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His gaze drops to the table, and for a few seconds, he runs his thumb along the edge of his plate without saying anything.

“Yesterday was the anniversary of his death.”

My chest tightens. “Oh, Wyatt.”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “That’s why I was fucked up all day. It happens every year. I know it’s coming, obviously, and every year I tell myself I’ll handle it better, but then the day gets here and…” He gives a small shake of his head. “I don’t.”

I reach across the table and put my hand over his. He looks down at it but doesn’t pull away.

“I was his big brother. He shouldn’t have died that young.” His voice gets rougher, and he clears his throat before continuing. “It still fucking guts me when I let myself think about him too much, so mostly I don’t. I don’t talk about him. I don’t talk about what happened. If someone brings up my family, I change the subject. You’ve probably noticed.”

“I have.”

His mouth twists slightly. “Yeah. You notice everything.”

He turns his hand beneath mine and laces our fingers together, but his eyes stay fixed on them.

“I know avoiding it probably isn’t the healthiest way to deal with shit, but it works most of the time. I can go weeks without thinking about it, sometimes longer. Then something happens, or my mom calls, or I hear a sound that triggers my memories…” He stops.

My stomach twists. “I’m so sorry, Wyatt. That’s horrible.”

“Yeah.” His thumb moves slowly over the back of my hand. “But that’s not really the part I’ve been avoiding telling you.”

I stay quiet.

He looks away from me, toward the window, then back down at our hands. Whatever he’s trying to say next is clearly even harder for him.

Eventually, he takes another breath. “What I haven’t told you is that it was my fault.”

My heart gives a painful thump. “What do you mean?”

“We were out on a frozen lake.” His jaw tightens. “Wayne and me. It was something we’d done before, and I thought the ice was fine.”

He stops, and his grip on my hand tightens.

“I was the big brother. I was supposed to know better. I was supposed to make sure it was safe before I took him out there, but I didn’t. We just went.”

“Wyatt…”

“The ice broke.”

His voice catches, and he looks away.

For a second, neither of us moves.

“He fell through.” Wyatt swallows hard. “One second he was there, and then the ice cracked and he was in the water.”

The sound at the rink! Now I know what that was about. It wasn’t only a reminder that his brother died. It was the sound Wyatt heard when it happened.

I tighten my fingers around his.

“He looked at me.” Wyatt’s voice is quieter now. “That’s the part I can’t get out of my fucking head. He looked at me, and I tried to get to him. I tried, Quinn.”

“I know.”

“I got down on the ice and reached for him, but I couldn’t…” He stops and presses his lips together, his eyes fixed somewhere past me. “I couldn’t get him out.”

My throat burns.