"Yeah," I say, a little subdued. "She chucked me right before I got here. We'd been together for years. We were meant to be, you know?" I ask him. "Everyone said so. And we were going to get married if I made it out of everything alive."

I fall silent for a moment, feet still pushing at the ice, and I hardly notice when Bitty guides us around a turn. "She said she didn't want to be my happy ending." Maybe I did treat her like that, a prize. I never meant to. "I don't think I was a very good boyfriend," I admit. "I liked to think that I would have someone, a future - it made it easier to fight. But that's not the same as loving a person, is it?"