She said those words for a reason. That I’m death personified. Loving me is like dying and yet still, why am I the one who feels dead already?
This time, the silence is deafening.
We’re both angry at each other, that much is fucking clear. The tension between has only grown worse over time, but she has to know.
“You can’t just say shit to my face, refuse to kiss me and then be mad that I stayed away and gave you the space you said you needed, baby, that’s not how this works,” I say. “You’re mad that I’m not there but Mia, you’ve always known where to find me and how to reach me. What did I tell you when we were in Europe?”
She’s silent but I can hear her occasional sniffles.
“You said…” she croaks. “You said that when I need you, I can just send you my pin and you’d be right there.”
“Fucking right, baby,” I whisper. “Your mind is declaring a war on you and it’s messing with your sleep and your peace, I get that more than you think, and you knew what to do. You’ve always known what to do when it gets bad, don’t you, Little Minx?”
“Oh God, Julian, I…” she trails off, as if she can’t find the words. Or maybe, she doesn’t want to say it.
“You miss me, huh?”
“Uh, no…” she says after a beat. I can hear her fighting to stabilize her breathing, as if she’s calming down from hearing my voice, at least that’s what I’m going to tell myself.
“Tell me you miss me, baby,” I say.
“Ugh, I hate it when you’re smug,” she says softly.
“If it makes you feel better, I’m in hell, Mia,” I confess, the words tumbling out of me.
“Hell, huh?” she says. “You touched me, branded me with the way you took over my own body and mind and then you left and now… now I’m remembering everything that happened to me. From the warehouse. From the time I was in that warehouse and guess what, I just realized why I was cutting myself before. It’s because Nancy used to do it!”
Fuck.
“I remember the lone light in the middle of the night coming from the bathroom on the ground floor. I remember I could smell the blood from the hallway,” she whispers, her words almost hypnotic as if she’s seeing the visual in her head right now. “I remember opening the door and finding her on the floor with her legs spread. There was blood everywhere, a sharp, bloody razor in her hands and the evidence of her own self harm on her inner thighs.”
Jesus Christ.
“Now you tell me, isn’t self-destruction in my blood, Julian?” she cries. “Am I not doomed and living in hell already with everything I buried that’s now coming back to haunt me?”
“You’re not doomed, baby,” I say seriously. “When you don’t feel strong, I’ll be here to remind you how fucking incredible you are because fuck, if anything, you’re the essence of what it means to be strong.”
“Yeah, but I don’t feel strong right now,” she cries.
“Maybe not right now you don’t, and I get that. More than you think, baby,” I whisper. “There’s something about the darkness Mia that awakens the ghosts of our past. They come out to play, to taunt us and remind of everything we would rather forget.”
She’s silent, listening, then she says unerringly says the one name that hits close to home but not really the nail on the head.
“Aiden?” she whispers.
Fuck.
“Yes,” I mutter, this time, getting up, I can’t remain seated anymore. There are days when I’ve felt Aiden’s ghost close to me, watching me, judging me, but ever since everything went up in flames in Palos Verdes and Mia almost died in my arms, his ghost has somehow become more intrusive, demanding to be felt. “I killed Aiden.”
And there it is.
The words that have had me a chokehold for years now. I expect her to gasp with shock or to end the call screaming as she dials 911 to arrest me for murder but instead, she’s calm, her sweet voice even dropping to a pitch that fucking makes everything in me ache.
“What do you mean?” she questions.
My eyes close shut as I reach the window opposite my desk. It’s still dark out, fall doing its thing and all I want, all I need right now, is to tell someone.
“The week before Aiden died, I was with him at home,” I start, saying the words I never told a soul. I mean, I told Dad and Liam about Aiden being brain dead and I had to pull him off of life support, but I never told them how it all happened. “Liam was with Cole, running plays and doing his manic shit to get in shape. I have no fucking clue where Courtney was and frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck.”
“Okay,” Mia whispers. “What happened that day, Julian?”
Here goes nothing.
“Aiden had been seriously down for a while, maybe even weeks,” I start, the words clipped and low. “I knew he was depressed. I knew he could sense the bad energy in the house between John and Courtney. I knew he never wanted to be alone at home with Courtney. At the time, it puzzled me before but now that I know what I know now… his unease was so fucking clear as day! But there was something different about the week before. He just had so much energy, Mia.
“He was laughing, talking none stop about everything and nothing. He talked about Liam and how he needs his hand fucking held. He talked about Dad, and when he did, he had this look in his eyes, like gratefulness or something…” I trail off, seeing it now. Aiden loved Dad at a time when I thought the man was nothing but a douchebag, Aiden knew the truth.
“Because they were brothers, Julian,” Mia says silently.
“You know?”
“Liam filled me in,” she admits softly. “But listen. Julian, I’m an only child but I’ve seen the way you and Liam are with each other. You fiercely protect and love each other, even when you fight, you still have each other’s backs. I guess that’s the kind of bond John had with Aiden.”
“Fuck, baby I didn’t understand it back then,” I seethe. “I was naïve to what he was actually telling me. He was the brightest person I’ve ever known, and I was fucking naïve, chalking it all up to his joy but it wasn’t.”
I fall silent, my body coiled tight with tension as if I’m back there again, in Aiden’s room.
“He was telling you goodbye.”
“Yes,” I mutter. “When he finally told me that he was tired, I had the audacity to go grab him an Ambien so he could sleep better, not realizing that he was telling that he was tired of living. And you know when the meaning of his words dawned on me, Mia? When I was busy thinking of you…”
“Oh God,” she gasps.
“I was thinking of you and the way you carry burden like that’s your only mandate in life when kit hit me that we were just the same only I was the fucking coward who refused to face my issues. So when I rushed back home and straight to his room, he was about to do it and I… I stared into his eyes, Mia, frozen in the shadows of the doorway. We held each other’s gaze for a two fucking minutes. The house was silent, but I swear it was loud at the same fucking time and in that moment, I accepted what he wanted… without actually fighting to keep him alive!”