“I’m glad. You always were a bookworm.”
I smile over the ache in my heart. He knows me better than anyone and has an index file of my history at his fingertips. I glance up at him and see a glimpse of the boy I used to love in his eyes, and the shards of my broken heart scrape painfully inside my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I chew the corner of my mouth and say impassively, “I don’t work on books.” Like the rest of my adult life, my career hasn’t gone as planned.
“Oh.” His eyes move off to the distance, but I can see the disappointment in them, and it fills me with sadness. The accident changed the trajectory of our lives, but Gabe changed the trajectory of mine even further. Did he really expect me to go on with the plans we made together...by myself? Did he really think I could? The thought fills me with frustration and hurt. Especially now.
I always imagined what this day would be like. I imagined what Gabe would look like, what I would say to him. I assumed he would be fragile—like he was after the accident. I thought I might actually feel sorry for him. But he’s not fragile. He’s strong, so much stronger than I ever could have imagined. And I don’t feel sorry for him. I feel angry.
“Well, it’s not too late,” he says, oblivious to the storm brewing inside me.
Yes, it is. It’s seven years too late.
I pick at the label on my beer bottle, trying to still the emotions that are sloshing around inside me. But I can’t. I realize now that I’ve been perpetually stuck for seven years, not because I was in Raleigh, or because I didn’t love my job—or Travis for that matter—but because I never got the closure I needed to move on.
I loved Gabe unconditionally. There’s nothing he could have done that would have changed that. And if I’m being honest with myself, there still isn’t. I’ll always love him for who he was before the accident. And I’ll always forgive who he became after it, because it’s not his fault.
As much as I want closure, as much as I need closure so I can finally move on with my life, I’m not ready yet. Maybe I’ve been fooling myself all these years, clinging to a glimmer of hope that something could change, that somehow things could go back to the way they were, but I’m not ready to sacrifice that hope for the sake of forgiveness.
“I’m sorry”—I shake my head and hold in a breath that promises to bring a flood of tears with it—“I thought I could do this, but I have to go.” I grab my bag and stand up. I suddenly have the urge to get as far away from him as possible. “It was good to see you,” I squeak out, leaving him sitting alone with a confused look on his face.
I don’t look up until I fall into my car and shut the door. Asking Gabe to stay was a knee-jerk reaction, an automatic reflex triggered by seven years of separation. I was just so happy to see him again. I was overwhelmed. But I wasn’t thinking about the consequences.
I drop my head to my steering wheel.
That was not what I imagined at all.
Chapter 6
Gabe
I sit alone on the bench by Brandon’s grave, frozen by the painful truth that Liv couldn’t stand to sit next to me for another second. It’s what I feared, what I expected, but it still hurts so damn much.
I’d do anything to go back and change our last day together. If she only knew that. If she knew how much it hurt me to say the things I said to her. But it was the only way to get her to go—so she could start living her life and stop wasting it taking care of me. The accident took away my future, but I’d be damned if it was going to take hers too. It hurt like hell to tell her I didn’t love her anymore, but it was deserved pain. At least, I thought so at the time.
I was so messed up back then. Guess I probably always will be, to some extent. But it got pretty ugly those first few months after the accident. I struggled with Brandon’s death. We all did. But the physical and mental challenges I faced during my recovery didn’t help my state of mind. Aside from the fact that my head looked disfigured and my leg was in a cast up to my hip, I struggled with my motor skills. I couldn’t button a shirt or tie my shoes, I couldn’t hold a pencil. Frustration doesn’t even begin to describe how that felt. Later, when the cast came off my leg, I still bumped into everything. There were so many bruises on my body, it looked like I had some sort of blood disorder. That went on for months.
I spent so much time in physical therapy that year, I didn’t have time to think about much else. But I eventually regained my motor skills and I learned how to walk in a straight line again, thanks to the physical therapists who stuck with me, no matter how much of a pain in the ass I was. And then I had plenty of time to think about how badly I messed up my life...and Liv’s.
In the beginning, my parents kept the news stories hidden from me, along with my phone, seeing as how I could barely hold it, so I didn’t see all the social media posts and commentary that labeled me a murderer. But it was only a matter of time before I saw what people were saying. Once it got out that I had been racing, people from near and far said I deserved what I got and that my head injury was karma getting back at me. Some said I deserved to lose my future. Even those in my own community, who knew it was an accident, looked at me differently. It’s been nearly eight years and I still remember the fear, shame, and guilt of seeing my picture embedded in the news stories. Brandon and Liv’s pictures made it into a few of them too, and I couldn’t look at them without feeling nauseous.
Liv was by my side, broken arm and all, stitches stretched across her cheek for weeks, while I recovered in the hospital. My only comfort was that she was there, usually curled up in a chair she’d pushed up against my bed. We held hands and cried together over Brandon, and I would hold her as best I could when she climbed up into the bed next to me and sobbed on my chest. The nurses tried to separate us a few times, but they eventually gave in when our parents intervened. I think they all knew the only way we were going to get through losing Brandon was together.
By the time I was released to go home, the stitches were gone from Liv’s cheek, but a bright pink line still remained where they’d been. God, it tore me up to look at her and see the constant reminder of what I did...to her, to Brandon...to everyone. She would tell me that it was nothing and that it gave her character, but one time she asked me if I still thought she was pretty because I didn’t look at her the same way anymore. And she was right, I didn’t. But not because I thought she was anything less than beautiful—the kind of beautiful that only comes around once in your lifetime. But because of who I saw reflected in her eyes—the monster everyone said I was. Someone who was capable of scarring her beautiful face and taking her only brother away from her.
It became harder and harder to be around Liv. I was frail, weak, and angry. And she was hopeful and positive. She was so sure that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to get better, and things would eventually go back to the way they had been. But how could they? How could I? I grew resentful and frustrated with her. The more she talked about our future, the one we’d planned before the accident, the more certain I became that I’d never be able to give it to her.
I tried to tell her this, to make her understand. But every scenario I presented, she rectified with some impractical solution.