Page 31 of Ash Fall

Kara's head tips back on a full, delighted laugh. "Oh my God, when you give up the no swearing thing, you go all in! There's no gradual descent with you. It's straight off the cliff to truck driver levels." We're both laughing now, the good kind we've needed for days, and it takes a while for it to wind down.

When it finally does, Kara tucks a white streak of my hair back behind my ear and lets her hand fall, and her voice drops with it. "I have to ask, what's the deal with Mars?"

The knots come right back. "Honestly, Kara, I have no clue. I don't know what he's doing here or why he came back after two years. He keeps trying to get me alone to explain but I don't think I'm ready to hear it."

"Well, that’s part of getting over your shit so we should go." One perfect eyebrow arches. "Because he's about to tell all of them downstairs. Gigi cornered him with a serving spoon, and that man is not leaving that kitchen until he explains himself."

My heart kicks hard. Two years of wondering, two years of building walls around the question, and the answer is happening one floor below me whether I'm ready or not.

"Really, right now? Then I guess I'd better go hear this for myself."

We slip out of my room and down the stairs on quiet feet, and Kara's hand finds mine on the way down. Downstairs we stop in the living room, out of sight of the kitchen, because Mars is already talking, and his voice stops me where I stand.

"...the night of the accident, I told Atlas about Luna and me."

Every muscle in my body locks. There it is, out loud, in my kitchen, the secret I have carried alone for two years, and my lungs stop working.

"About you and who?" Gage asks in a stunned tone. "You and Luna were together? The two of you were together, together?"

"Yes. We were just getting started but it had been building up for awhile." Mars's voice is surprisingly steady, every word clearly rehearsed a thousand times over the last two years. "I never told any of you because of the way we all treated her like she was off limits, the untouchable little sister of our best friend. But we were serious. That night, the night of the accident… I told Atlas about us. I told him I loved her and we were going to make it official, be something real."

Beside me, Kara's grip crushes my fingers, and her wide eyes swing to my face. She mouths, You and Mars?, with a look of pure disbelief. All I can do is nod once, and her arm comes around me and pulls me into her side.

"He flipped out." The steadiness in Mars's voice starts to fray. "Atlas told me I wasn't good enough for her and that I didn't deserve her, and we went at it, a full screaming match right outside the arena with their parents waiting in the car. Then he got in the car with them, and I watched him tear out of that parking lot, reckless and furious, and I knew he was behind the wheel, and I knew I was the reason he was upset. I stayed behind, told myself I'd give him space, let him cool off. That we'd make it right in a few days." His breath drags in, audible from a room away. "But then the call came, and they were just gone."

A single no starts somewhere under my ribs and grows louder, because that's not what happened, and he doesn't know that's not what happened.

"That’s it. There's the explanation everyone's been waiting two years for." Something in his voice finally breaks. "I lit the fuse. Atlas drove off furious because of me, because of what I wanted, and he's dead, and their mom is dead, and their dad is dead, and how the fuck was I supposed to stay? How was I supposed to stand at those funerals and look her in the eye when I'm the reason her whole world died? I wanted something I didn't deserve, and Luna paid the price for it. Her family paid the price for it. So, I took myself out of her life, because after what I cost her, my face was the last thing she ever needed to see again."

The living room tilts around me. All this time. The words keep repeating, useless and looping, all this time, all this time. Two years of empty chairs and unanswered questions, two years of hating him for leaving, and he wasn't running from me at all. He was running from a crime he never committed, dragging a debt he never owed, and nobody ever told him, because nobody ever knew there was anything to tell. My feet are moving before my brain finishes the thought.

The kitchen goes silent when I step into it. Every face turns toward me, and they read whatever’s on mine and move out of my way without a word. Jules steps back, Reid pulls Torrin aside, Gigi's hand rises to her mouth as tears start tracking down her face, and a path opens straight through my family until there's nothing between me and Mars.

He watches me come with everything he just confessed sitting wide open in his eyes, braced, and the pure devastation in them takes my breath away. Two years he's been living with this inside him. He spent all that time punishing himself for the deaths of my brother and my parents, convinced he killed my world, serving a sentence in some self-made prison all alone. I stop in front of him, reach up, and cup his cheek in my hand. His body shudders at the contact.

"You're such a fucking idiot, Mars." The whisper comes out thick with everything crowding my throat. "Atlas wasn't driving when the accident happened. None of it was your fault."

His face goes blank, and then it goes to pieces.

The sob that rips out of him doesn't sound human, and his knees give out all at once. He crashes down in front of me with his arms wrapping around my waist and his face pressed hard against my stomach. My hand on his cheek slides into his hair as the sobs keep tearing through him, two years of them breaking loose in great heaving waves. He clings to me hard enough to bruise, and I hold his head against me and let him pour it all out.

My own tears burn and blur, but I blink them back, looking up over his bowed head at the ceiling. Through all the grief and the pain crushing my heart, one thought rises up over all of it. Stupid fucking boys.

Chapter 15 - Mars

The sobs finally run dry, but I can't make myself let go of her. My face stays pressed against her stomach while her fingers move through my hair, slow and steady. Two years of poison have drained out of me onto her kitchen floor, yet one question remains, one thing I need to hear before I can believe any of it.

Pulling back enough to look up at her, I search her face. "He really wasn't driving?"

"No." Her thumb brushes once along my cheekbone to sweep away the damp before her hand falls away. "My dad was."

Three quiet words, and the story I've been telling myself for two years cracks straight down the middle. Her gaze lifts from mine and moves over my shoulder to everyone watching this go down, and whatever she finds there makes her step back from me.

"Get up, Mars." She tells me in a calm voice. "I need you to come with me. I have something you need to hear."

With one last glance at the others, she turns and walks out of the kitchen toward the stairs again. Nobody says a word. Pushing to my feet takes real effort, my legs shaky and my head swimming, but the weight I carried into this house is not the weight I stand up with. Gage gives me a single nod. Torrin's hand closes briefly on my shoulder as I pass, and then I'm climbing the stairs after her.

She waits at her bedroom door and holds it open for me. Stepping past her puts me close enough to catch the scent of her hair, and everything in me aches at how long it's been since I was allowed this near to her. The door clicks shut behind us.