“Sure. We can do that.” I peer into the rearview. “Right, Travis?”
He nods and flops back against the seat.
At her house, I walk Tommi to the door. She seems frail and unsteady. “Are you sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?”
She tries to give me a reassuring smile, but fails miserably. “I’m sure. I just need some time. Alone.”
I nod. I get it.
I get it, but I don’t like it. “Okay. Well, we won’t be long. And then be prepared to celebrate. Italian style.”
She nods again. Smiles slightly again. She’s like some strange reflection of the person I kissed just a little more than a week ago–not quite real, ready to shatter if I touch her.
I push the front door open. Before she crosses the threshold, I gently take her upper arm, stopping her. She looks up at me with those big, glistening green eyes. They’re so sad and empty they hurt me all the way to my soul.
I bend toward her slowly, so as not to startle her, and I press my lips to her cheek right near her mouth. Her skin is cool and clammy. “I’ll be right back.”
Again, she nods and pulls away from me, closing the door behind her before I can even make it off the step.
I try not to let Travis see my worry, but I can tell that he’s upset by her bizarrely distant behavior, too. I guess, like me, he thought she’d be ecstatic to have come out of this relatively unscathed. Only she doesn’t seem to be. In some ways, it doesn’t feel like she’s come out of this at all.
I call in the pizza and we pick it up, along with some breadsticks and soda. We drive straight home.
Back at the house, Travis walks on ahead while I carry everything in. I’m just setting the pizza on the kitchen table when I hear Travis’s shrill, “Sig!”
I don’t know why my name would alarm me so much. I don’t know why I would feel like someone reached inside my chest and ripped my heart out, breaking ribs and tearing skin in the process. I don’t know why I would feel like my life is hanging in the balance, or like the sun might never shine again, but I do. All from one word.
I feel the blood drain away from my face when I race around the corner and see Travis sinking to his knees in front of the open bathroom door. Bile rises in my throat and my stomach turns in on itself before I even get a look inside. Some part of me already knows what I’ll find.
And that I can’t bear it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - TOMMI
My body feels cold, which is a stark contrast to the trickling warmth coming from my wrists. It’s strange, though, because I notice it in a vague, sort of detached way like I might notice the sound of a lawnmower in the distance as I hang clothes on the line.
I let my mind drift in that direction, recalling a few happy memories of Travis when he was younger, playing badminton out back with me. I did the best I could for him. The very best I could.
Then, as if by magic, I hear him. It’s Travis. His voice is unmistakable. Only it sounds different. Panicked.
Reality comes rushing back, albeit a bit fuzzily, as I think about what I’ve done. I feel my first pang of regret. So lost in my own misery was I that, for once, I didn’t think of how Travis might feel about losing me, only that he’d be better off without me. But will he? Will he be better off with no family at all, versus one that’s as broken as I am? Will he be better off with one more nightmare to add to the long list of terrors he has to try and outrun, outlive?
I gasp, pulling air into my lungs. That’s when I catch the scent of something breathtakingly familiar.
Sig.
He always smells like soap and leather. I don’t know why. I’ve never seen him in leather, but it’s what I think of when I inhale him.
More sadness, more regret course through me, pouring out through the slices in my skin in rivers of red.
I feel big hands slide tenderly under my knees and back, lifting me out of the tub and cradling me against a hard chest. I sigh in relief, unable to think of a single place I’d rather be until I am simply…no more. Dead. Gone.
Sig’s deep, muffled voice gives Travis short, snappy instructions. Get me some towels. Do you know where your bandages are? Get me whatever you can find. Call 911.
I hear him muttering, his voice shaking when everything else is so rock-steady, even the accelerated beat of his heart beneath my ear.
“Please don’t leave me, Tommi. Please don’t go.”
As cold as I am, I warm at his words, wishing that I could’ve told him how I felt before I did what I did. But then he’d have known. He’d have known and he’d have stopped me.
There’s movement. Pressure at my wrists. Jostling. Hands grabbing, fingers holding. More pressure. A light touch to my neck. Faint throbbing at my pulse point.
“Travis, would you mind to watch for the ambulance?” Sig asks.
I hear no response, but after a few seconds, I sense the absence of my brother.
And then I’m being crushed in arms that feel like steel. Sig’s face is buried in my hair, his huffing breath moist against my skin. “Please don’t go, Tommi. Please. I never wanted to love you like this, but I do. But you weren’t supposed to leave me. You weren’t supposed to take everything I am, everything good in my life, and leave me with nothing. I did everything I could for you, so you could be free and happy and we could be together. Please don’t leave me like this. Oh God, please.”
I recall our conversation, the one where he admitted he never wanted to love someone so much that life would be less without them. Yet he loves me. He risked his worst fear for me. For the love of me.
He’s crying. It’s a slight, manly shaking of his big body that makes me want to pull him against me, to comfort him and tell him that I’m not going anywhere, that I would never leave him like that. Only I know that it’s probably too late to turn back now.
“I love you,” he whispers, wetness coating the area under my ear. “I love you more than anything else in my life. What am I supposed to do without you? You can’t leave me now, so soon. Not like this. Please, Tommi. Please, please, please. I love you. Tia, I love you.”
Tia, I love you.
Tia. That’s me. The real me. The girl who killed her brother by accident. The girl who forged checks and lied about who she was. The girl who bargained with her body and her soul, the only things she had left, in order to save her brother.