I ghosted through school just like I had in Forks. I answered when called on, but otherwise stayed wrapped in my protective numbness. I didn’t know how long I’d be here. The sun was too bright. I hated it. I wanted to go back to the cloud-covered town where I’d met him.
Part of me knew this was probably for the best. They wouldn’t understand how I felt. But if I could just make it through this last year of high school… then what? All of my plans had revolved around him. Every decision I’d made had hinged on a future I thought I’d have with him. And now? I had nothing. No backup plan. No second choice.
The numbness started to slip. I could feel the agony clawing at the edges of my mind, so I pushed it back down and forced it into place.
When I got home, Renee was sitting on the couch, watching some soap opera. I walked past her without a word and settled at the table with my homework.
The night passed uneventfully. Eventually, I climbed into bed, tossing and turning for what felt like hours before sleep took me. As soon as it did, I was back in the forest—searching. Always searching. I never found what I was looking for. I never would. My eyes snapped open as a scream tore through my throat. I shoved my face into the pillow to muffle the sound. When the screaming stopped, the tears came. I curled into a ball and cried myself back to sleep.
The sunlight clawed at my closed eyes the next morning. I dragged myself through the usual routine—shower, teeth, clothes—and found Renee in the kitchen making breakfast.
I groaned inwardly.
She never cooked unless she had something to say.
I sat down, trying not to show my irritation. She set a plate in front of me, then joined me at the table with her own. I didn’t even register what she’d made—I just picked at it so she wouldn’t feel bad. We sat in silence until she finally put her fork down and cleared her throat.
“Bella, this afternoon I’m taking you to see someone,” she said gently. “Honey… you can’t keep going on like this. You have to move on. You’re not the first person to have their heart broken.”
Anger flared in my chest, but I swallowed it. No point in fighting—nothing good ever came of it. I just nodded.
A shrink wasn’t going to help me. I couldn’t tell them the truth anyway. If I did, they’d think I was crazy. Lock-me-up crazy. I’d made a promise to protect those secrets, and I wouldn’t break it—not even now.
But then another promise came to mind. One I had made, one he’d made me promise in return.
Don’t do anything reckless or stupid.
That’s what he wanted from me. That was his parting request. And I’d promised. No hesitation.
But what had his promise been?
I promise that this is the last time you’ll see me. It will be as if I never existed.
His promise—broken the second it passed his lips. Because he had existed. Still did. Inside me. In every breath, every ache, every second I kept moving forward without him.
So if he could break his promise, why couldn’t I break mine?
I wasn’t going to tell the shrink the truth. But I would break my promise. I would do something reckless.
School passed in a blur. When I finished my homework, Renee approached me cautiously. “It’s time to go, Bella,” she said, already heading toward the door.
I followed her to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. The sun blazed overhead, and the dry heat wrapped around me like a suffocating blanket. I’d once loved this weather. Now I hated it. I still liked how the sun felt on my skin, but I resented it too. The sun was my enemy—it meant he couldn’t be here.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how sunlight reminded me of him—how it had shimmered off his skin, refracting into rainbows. That’s why I hated it. Because this place, this sun-drenched city, was a world he never could have lived in.
The numbness threatened to slip again. I clenched my jaw and pulled it tighter around me.
The drive was shorter than I expected. Before I knew it, we were in a small parking lot. There weren’t many cars. I didn’t care.
I kept pace with Renee, even though I tripped on a few rocks. Inside, I sat down in the waiting room, tuning out the receptionist and the soft, polite murmurs from my mom. She sat beside me and handed me a clipboard. I ignored it and stared at the floor, focusing on the fibers of the cheap carpet until they blurred.
“Bella, that’s you,” Renee’s voice broke through the haze.
“What?”
“They’re calling you back. It’s time to see the doctor. I can’t go in with you, but I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
I shrugged and followed the woman down the hall. She led me into a room and waved me in, sliding a clipboard into a wall slot as she left. I stepped inside and immediately knew—this was a child psychologist’s office.
The room was warm and cluttered. An oak desk sat by the window, framed by deep burgundy curtains. Bookshelves lined the side walls, overflowing with everything from Dr. Seuss to Jane Austen. A toy box overflowed in the corner. Two large leather couches faced each other in the center of the room. A two-way mirror filled the back wall. I scoffed.
A child psychologist. Seriously?
