“God, Chase. You have to believe me when I tell you that I tried to stay with her, but I think he wanted us…separated.”
I reach toward her hand hanging limply at her side and push my fingers to hers. She freezes, drops her chin, watches them link.
“I believe you, Laik.”
Her fingers twitch around mine. She pulls in a breath, then raises her broken eyes.
“I tri–I tried so fucking hard.”
I drop my chin to my chest and whisper, “You had already done more than you should have, Laik.”
She clamps down a cry, takes her fingers from mine and digs them into the top of her head. “Why doesn’t it feel like that? Why does it feel like I could have done so much more?”
My heart slams in my chest. “Because you’re a fighter. Tough as fucking hell.”
With her fingers still screwdriving into her skull, she shakes it.
“Nah, not me.” She raises her haunted eyes and looks right into mine, and I swallow the lump in my throat when she says, “That’s your sister.”
I keep my eyes on hers, until she turns away.
Silence hums between us.
Harlen returns to the seat across the room, swiping his eyes into the crook of his elbow, an attempt to remove the evidence of his tears.
“What happened after that, Laik?” he croaks, swallowing his emotions back.
I feel my heart fall to the basement of my stomach.
It was the question I was too afraid to ask.
The answer I was too afraid to hear.
Laiken’s bottom lip begins to tremble, and she pushes her fingers to her mouth, shaking her head. “I don’t think I can?—”
“Laik.” I reach for her hand. “I’m going to need you to, okay? Can you do that for me?”
“Oh god,” she cries.
And I tighten my fingers around hers, but she rips them away. She doesn’t meet my eyes again, shuffling back and turning away.
Silence fills the room again, the three of us holding onto our breaths.
“When our call cut out, I watched him break her legs, her arms, then he r-raped…” Her teeth gnash down on themselves. She closes her eyes. “I stepped out from behind the tree to try and, I don’t know, distract him, but he kept going, until he was done, and then he-he…”
Harlen’s exhale beside us is brutal, and out of the corner of my eye I see him shove his hands through the top of his curls, clenching his scalp, drilling his eyes closed, trying to keep her words out like I was.
And yet, I ask with urgency, “He what, what did he do?”
Laiken’s head swivels slowly toward me, and my heart bangs into my throat.
She exhales, then whispers so quietly I have to screw my ears to hear it, “He snapped her neck.”
I couldn’t breathe when I watched him close his eyes and a tear fell into his lap.
I couldn’t breathe when he stood and crunched his already bloodied fist into the wall.
I couldn’t breathe when he sunk his fingers into his scalp and tore at his hair as he cried for her.
