The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,371

take me back to my apartment. This is my last week here, and I feel guilty at how glad I am of that.

The conditions here are bleak. This refugee crisis is the worst of its kind in our hemisphere. But for the news coverage it receives, you’d be hard pressed to even know it’s happening.

But teams like mine, from all over the world, have come to help serve the people who are caught in the crossfire of political stagecraft. It’s easy to feel a sense of helplessness, because there’s no hope in sight for an end to the problem.

I climb aboard the van, and before I can buckle up, we’re off. It’s dark in the van, and everyone else is asleep. I pull out my phone and scroll to my favorite torture devices.

Pictures of Regan - a couple of us, but, mostly, just her.

My screen saver is one of her on a paddle board the afternoon we explored the mangroves. She looks like she’s eighteen. Her hair is braided into plaits that run down either side of her head and dangle over her shoulders. Her bikini is a mismatched black bandeau top and bright green bottoms. She’s grinning wildly, her hands lifted in the air over her head, an oar clutched in the left one. Her expression is triumphant.

Worry makes my heart skip a beat every time I think about her alone right now. The upheaval must feel endless.

I’ve started to call her so many times, and each time, I’ve stopped.

She’s so off limits, it’s not even funny. And despite lashing out at Hayes, I don’t want to make things harder for him.

I gaze out at the scenery as we wind our way through the valley. The horizon doesn’t calm me the way it used to. Now, when I gaze out at the place where the sky and earth kiss, all I see is her.

Regan, for me, is what that spot in the distance must have been for the men who were inspired to sail toward it, even though they fully expected to fall off the edge of the world. And just like them, I can’t resist that call.

I shouldn’t even attempt it. I’m not on a ship by myself. My brother is breaking his back to repair what my mother has broken. If I make a mess of things, I’ll take him with me.

And what if Regan never leaves her husband?

Can I risk so much when I’m not sure that the horizon isn’t just an illusion?

So, whenever I’ve had the urge to call her, I write it down in a letter. I’ve got a couple dozen notes that I never planned to mail.

The shuttle drops me off and I trudge into my apartment. I head straight to my desk and pull out the paper and pen I’ve been using and start another letter.

When my ink runs dry, I go in search of another pen. I feel around on the top of my bookcase where I keep my supplies and my hand brushes against a book. I grasp it and pull it down.

It’s my copy of Cosmos. The one thing that I always take everywhere with me. It’s like a Talisman. I open and read the inscription I wrote in my ten-year-old scrawl - “You’re my Venus, I’m your Mars.”

How true that turned out to be - just not the way I’d hoped. Like the actual planets, it feels like we have the whole world between us.

Yet, she’s still my Venus - that out of reach, elusive star. My goddess of love, my ultimate woman.

But am I her Mars? Didn’t I tell her that how the god fought for the love of his goddess even though she was completely off limits to him?

In three months, I’ll be headed on an expedition that will take me away from any modern conveniences for a whole month. If I didn’t come back, wouldn’t I regret not telling her that until my last breath, I loved her?

I make a decision, one that feels slightly premature and that I’m certain I’m not prepared for. But that’s never stopped me from trying before.

It certainly won’t stop me now.

Not when I think that loving Regan Wilde the way she was born to be loved - the way I know no one is loving her now - is also my calling.

There is nothing about a life with her that is as I imagined my life would be - the children I thought I didn’t want to raise, the