When it rains, it pours. I’m drowning in a lake of rain pooled at my feet as I step out of my car. The sun is due to set at any moment, but heavy black clouds paint the skyway with doom and gloom.

Wind howls and twists around me, autumn leaves caught in the whirlwind tangling with my blowing hair. I stare straight ahead at the Sunset Motel as I pace toward the chipped-green door. My heart that would once race is leveled with forced apathy. The only thing I feel is the cold storm against my skin.

And then the metal under my knuckles as I knock on the door.

Kemper pulls the door open wide-eyed, and I step aside him. He closes the door behind me, and rushes to retrieve a blanket off the bed. He throws it over my shoulders. “Christ, Stassi.”

“It’s raining,” I say deadpan as he dries me off with the blanket, but I didn’t come here to be reminded how much he cares about me, so I push the blanket off my back. It coils on the soft carpet.

“You haven’t answered your texts.” He bends at his knees and switches the heat dial upward. “I’ve been worried about you since Mrs. Salt said you had to take care of an emergency.”

“Is that what she’s calling it?”

“What happened?” He takes my hand and guides me to the bed. “Why are you—“

“She knows, Kemper.”

“Shit.” He raises his palm to his chin. “How did she find out?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What are we going to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything.” I cock my head to him with a can’t-miss frown. “It’s what I have to do.”

“Don’t say he it,” he says low and husky. “I need to tell you something first, and you’re not going to like it, but I need you to listen.”

Now, my heart begins to race. There’s sorrow in his tone, riddled with a wave of nerves. “You’re scaring me.”

“That’s probably a good thing.” He rises to his feet and steps to the window. Rain dances along the glass, painting a backdrop of tears. “You should be afraid of me.”

“You are the softest, most gentle man I’ve ever known.”

“I’m not who you think I am.” He twists his head over his shoulder. “I never lied to you, but there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you since I felt that first true kick against my heart.”

“What is it?” I question, but begin to feel as if I don’t want to know the answer. I came here to do what had to be done. It was supposed to be a quick in and out job, because I knew the longer I stayed, the more I’d lose my nerve to run.

“It’s about Nathan,” his words shoot straight through my heart. His face contorts as if he’s about to throw up. I, too, want to throw up. Release all my nerves in a pool at my feet.

“What about him?” I ask, my throat seeming to collapse.

“When this all started, I wanted nothing more than revenge.” He sighs and shifts his eyes upward at the ceiling, shaking his head. He’s not sure if he should continue, but he knows it’s too late. “I wanted to destroy Coach for what he set in motion.”

“You knew him?” I move to stand, but my feet give out on me before they’ve even landed on the carpet. I sink back onto the bed, dizzied and spinning. “This doesn’t make any sense.” His feet tap against the floor, his leg shaking. There’s an earthquake beneath us, and neither of us are prepared for the aftershocks. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I know you came here to break up with me, and I’m hoping that by being honest, by forcing you to see how much I’m in love with you, you won’t do it.”

“I don’t have a choice, Kemper,” I scoff, because why does he think this is so easy for me?

“You do.” He nods. “You always have a choice.” His lips curl. “You make them or you don’t, but don’t’ stand here and tell me it’s out of your hands.”

“I’m married.” I jump to my feet and pace around the bed. I need the space of the bed between us, to give me some measurable distance so I can think clearly.

“You’re going back to him?” He questions, almost to himself. “After everything he’s done to you?”

“What has he done to me that I haven’t done back? He cheated. I cheated.”

“He tore our lives out from under us,” he screams and points a finger to his chest, rage boiling to the surface and tearing me to shreds. I’ve never seen him this way, raw and visceral, exploding in a fit of blind anger.

“Who was Nathan to you?” I stare him in the eyes, trying to piece the jagged pieces of this jigsaw puzzle together. “Family? Friend?”

“I was with him that night.”

The revelation sends thunder through my veins, lightening shocking my heart into overdrive. “That’s not possible.”

“You know what I’m saying, and you know it’s true,” he yells, but calms himself down after a deep breath. “Please don’t make me say it out loud.”

“If you were with him, then why are you with me?”

“Because I knew how much Coach loved you.” He buries his hand in his palms and drops down into the chair beside the bed. “You were his prized possession, and I thought if I could steal you from him, I could hurt him the way he hurt me.”

So many question, so much confusion. “You’re gay?”

“No,” he scoffs. “Sometimes.” He eyes me. “That’s so not the point.”

“I think it’s pretty on the nose, if you ask me.”

“This started as something evil, but it became something else.” He stands and begins a slow careful march toward me. “Now, I don’t care about revenge or whatever. I was never supposed to fall in love with you, but I did, that first night under those bleachers, and I know that it’s crazy. You can’t fall in love in one night, but I did. And I’m standing here owning it because I don’t know if I can make you stay.”

“You can’t,” I say dryly, wanting him to know I’ve made up my mind, but that’s nowhere near the truth. “I need to process everything, but I don’t have time.”

