Aaron: Did Bowen say how he got his?
Me: No. He was really weird about it actually. Hence my text.
Mark: It was a plane crash. I’m sure there are a lot of unexplained injuries floating around.
Me: Yeah. You’re probably right.
That should have been the end of it. Question and answer. Case closed.
But for some reason I couldn’t quite explain yet, that knot in my stomach stuck with me for the rest of the day.
Bowen
Two months after the plane crash…
“What the fuck did you do?” Tyson boomed. Pure and utter terror contorted his face as he came racing down the hall.
I knew that feeling all too well, and numb as I was, I hated more than anything that he was experiencing it now too.
“I’m okay,” I rumbled.
I wasn’t.
I was quite literally dying—inside and out.
As he squatted in front of me, glass from the shattered picture frame crunched beneath his feet. It had once housed a picture of Remi and me from the day we’d gotten engaged. She was in a hospital bed, thick gauze wrapped around both of her wrists. It was after her first attempt when I’d still had hopes that we could turn it all around.
As I’d slid the ring onto her finger, I’d vowed to her that I would love her forever.
And she’d looked me directly in the eye, tears of joy rolling down her cheeks, and promised me she would never leave.
Yet there I sat, broken and alone.
Tyson peeled back the red-soaked towel I’d wrapped around my wrist and let out a string of curses. “You fucking idiot,” he seethed.
He wasn’t mad. He was absolutely beside himself with fear. I was familiar with that feeling too.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. It wasn’t enough, but it was all I had.
“Okay.” He drew in a deep breath and rocked back onto his heels. He closed his eyes for a blink, and when they opened, he was no longer my scared little brother, but rather a confident and capable doctor. Any other day when I wasn’t at risk of bleeding to death, I would have smiled with pride. Right then, I couldn’t feel much through the absolute agony piercing my chest.
“I’m going to wrap this up tight, and then we’ll get you to the hospital. Thankfully, you fucking suck at this and it’s not deep enough to kill you, but it’s not something that can be treated here.” His brown gaze met mine. “Are you going to fight me on this?”
I shook my head. “I called you, didn’t I?”
He stood up and disappeared into my bathroom directly across the hall, calling out, “Yeah, well. For future reference, the call should have come before you slit your fucking wrist.”
The call shouldn’t have had to come at all. I knew better than this. Then again, I hadn’t thought it out, either. It hadn’t been on my to-do list for the day. It was nothing but a rash decision made in the deepest depths of pitch-black darkness.
I’d realized that it was wrong the minute I used the broken shard of glass to carve my flesh. The blood flooding the surface snapped me out of my grief-filled stupor. The guy on his ass in the hallway. The one covered in blood. Life seeping from his veins… That wasn’t me.
However, once upon a time, it hadn’t been Remi, either.
I just wanted to stop hurting.
It should have been better by now. Time heals all wounds, right?
Bullshit.
If anything, time only made it worse.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t eat.
I couldn’t focus on work.
Forget about sleep, unless I wanted a head full of nightmares. My subconscious was a real bitch, taunting me with not only horrors of the past but also the infinite catastrophic possibilities of the future. Honestly, reality wasn’t much better.
Every day, I lost myself a little more as the distance between what-could-have-been and what-would-never-be became more and more suffocating.
I was a man with an anchor tied around his ankle, only seeing the surface of the ocean from beneath the waves. My lungs were on fire, and the life I was so desperate to hold on to was just out of my reach.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
Tyson returned from the bathroom with a fresh towel and wrapped it snugly around my wound. “Stop apologizing.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
He stared at me for a long second, his eyes searching my face for what, I didn’t know, but whatever it was, he didn’t find it. He sighed and curled his hand around the side of my neck. “You need help, Bowen. And not the kind of help that me, or Cassidy, or even Mom and Dad can give you. I know what you did for Remi. It’s noble. Crazy. But still noble. However, from where I’m standing, all you did was change places with her.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s better this way. It is.”
“For who? Because it sure as shit isn’t you.”
“It should be though. Jack said she’s doing great. Making plans to open her own company and everything. If I was any kind of a man, the fact that she’s doing so well would be enough for me.”
“For fuck’s sake, Bowen, that is not the way it works. Her being happy doesn’t negate how your entire life was just stripped from you in the most traumatic way imaginable. You have spent almost a year in a constant state of upheaval. Taking care of her. Stressing about her. Trying to fix her. Silently berating yourself each time she fell apart. Day after day, it was one thing after another. And now…”
“It was all for nothing, and now she’s gone,” I finished for him, emotion lodging in my throat.
He nodded. “She is. And you don’t have the first clue what to do with that. Not to mention, you just survived a fucking plane crash yourself. That alone is enough to do your head in, but on top of all the rest of it?” He let out a low whistle. “I don’t know how you’ve made it this long.” He hooked his arm under my shoulder and helped me to my feet.
My head spun and the floor swayed from side to side as I struggled to catch my balance.
He grunted, taking the majority of my weight. “But I do know you are officially done doing this alone. Just wait until I tell Cass. She’s going to be so far up your ass you’ll beg for lube.”
I barked a pained laugh. Only Tyson could make a joke in the middle of my nervous breakdown.
He walked me to his black Jeep Wrangler and waited for me to climb inside before shutting the door.
I hung my head as he marched around the hood. How the hell had I let it get to this point? Dragging my family into my mess… But he was right: I needed help.
They’d always been there for us when Remi was struggling. My mom had cooked dinner several nights a week. Cass would bring the kids to hang out, because even though no one ever mentioned it to her, she’d noticed the way Remi’s whole face lit up whenever the boys were around. And Tyson had this innate ability to make her laugh—usually at my expense, but if it meant hearing her laughter, I was all too happy to be the butt of every joke.
The truth was I’d been so occupied with taking care of her that I’d neglected myself. I’d ignored the trauma of spending five days wondering if the woman I loved was alive or dead when she’d been missing.
I’d ignored the way a part of me had shattered each and every time I found her lifeless, bleeding and broken.