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My throat tightens. I can’t think about those things. I can’t, because they’d reduce me to a pathetic, sobbing mess. And I clearly wasn’t his everything, considering I wasn’t enough for him to stick around.

“Do you hear me?” she asks.

Say something. Say anything
. “I—”

“I said, do you hear me?”

I nod once. “Yes, ma’am.”

She gets out of the truck without another word, not that there’s anything left to say. I bang my head
on the steering wheel. There’s no way in hell I’m going into that house for a while. I’d rather take my chances in hell, actually. Satan would be more welcoming.

I pull my phone out of the pocket of my khakis and scroll through until I find Marisa’s number.

Need to go somewhere. Wanna drive with me?
Flopping back against my seat, I hit Send and wait.

Friday night was amazing. Marisa was amazing. Everything about the night was straight out of a dream or something. I never thought a kiss could be so flawless, so perfect, so damn addicting, but she went beyond proving me wrong.

My phone lights up.
Marisa
:
Dad says no bc we’re going to church tonight
.

Dang it, it’s not even four o’clock yet. This day will never end if I don’t have something to do.
How about the batting cages? Even bring the guys if it makes him feel better. Be done by church time
. While I wait for her to answer, I send out a text to Jay, Brett, and Eric, telling them to get to The Strike Zone. I don’t even need a reply from them; those three have never turned down an invite to the cages. And I’m going whether or not Marisa does. Smacking the hell out of a ball is better than therapy.

Right as I hit Send to them, her message comes in.
Sure. Meet u there
.

What? Uh-uh.
I’ll pick u up
, I type back quickly.

Marisa
:
Already in town with parents. They’ll take me. =)

Oh. Okay, then. I back out of my driveway and head across town, which is quiet thanks to it being Sunday. There are only three cars in the parking lot at The Strike Zone, one of them belonging to Marisa’s parents. She hops out of their car right as I park.

“You can drive me to church, right?” she asks while I step out of the truck.

Uh, yeah. Duh. Her mom’s window is down, so I call out, “I’ll get her there, Mrs. Marlowe. No worries.”

Her mom smiles, and Dr. Marlowe leans across her to say, “Not too late.”

Backing away from their car, Marisa waves. “I’ll be fine. Bye, guys.”

As they pull out of the lot, Marisa walks over to me, all smiles in her bright green dress and jean jacket. “We were eating at Baker’s Grill when you texted. You have good timing.” She slides her hands into mine and leans up to kiss me. Yep. Still perfect. “Are your friends coming, or—?”

“They’re coming. Just takin’ their sweet time.” I search the parking lot and look out to the road, but there’s still no sign of them. “You want to wait out here, inside, or in the truck?”

She looks past me to my truck. “Definitely the truck.”

Pursing my lips, I nod. “Well, well, well. Looks like we may have a country girl convert.”

She holds up her hands. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that you were right: I do dig the truck.” She climbs up into the passenger seat while I circle around to my side. “And you’re sure your friends won’t mind that I’m here?” she asks as I close my door.

Yeah, right. They might like her more than they like me. “Trust me. But maybe this’ll help.” I reach into the backseat, feeling around the floorboard until I grab my USC hoodie. “Here,” I say, handing it to her. “Now you can be one of the guys. And it’s garnet, just like our team colors. You’ll fit right in.”

She rolls her eyes, but shrugs off her jacket anyway. My heart jumps into my throat. For the first time since that night at the pond, her scars are out in the open. She doesn’t notice me staring, thank God. She tugs on the hoodie, laughing when it practically swallows her whole.

“Dude,” she says. “You’re a giant.”

“I’m not that tall. You’re just that short.”

She swats my arm and settles back against her seat, kicking her boots up on the dashboard. “I wish I’d known you were coming into town. I would’ve invited you to eat with me and my parents.”

I shake my head. “Nah. I wouldn’t have been able to come anyway. I had—” I clear my throat. “I had a thing today.”

Looking down at my lap, I force away the thought of nearly making my momma cry, again, in the exact seat that Marisa’s sitting in. I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a momma’s boy. She was my best friend for a long, long time, and she’s been my number one fan from day one. The last thing I want to do is make the woman upset. But it ties with the other last thing I want to do, which is getting out of my truck when we’re at the cemetery. It’s a vicious cycle.

