"It looked like my sweet, gentle brother suddenly became a cold-blooded murderer? The same brother who couldn't even kill spiders in our house? Who volunteered at the animal shelter every weekend? That brother?"
I started walking in circles, unable to sit still with all this emotion coursing through me. I paced in front of the bench, my arms wrapped around myself like I was trying to hold all the pieces together.
"You have no idea what it's been like. My mother's cancer went untreated because she was so focused on Leo's appeals. My father started drinking. And me? I couldn't trust anyone after that. Not a single person. Because if you, the person I trusted most, couldn't believe me, then who would?"
Kyle stood up, too, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. "Lily, please don't be so hard on me, it's not fair. I was eighteen and terrified. One of my friends was dead. Another was accused of killing him. Everything was chaotic. And yes, I made the wrong choice. I've regretted it every day since."
I was filled with regret for everything that had happened during that time. But one thing I'd accepted all these years was that regret didn't change anything. It just didn't allow you tomove forward as you should. "Regret doesn't give Leo back those ten years."
"No, it doesn't," he agreed, putting himself in front of me to look at my face, causing me to stop my walk. "I don't know why the universe brought us to this exact moment, but I don't think any of this has been a coincidence. I've been thinking about everything you said at the hospital, and I think you're right about wanting to change things."
I looked at him, but didn’t say anything. So he continued, "This, whatever this is, this second chance, means we can change it all."
He stepped a little closer, not touching me but close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his blue eyes. "We can prevent what happened at the party. We can protect Leo. And we can remove all the situations that put Oliver in danger in the first place."
"How?" I asked, unsure if I should have hope. Even though I was back in the past, I still didn't understand how everything that happened happened the way it did. Changing our mistakes means first being aware of what went wrong the first time, and I was not sure where to start.
"I don't know exactly yet, but we'll figure it out." He took my hands, pressing them against his chest as if he needed something to hold on to. I don't know if it was to reassure me that he was serious or if it was an excuse to get closer to me. "I'm sure Leo didn't do it. I thought I had done the right thing by blaming him, but all these years have made me realize the mistake I made."
"You believe me now? After all this time?" I couldn't believe those words. I spent years wanting to hear this, and yet now it means nothing without action.
"I do," he said firmly. "And I swear to you, Lily, I will help you fix this. Leo won't go to prison this time. We'llmake sure of it."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted it so badly it hurt. But I'd spent ten years building walls around my heart, training myself not to trust, not to hope. "Why should I believe you now?" My voice was barely above a whisper.
"Because I have nothing to gain by lying. Because we're both stuck in this impossible situation together. Because..." he took a deep breath, "because despite everything, I never stopped caring about you, Lily. And I never stopped feeling guilty about what happened."
I released my hands from his touch and fell back down onto the bench, suddenly exhausted.
I've spent most of my life trying not to forgive Kyle for testifying against my brother, never considering the possibility that he could come back and fix everything, and now we are here with the chance to not let everything happen.
"I don't know if I can forgive you," I said honestly.
"I'm not asking for forgiveness. Not yet." He sat beside me, careful to leave space between us. "I'm asking for a chance to make things right. To be the person I should have been ten years ago."
But could he?
I didn't know whether to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it wasn't as if I had any other choice. No one but him would believe the situation I'm in now, and despite everything, I needed an ally to save my brother. "Okay," I said finally. "Let's make things right. For Leo."
"For Leo," he echoed. "For Oliver. For your family. And for us."
I didn't respond to that last part. I couldn't. Some bridges were too badly burned to cross again, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to forgive him yet.
CHAPTER 14
Kyle
I'd spentten years regretting that day in court. Ten years questioning why I helped condemn an innocent boy. Ten years, wondering if I could have changed everything if I'd just believed Lily's word that she had everything under control at her house.
There were things she didn't know. Things I never got the chance to tell her because after the trial, she refused to speak to me again. Things I couldn't explain in that brief moment in the kitchen at Waldo before the explosion sent us back.
Things that had haunted me for years.
Oliver had been part of my group of friends since middle school, along with Tom, Mike, and Jared. We told each other everything, or at least I thought we did. I knew Oliver had been in love with Brandy, Leo's current girlfriend, since freshman year, long before she started dating him. I knew he resented their relationship and would have done almost anything to break them up. But I never thought he would go this far.
That was crossing a line none of us would have approved of, which is why he never told us about his plan beforehand.
But there was more to the story. Things that never made sense to me, details that gnawed at the edges of my conscience as the years passed.
