I throw the screen door open and rush out into the storm, with hurricane winds puppeteering trees to their breaking point. Lightning lights the sky in short, bright flashes of blue. The wind whips and howls, twisting the long locks of my hair into my face.

I push hair out of the way as I launch the car door open and slide into the seat. With a quick twist of the ignition, I’m reversing down the long, winding gravel driveway before I’ve even pulled the door shut. The tires beneath me lose traction against the gravel and slide sideways, and into the grass, dangerously close to the edge of a ditch.

“Fuck.” I pound the steering wheel with an open fist and throw the car into drive. The tires spin against mud, sending slick dirt into the air. I shift into reverse and spin the wheel all the way into the opposite direction. It doesn’t work in my favor as my car slides further to the side, and deeper into the grass.

I bow my head against the steering wheel and let out a soft scream. My lips quiver on the edge of a breakdown. I jump out of the car and take a quick snapshot of the cars position. Maybe if I push it from the back, I can get it back on the gravel. I lean across the seat and push the car into neutral, then make my way to the back of the car to shove.

The muscles in my arms strain as I fight against the mud, but my feet lose traction too. I slip and tumble hard against the ground, my head cracking against a fallen tree branch and my body stained with mud. I peer up to the night sky. Nothing but clouds and a torrential downpour of rain that washes the tears from my face.

I groan as I climb to my knees and then onto my feet. My eyes shift back to the house, and my heart sinks into my stomach when I see Brock standing at our bedroom window, watching me struggle against mother nature.

I see everything in a flash, and everything that once made sense, no longer does. And what didn’t make sense before, now becomes obvious. Even though we’re separated by a good hundred feet, I can make out every feature of his face, and the tears that paint a fresh coat over his aging features.

He’s watching me leave, maybe forever and it’s an image I can’t shake. I look back at my car, and then the road I should be traveling on. Then back at the house. I swallow a nervous lump in my throat, but it’s not nerves I’m swallowing. It’s fear. It’s sorrow. It’s a sudden, stark realization that is the biggest blind side of them all.

My feet dig into the mud. Deeper and deeper, until the heels of my shoes are buried beneath the ground. I breathe, hard and fast, and then I’m racing toward the house, screaming, “Brock!”

He places his palm against the window, and the power to the house is cut. The field in front of the house, resting on a hill, goes pitch-black, and all I can see is a faint outline of the white exterior of the aging home. A transformer explodes beside the house, shocking the black sky with a spider web of deathly voltage, painting the porch in a foreboding shade of blue.

Brock throws the screen door open and gallops down the concrete steps. My heart races, pounds, sparks something in me I believed long lied dormant. When I can’t run any longer, I push myself somehow to run even faster until we meet in the center of the hill and I launch myself into his arms and there’s no hesitation on his end to catch me, cupping his strong hands around the curves of my ass as I lower trembling lips to meet his.

I kiss him deep and hard, chewing at his lip and swallowing his tongue. He tastes of rainwater, smooth and wet. He pulls me inside out, stealing whatever little breath I have left, devouring me, owning me, surrendering himself to me.

My breathing irregular, sharp and ragged, I pull away from his kiss and he lowers me to stand on my feet.

“What the hell are you doing?” he questions, but the answer should be obvious.

“I remember,” I sob. “I remember everything. I remember the way we used to be and how happy we were, and how happy we can be again.”

“What about Kemper?” His shoulders rise and fall as the blue sparks behind him recede into the night sky. “What about him?”

It’s an answer I hadn’t thought about, but it’s an answer that doesn’t matter anymore. It can’t matter. “I love you,” I struggle to get the words out, not because I don’t mean them, but because I’m finding it more and more difficult to breathe. “I always have and I always will.”

“Are you sure?” he screams over a roaring fit of thunder. “Are you in it for good?”

I nod. “I’m in it.” I throw my palm against his cheek. “We can be happy together,” I reiterate, needing him to believe the sentiment the same way I believe them. “We’re both royal fuckups,” I force a laugh, “but you were right. We took vows and in this spinning world, they have to mean something because if they don’t, then everything else is a lie.”

He closes whatever little distance is between us and pulls me into his chest, his fingers curling through soaked hair. “I love you Stassi Hamilton.”

“I love you too, Brock,” I whisper, unsure if he’s able to hear me as I take refuge in his chest, warm serenity and absolution. I’m at peace for the first time in the longest time, but I know the path ahead will be riddled with complications. But I survived the storm.

And as we stand in the pouring rain, underneath the most violent of skies, I like to think I’m a bird, soaring over the farmhouse with a unique perspective of the display on the ground. And as I fly away, the trees and dirt roads give way to a small town situated in the thick of a forest with a few thousand people lost in the struggle that is their lives, but at the end of each and every storm, they persevere.

Town after town, it’s all the same until I fly over the winding towers of a metropolis. The people there are the same, too. Further and further, my wings take me to new lands, until I reach the ocean and in a little shack lives a man, sheltered from the pain of this world. He’s happy and he’s free, and he’s found love in this impossible world, but that love he found just isn’t with me.