He exhales deeply. “What’s that?”
“We’re in Earth-616. This isn’t an alternate universe.” I clutch the phone tighter, tears falling. “We’re going to have our happy ending. It’s just going to take us a little while to get there.”
He told me that once. When I hit a low. Now he just needs to remember his own words.
He breathes out again, like a weight is slowly lifting off his chest.
“Do you believe me?” I whisper.
“Every word,” he says. “I want to hold you.”
I smile and wipe the rest of my tears. “You are.”
“Yeah?” he murmurs. “Lily…”
I wait for him to finish his thought, one of my hands gripping my white comforter.
Very softly, he says, “I wouldn’t be here without you.” It is bigger than an I love you. It is a declaration that solidifies what I’ve known for so long.
We aren’t connected by our addictions.
But by our childhood. Souls fused together from the very, very start.
56
2 years : 02 months
October
LOREN HALE
Since the hospital four days ago, I haven’t been able to produce a sentimental apology for my brother. Every time I try, something worse comes out of my mouth. Staying quiet has better results, but it also tears my stomach to shreds. I’m beginning to think that I hold back just to punish myself.
I run my hand through my hair before readjusting my baseball cap. I glance over my shoulder at the gas pumps, expecting a bombardment of cameras. It’s quiet, trees rustling in the wind.
“No one is following us,” Ryke reminds me, breaking a layer of tense silence. His eyebrow is stitched, the most severe of his wounds from the riot. I have two broken ribs, but I had to say no to pain pills. It’d be way too easy to rely on them.
Ryke and I stand outside of a gas station in Ohio, a grimy bathroom door in front of us on the side of the building. The road trip began in New York and it’ll end with Ryke climbing a few rock formations in Yosemite, California.
I’ve tried not thinking about that last part. Ryke never wears a rope or a harness. The probability of falling is greater than reaching the top. Connor even told me that. Heavy bricks set on my chest every time I accidentally process that end, the one where I outlive him.
The world is all f**ked up if that happens.
“I can’t help it,” I say to Ryke, looking around for cameras just one more time. “I’m always going to be on edge.” The media didn’t have any footage of us in the riot, and we managed to leave the hospital without notice too. We were there for a while because of Daisy—she’s okay. Not that okay. But she’s walking. Breathing. And she quit modeling. Though…she would’ve had to regardless.
Ryke bangs on the bathroom door, the handle broken, which is why we’re standing here, guarding it so no one walks in on her. “You need something, Dais?”
She’s been changing her bandages. I check my watch. For fifteen minutes?
“The tape is stuck to one of my stitches.” She sounds near tears.
Ryke doesn’t even hesitate or ask, he just pushes through the door. He leaves it ajar so I’ll follow him inside. I do. The space is cramped, and toilet paper is strewn on the damp tiles.
Ryke cups the side of Daisy’s face and inspects the wound on her left cheek, half the bandage off. “Hold still,” he tells her, peeling off the tape that pinches her skin and with it, a series of stitches. Her hands dig into his waist.
“Wait, wait a second,” she winces.
“Dais,” he says softly, his narrowed eyes on her. “This has to come off.” Blood has soaked through the gauze and needs replaced.
I lick my lips. “Just think happy thoughts,” I tell her.
She slowly starts to smile, which pulls at her wound. “Ow.”
Wrong advice. “Think horrible thoughts,” I say and then put a hand on my older brother’s shoulder, “like your knight in shining armor falling off his pony.”
She ends up laughing and touches her cheek, the pain barely reaching her green eyes that glimmer with something bright.
Ryke glares at me. “That’s the best you have?”
“I don’t see you offering anything, bro.”
“Picture me beating the shit out of my brother,” he says roughly, never looking away from me.
“Or the inverse,” I snap back, our jaws locked. How’d we even reach this place? It’s like a river of past history separates us, and I can’t cross it without him.
Daisy’s laughter has died out. “That’s depressing,” she tells us flatly.
Our attention returns to her. “That’s the point,” I say.
Her lips are downturned, and Ryke works on peeling back the tape, stitches still clung to it. Her eyes are already bloodshot at this point, and the signs of pain appear in the way she clutches my brother’s green shirt.
“Are you sure you don’t want your sisters out here?” I say to distract her. Rose and Lily are meeting us in a couple weeks, which’ll be a surprise to Daisy. But they’re adhering to her wishes as much as they can. Daisy just needs time to cope with what’s happened.
“Lily has college,” she says. “I don’t want to ruin anyone’s time.”
Ryke rolls his eyes.
I tilt my head at her. “They want to see you.”
“Not like this,” she whispers, referring to her marred cheek.
And then Ryke removes the bandage completely. I scan her face, seeing the wound before, but not since she was asleep in the hospital. The large, reddened gash cuts from her temple to her jaw. Sliced but stitched straight through her cheek. Apparently she was hit with a board, something sharp on the end. The wound looks gruesome, especially on a girl as pretty as Daisy. It’ll scar. There’s no question about that.
She studies my reaction while Ryke unpackages a clean piece of gauze. “I’m happier, you know?” she says, her lips rising weakly. She’s free from a profession that has been slowly making her sick for the past few years. And subsequently, she’s free from her mom’s ridicule.
I mask my expression by adjusting my baseball cap again. “I’m glad,” I say. “But I’m never going to be happy that this happened to you.” There could have been a thousand other ways for her to reach that point—to quit modeling. I’d never wish this for her, or any one of the girls.
“That’s okay,” she says softly, her long blonde hair falling at her waist. I have a feeling she’s going to chop most of it off soon.
Ryke begins to cover her gash with clean bandages, and her arms slide further around his waist. To where his body is pressed against hers.
He whispers something to her, his lips brushing her ear, not discreet about it. They’ve never been. And then she smiles brightly, her fingers falling to the band of his jeans. Their embrace takes me aback, like a swift kick.
And it’s in this single moment, that I know for certain, they’re together.
So I ask: “Did I miss something?” I gesture between them, my jaw sharpening on instinct. I wait for my brother to tell me the whole truth. For once.
Please.
And then he takes a step back from Daisy with a pissed expression. Like I ruin everything. He’s not even giving me a chance.
He says, “We’re just friends.”
Right. I nod a couple times. “I’ll meet you at the car.” Boiling. It goes beyond them together. It’s that he can’t be honest with me. He asks me for his complete trust, but it’s becoming harder and harder when he builds walls between us.