Kayla glowers at him. “I hate you.”

“Ditto.” He narrows his eyes at her before turning back to Ellen. “Is Angelo here?”

Ellen hesitates. “Uh, yeah…”

“Excellent. If anyone can get us out of these things, it’ll be him. Come on.” He pulls Kayla by the cuffs to the back door and inside the inn, while she mutters death threats and curse words at him.

For a moment, Ellen and I just stare at the closed back door.

“I don’t like that guy,” I say.

Still looking at the door, Ellen slowly nods. “But I think someone does.” She sounds amused.

I curl my lip. “What, the prisoner girl?”

Ellen gives me an oh please look. “That girl is hardly a prisoner.”

“Whatever.” I shake my head and go back to fixing the shutter.

Ellen watches me.

“So Pixie’s leaving in just a few minutes,” she says, after an awkward amount of time has passed. “She’s driving up to Copper Springs to pick up some stuff from her mom’s before heading back down to Phoenix.”

Where she’ll get on a plane and leave me forever.

“Yeah,” I say. I pull the damaged shutter down and set it against the wall before picking up its replacement. “I know.”

A gust of wind sweeps past, carrying the scent of rain and the promise of another storm. I don’t know why I feel so hollow inside today. I haven’t lost Pixie. We’re still friends.

Positioning the new shutter, I grasp my hammer and begin to nail it into place.

We’re friends.

Ellen eyes me. “Are you going to say good-bye?”

I grab another nail and hammer it in. “Probably not.”

She slowly nods and studies the discarded shutter for a moment. “You know, one of these days I’m going to run out of things that need to be fixed around here and you’re going to be out of a job.”

I stop hammering and look at her. “Is that a threat?”

“No,” she says, something unrecognizable in her eyes. “Just the honest truth.”

With a brief smile, she turns and walks away.

I’m packing. I’m crying. I’m hoping Levi will knock on my door and say something, anything. I’m packing.

I know he won’t do it, just like I know I won’t do it.

And I don’t even really know why I’m crying, other than I feel like I’m never going to see Levi again. Which is ridiculous. I’ll see him again.

I press a hand to my chest, where a sharp ache throbs with each of my heartbeats. Loving someone and not being with them hurts.

Thunder grumbles in the distance.

I look at the wall that separates my bedroom from Levi’s. Did I make the right decision?

The throbbing in my chest continues and I have to take a deep breath to keep more tears from falling.

I blink. I swallow. I’m fine.

I look around my room. Boxes everywhere. Paint stains on my headboard. Canvases of Charity in the window. More boxes.

Something green peeks out from beneath one of the dusty boxes and I bend to retrieve it. It’s the flag from our capture the flag game last summer. I run the old faded material through my hands and bite my lip.

Time.

It just goes.

And now I have to go with it.

This is the beginning of my future. Another tear rolls down my face and I swipe at it angrily as I shove the flag into my suitcase.

It’s better this way. It really is. It’s safer.

I yank off the painting shirt I have on and start to change into a clean tank top, but when I catch my reflection in my bedroom mirror, I pause.

I run a finger along my scar, tracing its jagged pattern with my eyes as the damaged-yet-healed skin meets my fingertips.

It’s a best friend and a place to call home. It’s a lesson learned and a reminder that life is fragile. It’s my first taste of death and a second chance at life.

It’s everything I never want to forget. And it’s beautiful.

I’m glad I shared it with Levi.

I’ve made my decision and sure, my heart is broken, but it’s the good kind of broken. The kind that leaves you branded, so you never forget, and heals over time, so you can see just how far you’ve come.

It’s the best kind of broken.

I touch my scar again.

Like me.

I stare at my computer screen as the sky outside darkens with the encroaching storm.

Pixie left twenty minutes ago. I know this only because I heard the wheels of her suitcase squeaking past my door. I didn’t say good-bye.

A friend would have said good-bye.

She’s off to New York, where she’ll have a new life and new opportunities, and I’m sitting here in front of a blank computer screen with nothing to say.

This isn’t how I thought things would go. This isn’t how I wanted things to go. Even though I haven’t technically lost anything, I feel incredibly defeated.

But the game isn’t over yet.

I straighten my shoulders and crack my knuckles. One essay on winning. I can do this. I start to type.

As a football player, I know all about the principles of winning and the strategies—

I delete and start over.

The great football coach, Vince Lombardi, once said, “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.” I’ve always appreciated this attitude because—

Delete.

I bite the inside of my cheek for a moment, staring at the wall as I think through what I want to write.

The new drywall over the hole I patched up hasn’t been painted yet, so it remains a dark gray splotch against the otherwise beige wall. The hole seems like forever ago.

I look back at the screen and start to type. Slowly at first, then gaining momentum as I carry on. Forty minutes later, I stop typing, scan the document, and start rereading what I’ve put down so far.

HOW TO WIN

Winning is an effect of trying. You have to want it badly enough to go through pain, discipline, and failure to find it. To confront it. To claim it. But most of all, you have to fight for it. Everything else—anything else—is absolute surrender.

My eyes snap to the dark patch on my wall again as my heart grows loud and heavy in my ears. Without another thought, I click Send on my half-assed essay, grab my keys, and race out the door.

The sky grows darker as I head south, the storm clouds closing in on the day and blanketing the earth below in a muted gray. After leaving Copper Springs, I decided to take Canary Road down toward Phoenix instead of the freeway. I haven’t been on this road since the night of the accident. It looks the same.

It feels different.

I hear a sharp crack of thunder and see a flash of hot white lightning cut down through the purple clouds, touching the horizon not far from the road. Less than a minute passes before thick drops of rain begin to splash against the windshield.

Storms are supposed to be terrifying things, reckless and unpredictable, violent and wild, but they energize me. Remind me of life and love and the brink of happiness. The urgency of breathing in, the wonderment of jumping out with your eyes closed.

I think back to the stormy day in the little fort with Levi. The rain. The kiss. The love…

I quickly push the memory away.

The old back road winds through the forestland, barely visible now through the downpour and darkening day. The monsoon clouds split open and a sliver of sunlight shines through the torrent onto the road in front of me, an oddly bright ray of hope against the violent rain and thunder. The patch of light illuminates a large object blocking the road. It’s coming up fast. Too close, too large, to ignore—and it’s right beside the ridge burn, the exact same spot where Charity died.