The impact his body made when it hit the pavement was deafening. Rubber tires squealed to a halt, and glass shattered—then someone was screaming.
It was all too much.
He ended up on his back, his eyes blinking unseeingly into the darkness, and he suddenly understood why Luca had found the sky so fascinating.
He felt like he was flying through a sea of stars, and all he wanted to do was follow his brother home.
“He looked so much like our mother.”
Harrison had missed the funeral.
He lay in his private hospital room, eyes staring at the white ceiling until they became too dry, and he had to blink the tears away to see.
He had missed the other funeral too, but he still didn’t know how he felt about it. He couldn’t remember much about the night he was brought in four weeks ago, but he remembered the day he finally woke up and got his brain to focus on something other than pain, the sounds of beeping and the smell of clean hospital sheets.
They had been drunk. They had snuck out. They wanted to get snacks and drive to the lighthouse to watch the storm waves break over the causeway wall. And between Harrison’s home and the lighthouse, Taylor lost control and flipped the car.
Luca wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The bumper on Harrison’s side had ended up wrapped around a pole. His leg had been shattered, now only held together by metal bolts, the miracle of modern medicine, and a dedicated surgeon.
Luca died on impact after he went through the windshield, and Harrison had crawled out the same way and dragged his broken body to his little brother’s side.
Taylor was hit by the next driver passing by the scene, unable to see through the heavy rain.
In the hour it took the ambulance to get to them, Taylor had died too.
Harrison had been the only one who had taken a trip back to the hospital that night alive, and everything in his heart wished he hadn’t.
If he were dead, he wouldn’t have to hear people whisper about him like he was some fallen hero, and Taylor was a storybook villain. If he were dead, maybe it would have tipped the scales toward a different outcome, and Luca would be the one staring at the ceiling right now.
If he were dead, he wouldn’t have to look at his mother’s face and think about how much Luca resembled her, and hate himself even more.
If he were dead, it would have been better for everyone. Now all he had were the pieces of his shattered dream held in his broken fingers, soaked in the blood of the two people he had loved most in the world.
Harrison
5 years later…
“I need help.”
Harrison scoffed into the phone, an endless stream of possible scenarios already filtering through his head.
“What do you need help with, shithead?”
With Arlo it could be anything from advice on how to talk to boys, towing his piece of shit car because it broke down on the side of the road for the hundredth time, or something stupidly impossible like coaching his university hockey team.
Arlo was an up-and-coming pain in his ass, and a good hockey player too. Whatever was in the Killinger DNA needed to be studied. There were enough of them in his family that if they did some tests, they might be able to scramble enough decent hockey players on a Canadian team so they could bring home the Stanley Cup more often.
Arlo was above decent; he would end up in the NHL one day without a doubt, but Harrison would never tell his cousin that. The kid’s head would get so big that he would float away.
“My car broke down.”
Bingo.
“I can hear you smiling through the phone, Harrison. This isn’t fucking funny. Shit is happening at the rink today, and I can’t even get my car to start so I can spin a few wheelies out of here to make myself look cool.”
“Dude.” Harrison felt old in that moment. So very old. “Please don’t tell me kids these days still think burning rubber on public property iscool. That is so eighties boring.”
“How the fuck would I know?”Arlo snapped, and Harrison could picture the pissy look on his face.“I’m like, the most uncool guy we’ve bothmet. I like anime, and I have a pet goldfish that I swear is going to outlive me. I don’t know how to be cool.”
