She hums softly. “Ah. Yeah, there are. But I said Brady and I are his siblings, so don’t blow my cover. Didn’t seem like a bad idea to take the burden of information off your shoulders, Bray.”
He shakes his head. “You’re a liar and a thief, Blakely.”
She groans. “All right, calm down, Clooney. I gave your sweatshirt back, it’s not my fault if you lost it afterwards.”
He mutters, “Yeah, whatever,” with a very pointed eye-roll.
The familiar bickering brings the smallest warm flame of fondness to life somewhere deep in my chest. If only I can keep it alive long enough to warm my long- dead heart. I have my doubts, the only person who could ever do that currently has a tube down his throat while he’s deciding to die or not.
Blakely squeezes Brady’s shoulder, then looks at me. “Hand over your phone, babes, I’ll handle letting your family know what’s going on and tell them you need some space.”
And here I was thinking Landon was being corny calling her angel. She might actually be one. “How are you so good at this?”
“It’s the golden rule of friendship, my darling. Someone has to be the one with their shit together so everyone has their turn to fall apart and have a friend in their corner to help. It overrides everything else. It’s just my turn to be the one in the corner.” When she looks at me, she’s clearly seeing our years together. Remembering them. “You gave me and Brady our turn to fall apart. I’m giving him a pass to have another go around because of extenuating circumstances, but it’s okay for you to take yours now. I can handle it.”
“I—no,” I stammer uselessly. “What?”
Brady coughs. “Damn. That was lethal.”
Yeah, that. The back of my throat burns with unshed tears as I struggle to find words. She only shakes her head. “Your phone, Chase.” I unlock it and hand it over with guilt swarming my insides. This is too much to ask of someone. “I’m going to give you guys some breathing room, okay? I’ll be around if you need something, though.”
And just like that, she’s walking out the door before I can even tell her thank you.
It’s quiet for a long time, nothing but the rhythmic beeping of Easton’s heart rate monitor and our shallow breaths to fill the space. I don’t even want to look at the bed and see him like that again. It ripped me to shreds losing him; the guilt of hoping that he didn’t want to end things between us and then realizing what that meant for him. The debilitating terror of imaging what could be happening to him, wondering if I could have prevented it. Cycling back into convincing myself he was just over our relationship and ghosted, only to start the spiral all over again.
Now here he is, after weeks of being missing, battered, bruised, and bloody after trying to take his own life. He was so fucking close by; this entire time he couldn’t have been morethan a half hour away, maybe forty-five minutes. The car ride is a bit of a blur time-wise, and I don’t know where the ambulance came from, but he was right fucking here. Right under my nose, and I didn’t find him. Never even occurred to me to look outside of the tourist traps and my neighborhood.
I was supposed to keep him safe, and I failed.
I let down the first person I gave my heart to. I don’t deserve to keep his. What was I thinking? That I could learn how to be enough for him? Laughable, looking back. It was always somewhere floating around in my head that I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I thought with maybe some time and good instincts, I wouldn’t fail him again.
Turns out, both times I sent him straight into the arms of his abuser. What right do I have to be in this room knowing his pain is my fault?
Brady’s head drops on my shoulder, like he could sense my urge to flee, but I rush to stand anyway as my breaths start coming in faster and faster. That phrase is turning over and over again in my head.
My fault.
My fault.
Easton being here is my fault.
“Ace, are you okay?” Brady asks from the surface of the ocean I’m drowning in. I want to run but my legs aren’t connected to my brain. I’m not sure my brain is connected to my brain. The weight of an elephant is pressing down on my chest, about to shatter my ribs into a million unfixable little pieces.
My job, the one true thing I’m good at on this planet, is putting other people’s broken pieces back together. My people. It gives me joy, a purpose that my heart feels floaty and aimless without. But what happens when I have my own broken pieces and I don’t know how to put them back? That’s where I always come up short. I’m my own worst instinct.
Brady yanks me hard, so I don’t have a choice except to fall forward. “Jesus, man. Take a fucking breath. You’re okay.” His arms wrap around me and squeeze. I try to listen, but all I can manage is a weird, wounded animal whine. He keeps babbling, a comforting sound that I feel more than I hear, washing over the sharp edges.
“I shouldn’t be here.”
My best friend chokes out a laugh. “Yeah? Why would you say some dumbass shit like that?”
I pull back, confused, and achy in places I can’t reach. “Don’t be dense, Bray. You and I both know that he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”
He looks to the ceiling for a long, very awkward minute. Finally, he says, “Forgive me, did I misunderstand the part where Blakely said the most haunting phrase I’ve heard in my whole life:he took a lot of pills?Did you dump them down his throat sometime between your mom suggesting a game of Uno and Parker breaking my favorite coffee mug?”
It’s a sick joke, not even remotely funny. It’s like he’s intentionally missing my point. “I loved him right back into that sick fuck’s arms! I should have been protecting him. He knew something was wrong; you saw how freaked out he was when he showed up at your house that night. He’s been freaked out this entire fucking time, but I got him to take his guard down so that maybe he’d love me back. Don’t you see how messed up that is?”
Brady cocks his head to the side. “You… Wait, no. You love Easton? Like, for real love him? My little brother?”