The nurse motioned for me to sit. “Dr. Rayburn will be in shortly. Feel free to read if you’d like.”
I slumped onto one of the couches and closed my eyes, guessing Renee was probably behind that mirror, watching.
The door creaked open behind me, and soft footsteps padded across the carpet. I didn’t bother turning around.
“Hello, Isabella. I’m Dr. Caroline Rayburn, and I’ll be speaking with you today.”
Her voice was calm and clear—neutral, practiced. She was trying not to spook me. I opened my eyes and turned my head lazily toward her. She was plain, angular, with a tight ponytail that seemed like it had been yanked into place as an afterthought. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She looked like someone who recycled affirmations for a living.
“It’s Bella,” I muttered, dragging my gaze back to the ceiling.
She nodded, walking around to sit on the couch across from me. She didn’t carry a clipboard like I expected—just a small recorder she placed gently on the coffee table.
“I want you to know, you’re safe here. You can share whatever’s on your mind.”
I stared at the ceiling for a moment, then flicked my eyes toward her. “Do you all go to the same school to learn that exact line?”
Dr. Rayburn didn’t flinch. “What line?”
“That safe-space, no-judgment, share-your-feelings routine. It’s like you downloaded it from a therapy script website.”
Her expression softened, but her smile was still trying too hard. “Well, sometimes what works is what’s true. So… how are you feeling today?”
I exhaled sharply through my nose. “Fantastic. Just thrilled to be dragged to a shrink’s office and psychoanalyzed under a two-way mirror while sitting on a couch that smells like stale Cheerios.”
She leaned forward slightly. “Is it okay if I ask what’s been hardest lately?”
“No,” I said flatly, then paused. “But I know you’re going to anyway.”
Silence.
“I’m not here to dig for things you don’t want to talk about,” she said finally. “But your mom’s worried. She sees pain and doesn’t know how to help. That’s all this is—an attempt to understand.”
I shrugged. “There’s nothing to understand. I got hurt. It happens. He left. I got left. It’s not complicated.”
“It still hurts though.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wow, insightful. Do you want to write that down?”
She didn’t take the bait. Just waited.
I shifted uncomfortably, tapping my nail against the leather couch arm. “Look, I know how this works. You’re going to file a note that says I’m emotionally shut down, possibly depressed, maybe suicidal. Then you’re going to suggest journaling or breathing exercises or something about inner child healing. So can we skip to the part where I pretend to care and then leave?”
Her mouth opened like she was about to say something measured and professional, but I was already on my feet. I didn’t look at her as I walked to the door.
“Thanks for the talk, Doc. Really productive.”
I hadn’t meant to say all that. But it was the truth. No one could help. No one but him. And he was gone.
All the therapy in the world couldn’t patch the gaping hole in my chest.
I thought back to that morning. To the decision I’d made.
I was going to break my promise.
There were plenty of ways to be reckless in Phoenix—and I’d found one.
I didn’t stop until I reached the car. My mind was spinning with what I was about to do. He’d hate it. He’d be furious.
But why did I have to keep my word when he hadn’t kept his?
The door slammed shut beside me. I felt the frustration radiating off Renee. When I turned to her, I saw she wasn’t just angry—she was scared.
“You could’ve tried to talk to her, Bella. You’re not going to get better if you keep locking yourself away.”
She didn’t get it.
“Mom… I’m scared to forget. But it hurts too much to remember. Talking won’t fix that. You should stop trying so hard.”
It hurt her, I knew that. But I couldn’t pretend for her anymore.
I’d already decided—I was going back to Forks. Whether she sent me or I left on my own. But first, I had something I needed to do.
Breaking the promise had been easier than I thought. I didn’t need parental consent—I was eighteen. All they needed was my ID and the payment. It hadn’t been cheap, but I’d used the money I’d saved from working at Newton’s. It was meant for college. But I wasn’t going.
I took the course every day after school—simulations, lectures, gear training. And now, the final day had arrived. After this, I’d get my jump certificate.
I wasn’t nervous. I was nothing. Just empty.
The plane was old and loud, rattling as it climbed. It smelled like oil and vinyl and adrenaline. I sat in the back next to the instructor, buckled into the harness, my limbs stiff and my hands locked around the straps. The sky outside the open side door was a vast, endless blue. Not a single cloud in sight this time. Just heat haze and the sun, blinding and high.
