I knew Aedan wouldn’t kill me. I knew I couldn’t kill him. That meant both of us would die at Rick’s hands—he’d slaughter us for ruining his big fight. And he’d probably kill Alec in the hospital out of spite.
Some tiny, traitorous part of my brain asked,isn’t one death better than three?
No. No way. That was giving up everything I believed in. I couldn’t conceive of a world without Aedan. The world needed people like him. Any world was better than that—even one without me in it.
The only solution was for me to die. But I knew I’d never persuade Aedan to do it.
So I’d have to do it myself.
49
SYLVIE
At the hospital,I sat at the end of Alec’s bed and just watched him breathing. The whole month that he’d been in the coma, he’d been gradually losing muscle tone, his body atrophying day by day, too slowly to notice. Now, though, I saw the difference. I think it’s because the same blonde doctor, Heather, was there, checking on him, and the whole scene could have been a month before. Except then, I’d been the frail one and he’d been the strong one.
And now I needed to be strong one last time.
“Tell me honestly,” I asked Heather. “Do you think he’ll wake up?”
Her shoulders slumped. “It’s impossible to say,” she said. “I can’t make promises—”
“Please.I’d give a lot for your gut feeling, right now.”
She nodded and stared at Alec. “Then...yes.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, studying my brother’s face. I swallowed. “I need your help.”
By the time I’d finished with the doctor, it was evening. I went straight to Aedan’s apartment. We didn’t even speak, when we saweach other. We just wrapped each other up in a hug and rocked there in the doorway for long minutes.
He eventually pushed me back and looked into my eyes. “You know it has to be me,” he whispered. “It’s the only way that makes sense. You’ve got a feck of a lot more to offer the world.”
I shook my head. “Don’t say that.” But my voice was weak and despondent.
He touched his forehead to mine. “Fight’s in three hours,” he said. “It’ll take an hour to drive out there.”
“I don’t want to spend our last hours talking about this,” I told him.
So we didn’t. He sprawled out length ways on the couch and pulled me so that I was sitting between his legs with my back against his chest. And he played with my hair while we talked about our childhoods and school and friends and everything that had made us who we were.I know so little about him!I thought, horrified.
We sat there as the sun went down inside and the apartment grew dark, neither of us wanting to move, not wanting to waste a single second of precious life.Why didn’t we get up earlier? Why didn’t we train less and play more? Why did I work so many shifts at the hotel?I kept learning new things about him, things that made me love him even more. He hated raspberries, but loved raspberry-flavored candy. He and his brothers had rabbits, when they were kids, and Aedan’s used to hide inside his schoolbag and try to go to school with him. He once walked four miles in the rain to get to a gig by his favorite band, then stood there at the front and dripped a huge pile of water—but the speakers were so loud, they blew me dry,he insisted.
“Aedan?” I asked at last. “What happened to your family? Why are your brothers spread all over the country? Why don’t you talk to each other?”
His arms tightened around me. “Some bad shit. Some bad shit happened.”
I waited, but he didn’t speak again. “You don’t want to tell me?”
I felt him shake his head.
“That’s okay.” I squeezed his arm. “You don’t have to.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just...it’s a family thing.”
“Not for outsiders?”
“Not my story to tell.”
I nodded silently. As far as he knew, he was going to be the one who died. He was planning to take whatever happened to his family with him to the grave. What could be that awful? I gave a tiny, involuntary shudder.
