk quickly back to my room and slip on my shoes, leaving them untied as I head outside toward the beach. The chill in the air isn’t unbearable, but it’s enough to make me glad I at least have long sleeves on. I search for any sign of her, looking up and down along the boardwalk and in the beach chairs near the hotel building, but she’s nowhere to be found. Slipping the photo into my back pocket, I break out in a mild jog and head toward the beach.

I find her sitting in the sand not too far away.

“God damn it, babe, you scared me.”

I sit down beside her, wrapping one arm around her body.

She stares out at the ocean, the chilly wind whipping gently through her blonde hair. She doesn’t look at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just wanted to—”

“I love you, Andrew,” she interrupts, but keeps her gaze fixed out ahead. “I don’t how a girl can be both so lucky and so unlucky at the same time.”

Unsure where she’s going with this, I’m afraid to say anything because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I squeeze my arm around her to share our warmth. And I don’t say a word.

“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I was at first, but I want you to know that I’m not anymore.”

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I say softly.

She still hasn’t shifted her gaze from the blackness out ahead. The waves just barely lick the shore several yards out. A tiny white dot, the light from a boat, moves along the horizon.

Suddenly, I feel Camryn’s gaze on me and I look over to meet it. There’s just enough light from the buildings behind us, and from the moon to see her soft features, wisps of her hair blow across her cold cheeks. I reach out a hand and pull a few strands away from her lips. Her eyes soften as she looks at me and says, “I did love Ian, very much. But I don’t want you to think—”

I shake my head. “Camryn, don’t do that. This isn’t about me, all right?” I tuck my finger behind another strand of her hair and pull it away from her mouth. “Don’t make it about me.”

She pauses for a moment, and I feel her hand move into my lap and my fingers link with hers.

She looks back out at the ocean.

“I didn’t want to go to Ian’s funeral,” she says. “I didn’t want the last time I saw him to be like that.” She glances over at me. “Do you remember that day in your apartment when I walked in on your phone conversation with Aidan, when he was trying to get you to go to your father’s funeral?”

I nod. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Something you said to him, about how the last time you see someone you’d rather it be of them alive, not lying dead in a box. Well, that’s how I felt about Ian’s funeral. I never wanted to go. It’s also why I didn’t want to see Lily. It’s why I chose cremation.”

“But you did go. To Ian’s funeral.” I steer clear of the Lily subject for now. She’s a more painful topic. For both of us. I saw her. She was so small she would’ve been able to fit in the palm of my hand. But Camryn refused to look.

She shakes her head. “Not really,” she says about Ian’s funeral. “I was there, but I wasn’t. My way of letting him go was shutting him out of my mind, every word he ever said to me, his face, anything I could shut out, I did. I only went because it’s what everybody expected of me. If I wasn’t so worried about what everyone else would think, I would’ve stayed home that day.”

“But that’s not closure,” I say carefully. “That’s the same thing as sweeping the dirt underneath the rug. It’s still there. You know it’s there. And it’ll bug the shit out of you until you do it right.”

“I know,” she says.

After a few long seconds of silence, I reach into my back pocket and pull out the photo.

“Y’know, if he was still alive, I’d be a little jealous. He’s kind of hot, for a guy.”

Camryn smiles over at me and I notice her eyes just barely skirt the photo.

I set it down on the sand next to our knees. Then I get serious again. “Camryn, what’s going on with you—the pills you took, all of it—isn’t just about losing Lily. You know that, don’t you?”

She doesn’t answer, but I can sense that she’s thinking hard about what I said.

“You shut everything out. Ian. Lily. According to Natalie, even your grandma and Cole and the fact that your dad left and seems to care more for his new girlfriend than he does for you.” I say it like it is because that’s exactly how it needs to be said. “Instead of dealing with it, grieving, whatever, you just shut that shit out and expect it to go away on its own. You’ve been doing that long before we met. You’ve got to know that it just piles up, and one day you’ll snap and go off the deep end.”

“I know. You’re right as usual,” she says dejectedly.

“Do you believe that, or are you just agreeing with me to get me to shut up?” I grin over at her, hoping to get a smile out of her.

And it works.

She smiles and says, “No, I do believe it. I just wish I would’ve believed it sooner.”

“Why do you believe it now?”

“Because you’re like a philosopher with tattoos.” She laughs and it sends a shot of warmth through my blood.

I can’t believe she’s laughing. At first, I thought it was going to take a long time for Camryn to come to terms with all of this, but she surprises me every day.

“A philosopher?” I say. “Hardly. But I’ll take the credit.”

Camryn turns sideways and lays her head on my lap. She looks up at me with those doelike blue eyes of hers, and I can’t help but reach down and touch the softness of her face.

“Do you want to know the truth?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say, but I’m feeling a little anxious all of a sudden.

“It’s like I told you back at Aidan’s,” she says. “If I ever lost you, of all people, that would do it for me. When I miscarried, it triggered all of my fears again. About losing you. It was like, in that second of tragedy I was reminded about death all over again and how fast it sneaks up on a person. If God or Nature or whoever or whatever the hell it is out there controlling all of this could be so cruel and heartless to kill my baby, then It wouldn’t have any second thoughts about killing you, too. It scares me, Andrew. The thought of ever losing you kills me inside. And because I almost lost you once, it makes the fear that much worse.”

“But I told you before—”

She lifts away from my lap and sits directly in front of me, her knees burrowed into the sand.

“I know what you told me,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter what you believe, or that you know all the right things to say to make it better. You don’t know for sure what will happen, Andrew. The tumor could very easily come back and despite everything we do, all of the precautions we take, it could kill you.”

I start to argue, but she’s so intent on saying these things to me that I know I have to let her.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she goes on, “and I can look you in the eyes right now and say that as much as it hurts, I can accept Ian’s death. I can accept Lily’s death. I can accept anyone else’s death even though whoever it is, it will be unbearably hard. But yours…” She pauses and doesn’t even blink as she looks deeply into my eyes. “I could never accept yours. Never.”

The silence between us only amplifies the sound of the ocean. I want to take her into my arms, to crush my lips over hers, but I just sit here, staring at her because the words she just spoke to me are the most powerful words I’ve ever heard or felt or understood.