“Then I remembered the Juliet balcony in the living room, the one my mum always fretted about when Lilith was a toddler.”My mouth curls at the memory as it attempts to douse the flames, but they’re too strong, too fierce for me to fight.
“I felt like I was on autopilot, like I wasn’t consciously acting, just doing whatever needed to be done as I smashed the glass and told Lilith she needed to be brave, that we were going to fly just like birds, and that when we landed, we’d be safe.”
The kitchen contorts, Hayami lost amongst the neighbours who were standing below, waving their arms and telling me to jump.And it was easy.No hesitation.No thought about the consequences, because when the flames are eating at your flesh, lifting the skin from your bones, there’s no alternative.
“I jumped with Lilith in my arms.We landed on two neighbours who were standing below and said they’d catch us.We fell to the ground, and, for a second, I felt relief that I’d got us out.”
I pause, my mouth dry, a bitter, charred taste clinging to the roof of my mouth.I reclaim my glass and down the remaining liquid, numbing the pain from the burns and fuelling myself for the rest of this sorry tale.
“You saved her,” Hayami says, her expression soft, as if she’s trying to convince me I’m the hero I’ve portrayed myself to be.
“I thought so.”My voice trembles, betraying my hard exterior.
She thinks this is the happy ending.
I swallow, my teeth grinding against the inevitable.“When the firefighters arrived along with the ambulances, Lilith was awake, crying, with a broken ankle and a few scratches, but that was all.I thought I’d saved her.”
My head hangs low, the glass now so heavy in my hand, I want to drop it.
“It wasn’t until I was in the hospital, when I was still being treated for my burns, that a policeman came to tell me that my parents were dead, that they’d been shot, their bodies burned in the blaze.”For the first time since I began, I meet Hayami’s eyes.Her teary gaze peers back at me, and I wish I hadn’t looked at her.“All I could think about was how my dad was going to teach me to drive, how my mum was helping me get through my A levels, and how young Lilith was to have our parents taken from her.”
I try to fight the heartache with my anger, but I’m bowled over by the grief.The loving family I thought would always be with me until I was old were gone.They were taken from me.
Suddenly, I want to be alone, but Hayami is waiting.She must know by now that this isn’t a happy ending.I can tell by how wide her eyes are and the hollows in her cheeks that she’s bracing herself for the worst.I bite the bullet and get it over with.
“It was later, much later, when I was high on pain meds and wrapped in gauze like a fucking mummy, that a doctor told me that Lilith had passed away the third night after the fire.”My breath catches as I remember how I argued with her, saying it wasn’t possible because Lilith had been alive when I got her out, alive when they took her to the hospital, alive when I’d been stretchered off to the severe burns unit.
She’d explained that it was common in fires for death to occur later on, as it was the smoke inhalation that killed and not necessarily the burns.
I look up, making sure Hayami sees my face, sees the man I am, before telling her, “I didn’t save her, Hayami.She died anyway.I’m not the hero you think I am.”
TWENTY-THREE
HAYAMI
PRESENT
Blinking away my tears,I stare at this man who I’ve spent six months with—knowing nothing of what he’s been through, nothing of what he’s endured, nothing of who he was before he leapt into my swimming pool.The man before me is no longer a beast in my eyes—he’s Fenrir, a tortured soul who has been through more pain in this life than I could ever even begin to understand.
This is the most he’s ever said to me—toanyone,I’m sure.I’ve never seen him talk to Willa or Bastian.And it’s no wonder he keeps to himself.No wonder he shudders when people ask about his scars.Because what he’s just told me has left me feeling so numb, I’m not even sure I’m really sitting here and not still asleep in my bed, caught in some horrible nightmare.
Who lives through something like that and comes out okay at the other end?
No one.
“I’m so sorry.”My words feel flimsy, as if they have no power to undo what he’s just told me.He lost everything.Everyone.At the age of seventeen, everything he’d ever known was taken from him.How do you live with that?
Fenrir doesn’t respond, simply hangs his head and clutches at the tumbler in his hand.
“How did you go on with your life?”I ask, my eyes swimming at all the possible answers to this.
His jaw flexes, the scarring around his chin moving like a mask.
“I spent much of the first year in the hospital, recovering from my injuries.The burns team helped my skin to heal.I had specialists, doctors, nurses, therapists, surgeons, you name it; they were all involved in helping me to recover.So, when I was finally discharged, the thought of ending it all felt wrong because so many people had helped get me to where I was.What kind of repayment would it have been for me to undo everything that’d been done to help me?For the first few weeks, I was lost, but then I had some counselling, and my therapist said that I needed to channel my anger, find a cause, fight for something good.He told me there’d been a reason I didn’t die in that fire, and that I just had to find the reason.That’s when I realised what I had to do.”
He waits, his eyes narrowing.I’m not entirely sure what he’s referring to, so I ask, “You joined the army?”
“Yes.Two years after that night, I joined the army for one reason and one reason only.”He balls his fist, flexes his fingers, and the penny drops.
