Emmy Sanders

“Where d’you think we go when we die?” Easton asks from beside me.

“I think, maybe, we become stars.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Hopefully, we’ll be part of the same constellation.”
I like that idea a lot, too.

“Your best friend and your best horse have the same name. Seems like fate to me.”
Wyatt James Montgomery. Monty.
Maybe it is fate.
The thought makes me smile.

“I would always choose him. Over and over again, no matter how it ends. In any world where there’s a Wyatt and an Easton, that Wyatt would find his Easton and fall in love. And maybe that’s just my story, to be the brokenhearted. Maybe I’m okay with that.”

I was ten years old when I met Lucky. I knew it then, and I know it now. He’s a firefly. Luminous and wild. He was never meant to be trapped. Not here and not with me.
And in a few days, I’ll finally watch him fly away.

We talk for hours, like we usually do when I call. And I realize, not for the first time, that my favorite part about all of these adventures is when I get to go back to whatever temporary home I have at the time and share them with Ellis.

I think it was at thirteen that I first felt my heart beat for you. And break, just a little. Because I knew, like that tornado, you’d leave destruction in your path, and I’d be your willing victim.
I’d do it again.

I don’t think we could ever be unraveled.

“As soon as you get home from work, we’ll—I don’t know. We’ll do something great.”
I nod. Of course it will be great. It’ll be with him.