“Do you want the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” Marisa asks.

I’m about to ask what she’s talking about when I realize I’m flat-out staring at her wrists. Crap. I look up at her, but she doesn’t seem bothered at all. I grab her hand, lacing my fingers through hers.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” Hanging my head, I groan. This day keeps getting better. “I’m sorry.”

She pushes up her sleeve on the arm of the hand I’m holding—
the
arm. “It’s okay. We’re more than friends now, right? And more-than-friends should know these things.”

I nod, urging her to go on. Ready or not, here comes the truth, I guess.

“The night you picked me up was the one-year anniversary of all this,” she says, holding up her arm.

I don’t think I can handle the truth.

“It’s weird,” she continues, “and you’ll probably think I’m a freak, but that night is kind of like a birthday,
I guess? I wanted it to be a celebration. It didn’t exactly pan out like a celebration, considering I cried my eyes out until you picked me up, but whatever. A girl can try.”

Really don’t think I can handle it. “You’re losing me already,” I admit, my voice cracking.
Keep it together, Braxton
. “I thought your birthday was in December.”

She lets out a breathless laugh. “’Kay. From the beginning. I’ve had depression for as long as I can remember. It’s something I’ve always just kind of dealt with, you know?”

Not at all, but I nod anyway.

Her gaze falls to our fingers, which are still entwined. “Last year, I spiraled downhill. Way downhill. At, like, supersonic speed.” She presses her lips together, her cheeks flushing. I squeeze her hand gently, hoping it gives her some sort of relief. “I was in the bathroom,” she continues softly, “exactly like some stupid clichéd movie scene. I was curled up in the bathtub, sobbing my eyes out, with the shower pounding on me. The water had gone Arctic-cold. I remember praying for God to make it hot again because I was too weak to turn it off. You see, there’s this darkness that comes with rock bottom. It sucks you in like a black hole. It just—it swallowed me whole.”

Her eyes meet mine again. My heart stutters at the pain there. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine.

“It hurts,” she whispers. “You have no idea how much it hurts when that happens.” She sniffles. Shakes her head. “All I wanted was for the pain to go away, no matter what it took. The razor was there, and something inside me snapped. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. My parents found me right on time, but it was—” She pauses. “It was bad. A mess.”

Red clouds my vision. All I can see is Marisa covered in blood. Marisa’s parents freaking the eff out. Marisa
not breathing. And now I can’t breathe. I. Can. Not. Breathe. God, please don’t let her notice.

“Breathe, Austin.” She gestures for me to take a deep breath, which I do.

This has nothing to do with me. This is her story, the weight on her shoulders, the scars she carries around. But damn it, my heart is downright clenching at the thought of her hurting.

“I’m going to sound like a dick for this,” I say, “but how the heck is something like that even close to a birthday? It sounds more like a…” I can’t even finish.

“A funeral?” She smiles, surprising the hell out of me. “You’re not a dick. You sound like my mom. And that’s why I didn’t want to go home that night. We would’ve had our usual family dinner, except it would have been silent, with my parents trying their best to not slip up and say something that might trigger me. Being alone was infinitely better.” She pauses, then adds, “Until you came along.”

This strange look comes to her face, almost peaceful. Content. And I have no idea how someone can talk about the night she nearly died with a smile on her face.

“That night last year,” she says, “I was kept in the world for a reason, I think. And while I was in a hospital bed, covered in bandages and being force-fed medicine and treated like a complete psycho, I felt more at peace than I ever have in my life because I was a survivor. That’s the night I decided to really live my life, not just exist. Therefore, my birthday.”

I hold her gaze, my heart racing and my hands shaking and my breaths refusing to come yet again. I want to cry. I want to hug her. I want to tell her that I don’t ever want to hear about anything bad happening to her again. For a split second, I want to say that I don’t have a damn clue why someone would intentionally hurt herself.

Or himself. Especially when they have people who love them more than anything.

