“At me.” God, it hurts. Like flaying my chest open, as I face it. “At all of us.”
And I get it. “Because we weren’t there.”
Her face crumples. “It’s not fair. I know it’s not. But – I left you that voicemail, and I hoped that you knew me better than that, Theo. You knew me better than anybody else. And I hoped you’d know that I meant the opposite of everything I said in that message. But you didn’t.”
We didn’t save her. Didn’t find her. Not that time. And the message I’ve listened to a hundred times or more – hating her, or so I told myself – she was inagony. Begging us to help her, as my brother broke her.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My eyes are wet. She chokes on a sob, leaning forward. I press my forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry, Kenny.”
She buries her face in my neck. The two of us end up on the floor, Kenny’s cries dampening my skin. “He just - he wouldn’tstop. I begged him, Theo. But he just kept going. Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know.” Broken, pleading words. “I don’t know, baby. I wish I did.”
I wish I could solve it, for both of us. But I can’t. I can’t fix it. So I hold her, instead, as she cries out her pain into my skin and I try to take it for both of us. I canfeelit, cutting into my heart.
She was willing to die as the villain in my story.
Because… “You didn’t think you were worth choosing, did you?”
I draw back, push damp hair from her face. “You didn’t think I’d choose you, Kenny. But I do. I always will.”
I would have then. I nearly did. But I let her go, let her get in the truck with him. And I have to live with that regret for the rest of my life.
But it’s nothing compared to what my mate has to live with.
I find the lines in her neck. Jagged and ugly. Brett’s poison, forever burned into her. And I press my lips to them in silent apology. To the ones I can reach.
One. Two. Four.
I can’t see any more.
Silently, she shifts back. Our eyes meet as she tugs the shirt over her head.
My heart breaks all over again. My eyes shift over her bare skin, moving from mark to mark.
This is not about us. She shivers when I shuffle forward. My lips press to her skin again.
And again.
Every single mark.
Every single jagged lie.
Seventeen of them, branded into her skin by my mirror image.
I find them all, an apology in every movement. My tears soak into her skin, her hands on my shoulders, trembling with pain I can feel with every breath as I face what he did.
And finally, I brush my lips over hers. One final apology. “I’m sorry. For everything I said and did. All of it, Ken. For the diner, and the anger, and the bark. Every bit of it.”
And when I pull back, Kenny is the only person I see.
Her voice is a croak. “You don’t need to apologize for him. You never have.”
Her fingers cup my cheek. Lower, until they’re pressed against her bite in my skin. “Apologize for your own mistakes. God knows there’s plenty of them. But they’re… they’refixable, Theo. Some things are fixable.”
I stare at her. She doesn’t look away, her eyes burning into mine. “That’s how we fix this. We focus on the things we can fix. You and me? We can work on that. We can’t fixhim.”
Fierce, and beautiful, and scarred. Unapologetically Kenny.
