I’ve been gone all morning and so much is weighing on me. It’s a set of waves that keeps crashing down. Just when I think I’ve reached the surface, another wave pushes me under again, forcing me to fight my way back up. With each passing day, just when I think I’m getting ahead, I realize I’m not. I really don’t know how much more I can take. It’s leaving me exhausted. It’s tearing my heart apart. When I reach my room, I drop my bag on the floor, kick off my shoes and crawl onto my bed. I pull one of my pillows to my chest and hug it tight, curling myself around it for comfort. I close my eyes, force everything down and hope for a few moments where my life isn’t loaded with problems. Where Embry’s not trapped between this world and the next, where his brother isn’t rotting in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, where Allison isn’t hiding something from me. But most of all, where my heart isn’t being pulled in two different directions—the one that’s falling—hard—for Embry’s ghost, and the other where I don’t know how I can ever look him in the eyes knowing he’s the complete opposite of what I thought—hoped—him to be.
