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“I’m not your fucking brother!” Something inside of me snaps. That flimsy thread I’ve been holding onto since prom night, when my entire world crashed and burned at my feet, filling my lungs with soot and turning my heart to cinders. June stares at me, staggered, lips parted with the remnants of her unsaid words. “I’m just an orphan,” I continue. “Life’s forgotten transient. I’m the by-product of a man who didn’t give two shits about me—who killed my mother, then killed himself.
“I’m the leftovers of a tragedy, like that steak you forgot about in the fridge, the one you really wanted to eat. It had so much potential to be good, but you spoiled it. And you don’t want to throw it away because that would be such a damn waste, so you just let it fester, stinking up everything around it that’s healthy and thriving, wishing you had gotten to it in time. It’s futile, though… You always end up tossing it.”
My chest heaves with heavy weights as I purge my guilt, my self-loathing. My sickly fear that I’m going to infect June and drag her down into the waste with me.
Her gaze scatters across my face, glossed with tears. She’s breathing just as hard as I am, drinking in every rotten word while she shakes her head to counter my tirade. “You don’t really think that,” she mutters gently. “You couldn’t possibly.”
I clench my jaw, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Just go, June…please.”
“You’re the strongest person I know. The bravest. When life knocks you down, you keep getting back up again. No one in the world has that kind of resilience—no one.” She’s still shaking her head. “You’re a true fighter. A hero. My rock.”
“Stop. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course I do. I’m not stupid, Brant.”
I spear her a sharp glance. “You’re naive.”
She has no clue. She has no idea that only moments ago I was imagining how my name would sound on her tongue when I made her come.
It’s sick.
It’s fucked.
It’s going to ruin us both.
June looks wounded, her face flashing with subtle pain. “Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t be cruel. We need each other right now.”
“I can’t be what you need.” Averting my eyes, I shut her down. I have to. She’s the only good, pure thing I have left in my life, and I refuse to pollute her with these poisonous feelings that I don’t even understand. “You have to go. Don’t come back in here.”
My eyes remain fixed on the far wall while she processes my words beside me, still and quiet. While she absorbs this new energy swirling between us. While she cuts herself on the rusty razors hidden within my command.
I don’t wait for a reply.
I just lie back down, roll away from her, and pull the blanket up to my chin.
A blatant dismissal.
June never does respond…not with words, anyway. Her response is in the small cry of anguish that breaks free, the one that haunts my dreams that night. It’s in the shift of the mattress as she abandons me alone on the bed and retreats from the room, leaving only her sweet scent behind.
It’s in the starkness of her absence.
And it kills me, it does.
It absolutely destroys me.
But, ultimately, I know it’s for the best—
Better me than her.
I thought that losing my parents would be the worst thing that ever happened to me. True tragedy can’t be topped, right? There’s only so much trauma one person can suffer through…right?
Well, Theo’s death proved me wrong, and to this day I still feel the ripple effects of that catastrophic blow. I’m still picking up pieces of debris.
The only sliver of peace during those awful, soul-crushing months after he died?
Practice.
I’d had practice with tragedy. I’d been there before, and I’d seen what the darkness could do.
