Epilogue

Five months later

The seagulls caw over my head as I make my way barefooted across the sand.

It is warm between my toes and I leave a trail down the beach as I walk in the late afternoon light.

The sun is blazingly bright, it's warmth touching my skin and wrapping me in its welcoming embrace. The breeze dances through my hair and my light blue sundress flaps around my legs.

I've never felt so at peace as when I first arrived here.

Everyone else in Florida was complaining about the December chill in the air while I'd been sure I'd never been more comfortable someplace so open and warm.

Now, late April, the heat is intoxicating. I sleep with the bedroom window in my apartment wide open, letting the morning air drift in to wake me slowly with each new day.

I've never been somewhere so open. The land is flat as the eye can see, just the sprinkling of resorts and hotels jutting up into the sky to break up the endless landscapes.

As I stare out at the ocean, it still holds just as much wonder as it had the first day I'd laid eyes on it.

I've never seen something so all encompassing and vast. The way I can look out at it on a sunny day and stare in awe at the way the sky just blends into the water on the horizon.

Right here, at the edge of the water, sitting on a towel with my toes dug deep into the sand, I've found my happy place. A place that feels welcoming and safe and calm even as the waves thrash together and spit sea foam up the coastline.

"Figured you'd be here." I turn my head, shielding my eyes from the sun to look up at him.

He's a sight to be seen with the sun blazing around his head, making his hair look more blonde than brown. Like a halo around him.

Only Aries could be so beautiful to distract me from the ocean. His crystal clear blue eyes shine, and his smile lines around his mouth deepen as he looks down at me.

"Do you think I'll ever get sick of it?" I ask as I scoot over to share my towel with him.

He sits close beside me, his shoulder touching mine.

"Nah." He shakes his head, his hair flying wildly around his face and he laughs, shaking it back and putting on his hat. "I don't think you will."

Down the beach from us a couple is taking selfies in front of the ocean, both dressed in white. While on the other side a large family starts to pack up their chairs and umbrellas, beckoning their kids out of the water.

All around us is so much life. People are here to make memories. To take pictures to share with their friends and families back home. To escape their every day lives and finally get a break from all of the chaos that comes along with it.

I grin as I watch them all.

I don't think I will get sick of this.

For them, this is a destination. This is a place to come and unwind while the salty air revitalizes their senses.

For me, it's home.

It had been so easy to pick.

"What's next for you?" Kelsea had asked when I'd dropped her off at the airport to send her home to New York.

I needed something fresh, something new, something warm, to wash out all of the time I'd spent hiding in the cold damp past.

And I'd never seen the ocean.

I thought I'd stay a little while, but a week turned into a month, and before I knew it I was signing a lease.

"I'm so proud of you, Missy." Aries knocks his shoulder into mine. His arms outstretched in front of him to scrape the sand up over his feet. "I don't know if I told you, but I am."

"Thank you." I turn to smile at him just as he turns to look at me. Our eyes meet and I feel that same jolt of electricity through me. The other thing I don't think I'll ever get sick of. It will always be there. Like the pull of two magnets. My heart will always lean towards him. "I'm proud of you too."

He shrugs it off, typical Aries.

He'd moved out of Faulkner shortly after me. He got a great job for the power company that pays great and he's renting an apartment in Wyoming near his aunt.

With how everything went, it was too hard for him to stay in town. But he'd picked himself up, and despite the way people still talk about him, he'd continued to persevere.

We text on occasion and there are phone calls here and there, but for the most part, we've focused on getting our own lives back on track. It doesn't change how my heart leaps whenever I get to talk to him. I crave hearing he's ok. Learning all about his life and appreciating all of the ways he's changed since I knew him as a boy.

My phone pings on the towel beside me with a text from Kelsea. I grin with anticipation. Tomorrow she'll be here.

She had promised to spend every summer here with me. She landed an amazing marketing job in the city that gives her the freedom to be creative and she loves her work. Especially that she can do it from anywhere in the world. Like here with me.

My heart is so full thinking of how well everyone is doing.

While Aires and Kelsea's lives are on the upward track a bit more than mine, I'm still growing too.

I have a waitressing job and I'm taking some night classes at the local community college. I still don't know exactly what I want to do, but I'm eager to see what happens next.

My life is still far from perfect.

Most nights I still struggle to sleep. The endless thoughts of how I could have changed things. How I should have seen things coming. How I could have stopped it. What I should have said to save my brother's life.