I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t excited, either. Mostly I just wanted to feel something—anything—besides the constant, choking fog that had swallowed me whole. This was supposed to be the thing. The jolt. The moment where numbness cracked and something surged through.
The instructor leaned close. “You ready?”
I nodded, barely hearing him over the roar of the engine and the pounding in my ears. My mouth was dry. My heart thumped, slow and heavy, like it hadn’t quite decided if this was real.
Then we were at the door. Wind slammed into me, flattening my breath. The world tilted forward.
He counted down—three, two—
And we jumped.
Everything disappeared.
The rush of air hit me like a freight train, tearing at my clothes and screaming past my ears. My body flipped into a freefall, arms and legs flailing against gravity, and for one raw second, I wasn’t thinking at all. I wasn’t remembering. I wasn’t aching. I wasn’t anything.
Just falling.
Weightless. Spinning. The sun above me, the ground so far below it felt imaginary.
I screamed. Not in fear—more like a release. A ragged sound I couldn’t stop, a sound that felt like breaking glass and finally breathing again.
Then the parachute ripped open with a violent jolt, yanking me upright. The harness dug into my thighs and shoulders, and I gasped at the sudden drag, the quiet that followed.
It was like floating now. The chaos replaced by eerie silence. The desert stretched out below us—brown, cracked earth dotted with scrub brush and roads that looked like pencil lines. I could see the curve of the horizon. It was beautiful in a way that hurt.
We drifted down slowly. The instructor guided us toward the landing zone, shouting instructions I barely heard. My eyes were locked on the sky.
When we hit the ground, it was with a heavy bounce, knees bending as we skidded to a stop. The instructor unbuckled our harnesses, and I stood up too fast, stumbling as the rush caught up to me.
I laughed once—sharp, surprised. I had done it. I’d broken my promise.
I’d been reckless.
And for a few minutes, I’d felt alive.
But as I walked back toward the building, the adrenaline started to fade. The weight crept back in. The silence returned. The hole in my chest didn’t close. If anything, it felt bigger now—more aware of how briefly it had stopped hurting.
Still, I had my certificate. I could go again. And I would.
Because maybe if I kept falling, one day I wouldn’t feel the landing at all.
By the time I reached the locker room, the trembling had started in my fingers. The aftershock of adrenaline—like my body had just remembered it was supposed to feel something. I sat on the bench, staring at my hands. My knuckles were white. My nails dug crescent moons into my palms. I flexed my fingers slowly, then pressed them flat against my thighs.
I had done it.
I had launched myself out of a plane on purpose. I’d laughed when I hit the ground. I’d felt the thrill—sharp, electric. But now it was gone. The moment had passed. Like it always did.
And I was still here.
Still broken.
Still empty.
The high had evaporated, and in its place, the ache had crept back in like smoke under a door. The kind that seeped into everything—into my breath, my bones, my thoughts.
I changed out of the jumpsuit in silence. The fluorescent lights hummed above me. I could hear voices outside—someone laughing, music from a nearby car. Everything felt far away, like I was watching life from behind glass.
As I walked back into the parking lot, the instructor gave me a thumbs up from the hangar. “You did good today. Natural jumper.”
I nodded, forcing a half-smile. “Thanks.”
He didn’t see through it. People never did. Not unless they were looking for the cracks. I opened the car door and slid inside, gripping the steering wheel like it might anchor me.
I didn’t turn the key. I just sat there. The heat was stifling, but I didn’t roll down the windows.
I’d done what I came here to do. I’d broken the promise.
But it hadn’t fixed anything.
If anything, it proved how easy it was to fall—and how nothing caught me on the way down. No arms. No voice in my ear. No reason to stop.
I glanced at the sky again through the windshield, still bright and pitiless. The sun had started its descent, casting long, golden streaks across the parking lot. That shimmer used to make me think of him—how it looked when it lit up his skin like fire through crystal.
Now, it just made me feel thirsty.
Dry. Spent. Small.
I blinked once, slowly, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life, low and steady.
I had one more class tomorrow, then I’d be cleared for solo jumps. No instructor. No safety net.
And I knew I’d go.
Because that thirty seconds of falling was better than hours of aching.
Because being numb in the air felt better than drowning on the ground.
Because if he had erased himself so completely… maybe I could, too.
1.7562 Billion Miles 