“We lost someone we both cared about for different reasons.” He pets a gentle caress against my cheek. “That connects us, forever and always.”

“I love you, Kemper,” I whisper and lean into his touch, closing my eyes and reveling in the way he can make me feel; loved, wanted, full. Those three words, I love you, were always so elusive. I couldn’t say them before, but I can say them now, only because I’m about to flee. “Truly. Madly. Deeply. Over the moon and around the sun, I love you with every bone in my body.”

“Then why walk out that door?”

“I wish I didn’t have to make these choices, because when I do, I don’t even want to live in this world.” I trace my hand along the back of his palm, caressing him, but I know I need to pull myself away from him, and that’s just what I do. “I want to crawl in a hole and die.”

“I’ll wait for you.” He follows me to the door. “A thousand years if I have to. I’ll sit this lifetime out and wait for the next.”

“You need to live.” I place my palm on his chest. “Take that heart and love someone who deserves it.”

“Do you think I don’t understand how wrong this is?” His voice shatters, pleading for me to think this through. That’s the problem, though. I’ve thought about it too much and not enough. I’ve thought about every scenario, and it always ends up leaving someone with a broken heart. “I think about it every night. I know what I’m asking you to give up.”

“Then you wouldn’t ask it.”

“What about me?” His eyes are swollen, his breath broken. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Every second I stay here is another second I’m not running.” I twist the knob of the door, but hesitate pushing it open. “If I don’t walk out that door soon, I’m never going to walk out.”

“That’s fine with me.” He forces a beautiful smile, cracked open with despair but he hides it well.

“I know it is, and that’s why this is so hard.” Wind pounds against the door, forcing it open. “I wish I could be who you need me to be.”

“Don’t you get it?” He braces his hand on the edge of the door as it swings open. “You already are. You’re damaged and broken, and you’re all the more beautiful for it.”

Behind me, a storm rages on with thunder roaring through clouds that are darker by the second. Before me is another storm, standing tall above a broken foundation. “Goodbye, Kemp,” I say lowly, because that’s all the strength I can muster. We exchange one last look. He’s full of longing and words left unspoken. I can’t know what’s written on my face, but I feel empty and can’t help but feeling I look it too.

I smile one last smile and turn to the rain. It pounds against my head, rolling down my face, and with every sharp inhale, it sputters on my lips. With every inch I distance myself from that fateful motel, my need to breathe escalates but my ability to do so withers. I’m left suffocating, claustrophobic in an empty parking lot that floods higher and higher with no end to the storm in sight.

I hear footsteps kicking through the water behind me. My eyes fall shut. When I open them, Kemper’s standing in front of me, his chest heaving, his lips shuddering, his body shaking. From the cold or pure adrenaline, his entire being vibrates. The rain pushes his hair flat against his head, dripping near his eyes.

“If you drive away right now, I won’t stick around,” he threatens, but it comes out more like begging me to stay. “I can’t go to that school everyday and see you. It’d kill me.”

I don’t say a word. I know that I can’t.

We stand face to face in the freezing rain. Anyone could see us, but it matters no more. After this last passionate embrace, the game is over and we’re both back at square one, fumbling through this field they call life. There’s hope on the horizon, but we can’t see it beyond the storm clouds.

We just see each other, bruised and damaged, soaked from the storm. Tattered and shredded for the world to see, drowning in the emotional pool gluing us to the ground at our feet.

Neither of us speak a word. We don’t have to. He had to have known that the second he gave chase to me. It was over before it started, and though I love him, it’s with the heaviest of hearts that I must let him go.

It makes no sense, and maybe it doesn’t have to. How can you truly love someone you hardly know? I’m not the one to ask, because I honestly don’t have a fucking clue. I just know what I know, and I can feel it too.

It’s worth repeating; Love has no rules, and it has no limits. I used to believe it was a balancing act; a carefully crafted equation of give and take. Now, I know it can never be balanced. To love, you must lose. To lose, you must truly love first.

I’ve loved. I’ve lost. I’ve had my Goddamn heart torn out of my chest, and somehow I’m still standing with enough strength to walk away from him, when I want nothing more than stay here with him.

We stare each other down for a moment more, standing as still as statues while bolts of lightning flash from above. Something about the electricity in the sky breaks me from the spell and I turn to my car without saying a word.

“Don’t do this to me, Stassi,” he pleads from behind me, the last words I’ll ever hear him say. “I love you so Goddamn much.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper under my breath and slide into the front seat of my car.

I turn the ignition and throw the car into gear. It’s when I’m pulling out of the parking lot that I break. I make the fatal mistake of looking in the rearview mirror. Tears brew from my eyes, clouding my vision of him with every stifled inhale. He stands there motionless, his hard body weathering the storm but his boyish face defeated and irrevocably broken.

I’m broken too. I guess we’re all broken in our own ways. Some of us survive, persevering through the pain. Some of us wither and die. And some of us are stuck in place, damned to live the same mistakes over and over again.