“The principal didn’t really think so. I was suspended for three weeks and sent to state-mandated counseling. I think the only reason I still managed to get a scholarship after that was because I was salutatorianandI was a foster kid—lashing out was kind of expected of me, to a certain degree. But Abby deserved everything she got, and I refuse to back down about that.
“I don’t know your uncle, though he does sound like a real dick. He treated you like garbage. But you can’t keep blaming yourself for everything that happened.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled in closer to his warmth, nuzzling into his cheek. “Yourdad could’ve had that same heart attack and died in his sleep. You could have swallowed your words, had the evening go off without a hitch, accepted your mother’s offer, andstillgotten in the car with him and had him die the same way the next day. You can’t sit here and keep trying to figure out what you could have done differently.”
Theo shook his head. “I don’t know about that. I’ve thought through every scenario, every single possibility. If we’d left in the morning, and if I hadn’t gotten into that fight, he might not have been stressed enough to have such a massive heart attack. We might have made it home, or he could have had a smaller one that was fixable. If it was lighter outside, I would’ve noticed him drifting sooner and could have taken the wheel and avoided the crash. Maybe he wouldn’t be dead. Maybe it wouldn’t be my fault. Maybe…maybe I wouldn’t be likethis.” He lifted a hand and ran it down the length of the scar on his face, his fingers shaking. He clenched his fist tightly before letting it fall limply into his lap.
“Theo.” She looked him in the eyes and cradled his cheek with her hand. “Listen to me. You have to stop blaming yourself. It was an accident. You can’t go back and change the past, no matter how much you want to. Dwelling on it like this isn’t going to do any good for your future.” She slid her palm along the planes of his face, tracing the ridge of his cheek with her thumb. “I’m not sure I’m going to like the way this sounds, but hear me out,” she murmured. “Maybe you should let the past die. Bury it in the ground, and—and forge something new.”
He grew quiet.
All either of them could hear was the crackling of the flames in the fireplace.
“Let the past die?” he finally whispered, and his eyes went wide. “Oh my god. I—I’ve been making thismylegacy, haven’t I?” His bottom lip trembled, and he bit it sharply before burying his face in his hands. “Dad was right: I’m just likethem.”
“No, you’re not. It’s just that I wouldn’t think your dad would want you to cling to this guilt, would he?” Audrey ran her hands through his hair before peeling his palms away from his face. “I’m not saying not to honor him, but it sounded like he loved you a lot. I don’t think he’d want you hurting this much. Look at me, Theo.” When he still wouldn’t meet her gaze, she put her hand under his chin and tilted his face up to make him. “He angled the car away to keep the truck from hittingyourside head-on even while he was having a heart attack, didn’t he? He tried to take the hit so thatyouwouldn’t. He protected you. You know that’s true, don’t you?”
Theo closed his eyes sharply, but it wasn’t enough to keep the tears from spilling out. They lingered on his eyelashes for a split second, shining golden in the firelight before finally falling, leaving shimmering streaks in their wake. He sniffed and nodded once—then again, more firmly this time.
The hardest words to say waited on her tongue, and her own heart broke when she finally released them.
“He wanted you tolive. Your father made a choice, and he choseyou—he chose you over himself, over anything else.” Her own cheeks were wet, the tears streaming down them in earnest now. “And you know what? In a lot of ways, that’s more than my mother ever did for me. That’s what a parent’s supposed to do. He loved you so much. You have to know that.”
A sob wracked his chest at those words.
Audrey wiped his tears away and buried her hands in his hair again, pulling his head down to the curve of her neck. Theo’s arms shook as they wrapped around her—strong, but still tentative, still broken as they always had been.
“You said he knew who he was, and that he accepted himself, and your mother, even with their complicated past,” she said, her voice quivering as she pressed her lips to the side of his head. “Why can’t you have the same thing? Why don’t you think you deserve thatkind of peace? Your dad thought you did. Don’t you think that’s what he would have wanted for you? For you to forgive yourself, and to let your wounds heal, to stitch them up and let the scars finally settle?” She shook her head. “This isn’t living. It’s a half-life at best. He can’t have wanted you to keep cutting yourself open, slicing over your scars with a knife and bleeding them dry, again and again and again. And I don’t want that for you either.”
Her hands shook as she held him close, the ache in her heart for him growing with every tear he shed. “Your dad loved you, and if there’s one thing I believe, it’s that love never dies. It persists. It’s what we leave behind—it’s what your father left behind for you. It’s not his death that keeps his memory alive, it’s his love. That’s his legacy. It lives on through you.” She buried her face in his hair. “And nowIlove you, and I don’t want this for you. I don’t want you to keep hurting yourself, torturing yourself over this.Ican’t bear you living with such pain. Seeing it hurt you? It hurtsme.” Another sob tore through her chest. “Please let it go,” she begged. “At least a little. For me, if not for you. I love you too much for you to keep carrying it like this.”
Theo’s shoulders shook.
His arms tightened around her, and his fingers gripped so hard as he clung to her, she wondered if he might have left bruises petaled along her ribs and back.
But that was fine.
It was nothing compared to the hurt he felt.
She knew it, by the sound he made.
When he finally set it loose—
And let it go.
She felt where it came from when Theo finally set his grief free. It rose from deep inside him, boiling up from some unknown place, somewhere he’d buried it, refused to fully look at it, refused to let it do more than only simmer constantly beneath his skin.
It wasn’t small.
It wasn’t just a pool of grief.
It was an entire ocean.
And he’d been lost in it, adrift at sea.
He was spent from treading water, trying not to drown.
He needed a safe place to breathe.
To rest.