But the difference between her and my dad is that she’s here. She’s alive and she’s here and she’s real, holding my hand and breathing the same air as me. And now I’m breathing again. My heartbeat steadies. The shaking subsides. I see a girl who knows pain, true pain, on the inside and out. She’s tougher than I could ever dream of being. She saved herself.

“Austin?” she whispers. “Please say something.”

My mouth opens, but no words come. I clear my throat and try again. “Is that why you moved?” I ask. “Why you moved here?”

Relief floods her face. “Yeah. Sort of. People are vicious. My softball girls, the ones I would’ve trusted with my life? When I got out of the hospital, they were the worst. The phone calls, the words scribbled on my locker, the pushing in the hallways. It was too much for me to handle. Mom started the homeschooling thing, but a few of them decided they weren’t done. That’s when they came to our house.”

My eyes widen. “They went to your freakin’ house? Are you kiddin’ me?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. They TP-ed the place, smashed eggs on our cars.” She barks out a laugh. “My favorite was when they spray-painted
PSYCHO
on the front door. That was fun.” Her gaze grows distant as she looks out her window. Brett’s Jeep roars into the parking lot, with Jay’s car close behind. “My parents grew up down here. Dad’s from Dillon and Mom’s from Summerville. So when I decided on USC, they figured what the heck? Let’s all move, sooner rather than later.”

Brett pulls into the spot next to mine. He blares the horn and tosses up a wave just as Jay swerves into the spot in front of his. Marisa hangs her head, pulling her sleeve back down.

“So now I have no locks on my doors,” she says on an exhale. “I have to take my meds in front of them every day. As long as I do that and stay on top of therapy, they’re okay with giving me some space, letting me go little by little. But…” She shrugs. “Like I told you before, it’s hard for them, too.”

My mouth hangs open. “You make my problems sound like shit. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

She places her hand on my cheek, running her thumb across my skin. Everything inside me melts faster than a snowball in hell. “We all have battles to fight, Austin. Mine are just in my head.”

Jay knocks on her window. She yelps and jumps. He grins like an idiot and waves, making her laugh. It’s better than the sweetest song I’ve ever heard. The moron outside jerks his thumb toward the building.

“One minute!” I yell.

He rolls his eyes, but jogs to catch up with Brett and Eric across the lot. Rubbing my thumb across Marisa’s knuckles, I smile as her eyes meet mine.

“You didn’t have to tell me all that. I was crazy about you anyway. Now I’m even crazier about you. Congratulations.”

She blushes, looking down at our hands. “You’re kind of awesome, you know that?” She looks back to me. “I’m really lucky.”

I shake my head. “I’m the lucky one here.”

My phone buzzes from the dashboard. She grabs it with a glance at the screen and tosses it to me. “I think that’s our cue.”

Jay
:
either kiss her or get ur ass out here
.

I look up at the building, where Jay’s waving his arms. Shaking my head, I shove the phone and keys into my pocket. Once I meet Marisa outside the truck, I burst out laughing. My hoodie nearly reaches the bottom of her dress.

“You’re such a shrimp,” I tell her. She narrows her eyes. “A pretty shrimp?” I take her hand, sliding my fingers through hers.

A few other cars have pulled into the lot since we got here, which means we’ll probably have to wait for a cage, but it’s worth it. Knowing where she came from, what she went through? She’s the strongest girl I’ve ever met in my life.

“You know, anyone can hit off a ball dispenser,” I say as we head toward the guys. “Not to mention I went easy on you that day at the field. Have you ever hit a live curveball?”

She swings our hands between us. “Please. That’s child’s play.”

And it’s official. There is such a thing as perfection personified. “What about a slider?”

“Piece of cake. You think my dad raised a princess?”

We stop in the middle of the lot. I look down into those bright green eyes, full of beautiful chaos and plenty of stories still untold. I’m a goner. All I want to do is stare into them all day and all night long.

“Braxton!” Jay yells. “
You
called
us
. We playin’ or what?”

But I guess that’s not entirely possible. I drop my head and groan. Marisa and I continue across the lot, being openly stared at by the family walking past us toward the building. Good ol’ Small Town USA.

“You know,” I tell her, “they’re probably whispering behind our backs.”