The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Twenty-Three

My friends must have seen what happened; they try talking to me about it, but I don't have anything to say.

They've noticed I'm angry and out of sorts, just as they noticed when I was happy, when my heart was full of Roan.

But of course I can't tell them a damn thing.

I've lied to them all this time, even though it's for everyone's good, and now I'm trapped in a cage of my own lies.

Even though I know it hurts them, I shrug them off.

But someone else isn't deterred quite so easily.

Cole finds me while I'm catching my breath in between bouts of exercise. Her hair is twisted in a knot on her head, and her eyes are glittering.

"So that was impressive," she remarks.

I glare back at her, waiting for the insult that I'm sure is about to follow.

It doesn't.

"You really would have taken Gavin on, wouldn't you?" Cole says, and I'm sure that's admiration I hear in her voice.

I shrug, unwilling to engage in this conversation.

Cole is tangled up in everything, and I don't want to think about any of that right now.

She glances around and lowers her voice. "You should keep that up, you know."

"What are you talking about?" I snap, irritated.

"Just . . . wherever this anger has come from, hold onto it. It might be useful."

I let out a loud sigh. "What are you trying to say, Cole?"

But she won't say another word.

I do hold onto my anger for the rest of the day – though not on Cole's suggestion – but later that night, when I'm curled up in bed, my face pressed against Boots's fur, grief and pain rise up in a terrible wave, drowning the anger.

Of course Roan has been using me.

Of course someone as beautiful as him couldn't really fall for someone like me.

Of course it was nothing more than pretty lies, him feeding me what he knew I was so desperate to hear.

Of course the chocolate really was a bribe, drawing me in so I would believe he cared.

The confidence that I've built up is crumbling, the walls threatening to come down, and I want to shore them up, but I don't know how. I don't want to go back to the girl I was before, the girl who couldn't bear to look at her own face. I don't want to feel damaged anymore.

But I'm starting to think that the foundations of that confidence were the pieces of his heart that Roan gave me – that I thought he'd given me. Now he's taken them back, or maybe they were never really mine, and without those foundations . . . do I really have anything?

Roan.

I wish I could hate him.

I wish I could cut him out of my heart like a poison, slice deep until I find the roots that he has laid down inside me, tear them out, toss them aside. But some roots go too deep. I could cut and cut and cut, but I doubt I'll ever get all of him out of me.

The pain in my chest is so physical that I curl around it, trying to breathe between silent sobs.

Even if we still succeed in bringing everything down, what future do I have now?

I've entertained myself with dreams of travelling the world with Roan, of seeing all those places he showed me in his photos, seeing them for real, and now perhaps I never will.

If I do, it won't be with him.

I've imagined shattering the bars of my cage and flying free into that everywhere sky with Roan at my side, but that won't happen now. Maybe I can still fly free one day, but I'll fly alone.

And that frightens me.

It's a big world out there, and often a cruel one, and I will be nothing but a very small bird in a very large sky. For the first time in my life, the thought of flying makes me shy away.

"Why couldn't it have been real?" I whisper-ask Boots, and he stares quietly back at me, his eyes gleaming in the dark.

I rub his little chin, his nose, his head, until he starts to purr, and then I gather him into my arms and hold him as tightly as he'll let me.

"Why couldn't he just have loved me?"

Because I think I would have loved him.

I think I do love him, and that knowledge twists the wreckage of my heart.

Maybe he didn't mean for things to go this far.

Maybe he didn't think about how much he could hurt me.

But he has.

I wake up before the alarm, and pull in a shuddering breath.

The ceiling takes shape above me, as white and featureless as ever, and for a span of time that could be minutes or hours, I simply lie there, staring upwards.

At some point in the night, Boots wriggled out of my arms and is now sleeping next to my pillow, all his paws tucked in, his face buried in his tail.

My heart is in pieces, and I carefully gather them up and tuck them away in the deepest recesses of my chest, trying to avoid touching their sharpest edges. Then I climb out of bed and deliberately approach the mirror. My face stares back at me, tired and puffy-eyed, the scars stark against my pale skin.

I look, and look, and look, and look.

Roan has broken my heart, but he will not break my confidence.

I don't care if he is the one who helped me build it.

I don't care if he is the one who helped me truly realise that I am worth something.

The only way he can take those things back is if I let him.

I won't.

Maybe it was a lie from the start, but that doesn't change how I feel about myself now.

I am beautiful, not because Roan told me I was, but because I'm telling myself I am.

And I will not forget it.

I plan to wait a few more days until I return to the fence. I'm sure that either Roan or Rosie will be there, because no matter what has happened, they still need me.

But fate has other plans.

That morning, as Ripley is giving her usual ugly speech, she announces something else.

The date of the Trials.

Two weeks from now.