I couldn’t breathe when he shoved his best friend away and stumbled to the floor.
I just couldn’t breathe.
And I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to again, because telling Chase what happened to his sister was just as painful as witnessing it and not being able to stop it.
My pulse is in the tips of my fingers.
They are throbbing against the painted brick wall, my head hanging between my shoulders.
My chest rises and falls, the pain at the center growing sharper.
I knew agony, just not quite like this.
I was fifteen when I took a shot at my father after watching him physically beat my mother.
At fifteen, I took a stand for violence against women.
At eighteen, that stand,that fight, had been stripped away from me. I had been severed at the vein.
My sister lost her life to a fucking psychopath, andIwasn’t able to stop it from happening.
I throw my fist against the wall. Bite my tongue when the wet crunch hits my ears.
If I hadn’t been drugged, if I hadn’t been beaten, if I hadn’t been locked up, would my sister still be here? Would this have happened at all?
Harlen asks Laiken how she got away, and I listen to her tell him how she ran, and how she kept running until she couldn’t. And I press my forehead to the cool wall, squeezing my eyesclosed, wondering what this meant for Laiken. Wondering ifhewould come back for her.
A delicate tug at the neck of my shirt has me spinning, tears burning down the length of my face, a gushing stream at the column of my neck.
Laiken is standing in front of me, her tears trekking the same path as my own.
I reach for her, tug her to my chest. With her in my arms, I fall back against the wall, crying silently into the top of her head. And though every sob is quiet, I know she can hear them, the same way she can feel them, and maybe that’s why I grip her harder, holding her tighter.
How would I keep her safe?The thought terrifies me. But not as much as the one that follows at the heel of it.Could I keep her safe?
With every subtle movement, a tick of a muscle, a thud of my heart, with every proof of stilted life, the grip she has at the back of my shirt grows tighter, and she cries deeper.
“I’m so sorry, Chase. I’m so sorry. I tried. I…tried.” She repeats the same words over and over again, and something in me snaps at that. On my pull back, I palm the side of her head until her face is resting in my hands.
Both of my thumbs reach across her wet cheeks, cutting through and spreading the stream of tears when I shake her. But it isn’t rough or violent. “Why? Fucking why would you do that!?”
Her green eyes grow dark, the pools at the rims deepening. She looks hurt, but she didn’t need to be.
“Wh-wh—” her words tremble on her tongue, though they don’t fall.
“What the fuck, man!?” Harlen’s voice comes from behind me.
I ignore him. I keep focusing on my sister's best friend.
Laiken drops her head, then attempts to pull back. I don’t let her, instead forcing her chin upward with both thumbs until she’s looking at me.
And when I have her there, eyes touching mine, oscillating back and forth, I tell her, “Try to distract him? I could have fucking lost you, too.”
Silence hangs a beat, then she whispers, “Because she would have done the same for me.”
I shake my head, not because I didn’t agree with what she’d said, but because she was right.She was absolutely fucking right.I let go of her, pushing my sweaty palms back into my hair.
“That was fucking stupid, Laiken,” I tell her.
