“I mean,” I laugh, “who can say no to s’mores?”
Laughing, Lila leaves my house.
I head into the bathroom and study my reflection, my gaze drifting to the skin still visible beneath my clothes. A few faint marks remain where that man cut me the deepest, but for the most part, everything has healed.
There’s almost no outward sign that I was hurt at all.
Aside from the same dream that still haunts my sleep, I don’t remember anything. Patch says it’s likely I never will because I was drugged and unconscious. He thinks the dream is simply the last thing my mind registered before everything went dark.
He’s probably right.
And while I’m grateful I won’t remember the rest of it, there’s still a part of me that’s angry…at myself.
No matter what Tank says. No matter what my brother, my therapist, or my friends tell me.
It feels like my fault.
I knew the risks. I knew the danger of being a single, drunk woman. I know the danger women faceevery day, drunk or sober, and I still let myself make that choice.
I still trusted the wrong person.
I know, logically, that blame doesn’t belong to me.
But healing isn’t logical.
And some days, the hardest part isn’t surviving what happened…it’s learning how to forgive myself for it.
***
“Can we get a swing?” Bree asks her dad. “One with a seat for me and one with a platform for Uncle-Brother Micah?”
Max smiles down at his sweet girl.
“Did you ask your brother if that’s what he wants?” he asks.
Micah is technically Lila’s brother…Bree’s uncle…but after Lila and Max became a family, Bree made a firm declaration. Since they were all one family now, Micah was no longer her uncle.
He was her brother.
No one argued.
Old habits die hard, though, and Bree still sometimes forgets to drop theunclepart before Micah’s name.
Hence… Uncle-Brother.
I think it’s adorable.
And I secretly hope she never stops saying it.
“I think it’s a swell idea,”Micah’s tablet says.
It used to take him a while to respond, but Foster’s been tinkering with the tablet attached to his chair. I can’t prove it, but I’m almost positive the thing can read Micah’s mind now because his answers come almost as fast as mine.
For someone with locked-in syndrome, he’s incredibly active.
If he’s not playing chess with Foster…and losing…then he’s outside with Bree. Lila told me he’ll never get his body back, but he can move his hands now. His toes. His face.
It’s not much movement, but it’s everything.