I have a mad case of survivor's guilt, or at least that's what my therapist says minus the mad part.

I'm still learning to cope with everything that has happened to me in my life and take accountability for the parts that I can and leave behind the parts that weren't my fault.

On nights when I wake up screaming in my bed, fighting the hands away from my throat, I remind myself that it's over. I choose to let go of what's gone and what's no longer real.

I'm far from figuring everything out, but when I look back at the person I was less than a year ago, I'm proud to look in the mirror everyday at the woman I am now. Flaws and all.

I still miss Dallas every day.

I still see him falling whenever I think of him. I still feel all of the pain from that moment throughout my whole body. I still love my brother, even though he wasn't what I believed him to be. I know those feelings will never go away, but I'm learning to live around them.

"What's going on in there." Aries taps a finger to the side of my head.

"Just thinking of how far we have all come." I turn to tell him. "How much we went through together."

When I look at him now, I still sometimes see his body laying there in the snow. So much blood around his head I was sure he was dead. I still feel his too still body beneath my fingertips and I still hear the way I'd wailed his name, begging him to be ok.

I blink away the memory of his shattered face and take him in as he is again.

"I'm really glad you came." I whisper and he gives me one of his brightest smiles.

"I am too, Missy." He grins. "This weekend has flown by."

I nod. "Too fast." I agree and both of us sober a little. I've never been good at goodbyes. Probably because most of the time I never had the chance to give one.

We both stand and I fight against the feeling of loss sinking in my stomach.

Aries dusts the sand off of him and then looks down at me and lifts a hand to my face. He just holds it there for a moment, his thumb rubbing absently against my cheek bone.

Then he takes a deep breath and sighs, letting his hand slip away.

"I want to come back again sometime soon." He tells me. "Whenever work slows down a bit, maybe I could stay longer next time."

"I'd like that." I nod.

"I'll text you when I land." He says and I step in to give him a quick hug.

We part and I watch him turn slowly.

"Hey, Aries." I call back to him and he turns back to face me. "Do you remember when you said...never mind." I laugh at myself. "It's stupid."

He grins, stepping in closer to me. "Nah, you can't do that." He laughs. "What were you going to say?"

My cheeks flush and I look up the beach as I speak. "Do you remember that time we were arguing about you know, like, what we were?" I laugh nervously. "And you told me that it's like we are reading the same book but I'm chapters ahead of you?"

I peek a glance at him as he shuffles nervously. "Yeah, kind of." He says. "That was shitty of me. I'm sorry for how I treated you back then."

I shake my head though, a soft smile on my lips. "No, it's not bad." I tell him. "I used to think about that a lot." I admit. "It was one of the last conversations that we had and for some reason that statement just alway kind of stuck with me. How we were just never quite in the same place at the same time?"

"I wish it had been different." He tells me.

"I just wanted to say," I chew my lip anxiously. "That I'm really glad you were here for this chapter in my life."

Aries steps in and wraps me in his arms. The warmth of his body, and the steady rhythm of his heart, feels so comfortable.

Still feels safe.

"I'm glad I was too, Missy." He says into my hair.  "I don't ever want to lose you like that again, ok?" He pulls back and looks down into my eyes.

"Me either." I nod and he holds me again. I soak it all in. Everything from before, and this moment now.

Slowly he lets me go and I watch Aries walk up the beach, back to the hotel until I can't see his figure anymore.

I don't know what the future holds. Maybe one day we do find our ways back to each other, maybe we don't. Maybe this is just the start, or maybe this right here is our end. Either way, I'm thankful for what we had.

We brought each other so much pain and heartbreak, but we also had something innocent and pure once upon a time.

Maybe one day we meet in the same chapter, or maybe our books and journeys take us to different places.

For now, I'm content.

I don't feel weighed down by sadness or the loss of anything or cling to a past that no longer exists.

Now I move forward, whatever that looks like for me.

I turn to face the ocean and I let my feet carry me forward.

The water laps at my toes, then my legs, then my stomach, then my chest.

I walk into the water, my head held high, a smile on my face, not giving a crap if anyone sees me fully clothed taking a dip in the ocean.

The waters swirls and wraps around my body, and I let the waves lift me. I feel weightless and small, and like nothing else in the world right now matters but the comfort I feel right here in this moment.

I float on my back, the sun heating my cheeks and I watch the wisps of white clouds drift lazily overhead.

I don't know what happens next.

But there is one thing I'm sure of.

I'm okay.

I'm okay.

I'm okay.

The end