"Ryan," Marissa breathed as he entered the room. The first time, in all those years. He was the same, really. She still loved him. She had never really stopped. She regretted the decisions she'd made, they'd made. All of them. He looked just as good as he did in high school—muscular, golden hair, piercing blue eyes. Same half-smile. She tried not to blink, as though he would disappear before she could open her eyes once more. He was still Ryan. But he wasn't her Ry anymore. He was Ryan Atwood. Her ex-husband. Her heart winced.
And behind him, a girl entered. Her daughter. Haley. God, she was gorgeous, Marissa thought to herself. She was Elly, really—they were absolutely identical in almost every respect. She couldn't believe that one day she'd let herself leave, that one day she'd left Haley—her daughter, her beautiful, amazing daughter—and gone away. And then she looked at Elly, saw the way the daughter she'd raised looked at her, with hatred and anger. She'd done bad things, she knew that. She always had. But every time she looked at Elly too many sensations ran around her. In Elly, there was so much Ryan—which pained her more than she would ever admit. In Elly, there was Haley—there was the constant reminder that there was a girl out there with no mother because she and Ryan couldn't work out that last argument. And there was the constant reminder, too, that she was not a good mother even to the daughter she had, that her daughter was just like her in high school—independent, rebellious, and angry—and she hadn't fulfilled the promise she'd made to herself right before she'd given birth. She remembered the scene like it had been the day before. She had sworn to herself that she would be a good mother. That she would never be like Julie Cooper, that she would love and adore and nurture the two babies she was about to be given unconditionally and constantly. And her heart stung as she finally realized why the four of them were together, again, somehow.
Because she'd failed. She'd failed as a mother, to the daughter she'd raised, to the daughter she hadn't raised, and to the love of her life. The memories of her feelings in high school had always haunted her, but now she felt them come up again in a whirlwind. What did Seth always used to say?
Right. That Newport was "a world of insecurity and paralyzing self-doubt."
She'd left Newport when she was eighteen. But that world was still inside her. That world had followed her to New York and then to Los Angeles; those feelings remained. And she realized that until she made things right, they would never leave.
"Marissa." Ryan said quietly. She immediately buried her face in her hands, but she couldn't hide anymore. From her daughters, from Ryan, and from her tears.