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“Fuck,” I hiss. “If I’d just stayed for five minutes longer, I could’ve stopped everything. If I’d just driven him to the dorm . . . but I didn’t.”
I drive a hand through my hair, and Sam says, “What happened after he called?”
I blow out a breath, my head light. “I raced through the woods to find my mother dead.” I’m shaking now. “He’d crashed into a tree not far from the house . . . and I couldn’t help her. She was gone.” I close my eyes against the images of my mother’s limp body. Lifeless eyes. The blood. “I got sick on the side of the road, and Tyler was so fucked up. Drunk, freaking out, and when I looked into his eyes, I just broke. I wanted to protect him. That’s all I could think. And I knew when the cops got there, they’d arrest him. He’d go to prison maybe for the rest of his life.” I look into her eyes now, praying. For what, I don’t know. “I couldn’t let that happen. Tyler didn’t mean it . . . it was an accident. He was smashed. And it was beyond wrong and fucked up. But this was our mom. Our fucking mom.”
A violent sob takes me, and Sam moves to sit beside me. I can’t believe I’m losing my shit. “I’m fine,” I say. “Shit. I’m fine.”
Her arm reaches around my waist, her warm, soft skin affecting me. For one moment, I long to be lost in her. Just disappear. Because when the full truth hits, I’ll never feel her again.
Her fingers comb through my hair, and I shiver at her touch. “Tyler wrote in his journal that you always looked out for him. That you always tried to protect him from your dad, and everything.” Her hand takes mine, her tiny fingers lacing through my large ones. “You were just doing what you thought was right at the time. Still trying to protect him.”
She’s right on that. I nod hard. “I’d only had one beer because we spent most of the night arguing. And that was over an hour before then. So I thought . . . I could send Tyler home. Call the police. Tell them it was me who was driving Tyler?
??s car, and that I’d tried to swerve to miss a deer in the road.” I pull in a breath. “I kicked dirt over Tyler’s puke, told him what to say to the cops, and made him go to the house.”
“But what about the cab driver?” she asks. “Wouldn’t the police question him?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I thought about that. But I was at the scene. I confessed, so they never investigated beyond that.” I shrug shamefully. “I always thought if I ever needed to tell the truth, the cab driver would be the one to back up the story.”
She nods. “Is it that time? Now?”
“No.” I look at the wall, everything growing black in the edges of my vision. “I missed that chance.”
“What do you mean? You can always tell the truth. I know that you don’t want your father and others to think anything bad about Tyler . . . but. This is about your life, too, Holden. You shouldn’t have to suffer because of Tyler’s mistake.”
A dark laugh barrels out of me before I can stop it. “I think Tyler would’ve been better off without me trying to protect him.” I shake my head. “Seems that my interference only fucked shit up worse.”
She sighs, deep and heavy. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for all this.”
“Yes,” I say. “I can.” Then looking into her jewel-like eyes, I crush them as I say, “If I’d told someone the first time Tyler tried to kill himself, he never would’ve succeeded in the end.”
SAM
My heart jumps in my throat. I don’t want to—will not believe Tyler committed suicide. “Stop saying that.” My voice is raw and angry. I’m trying to take all this in and be here and understand what Holden has suffered, but I can’t listen to him saying that about Tyler anymore.
Holden’s jaw tightens. “Tyler was different with you.” And I know this much. In just under a week, I’ve learned too many painful secrets about the guy who was my best friend and who I loved dearly. I don’t think I can learn anymore. My head is splitting open.
But Holden presses on. “One night, our dad flipped out. Tyler forgot to add oil to his dirt bike and burned up the engine. Dad grabbed a pan from the stove where Mom was cooking and pinned Tyler against the wall.”
I swallow hard, trying to brace myself, while the images his words create sear my mind. “I pushed Tyler out of the way right before he slung the pan. Hot grease caught me in the chest, burned through my shirt, and hurt like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”
Tears well in my eyes. “Oh, God.”
Holden shrugs, like talking about your father burning you with cooking oil is an everyday convo. “Tyler was already on a downward spiral before that. But after I’d gone to the ER, telling them, of course, that it was my own dumbass fault, he spiraled out of control.” He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “He took a bottle of some shit I had in my room. I found him face down in his own vomit on the bathroom floor. I stuck my finger down his throat and made him puke up the rest before putting him in the shower to wake him up.”
The missing section in the journal, I realize. The broken timeline. Tyler had to have only been thirteen then, and it must have been right before he spent a couple weeks at his grandparent’s house. It’s why he was sent there that summer. His parents hid everything so well. I never even questioned.
“Dad was pissed,” Holden says. “He tried to whale on Tyler while he was completely out of it, and he probably would’ve finished him off in his condition. I lost my shit. Just went to town. Beat the hell out of him.”
“He deserved a lot worse,” I say, not able to hold back my hatred for their father.
“Yeah. Well, after that, he put me back in my place. Shipped me up off to boarding school, and Tyler went to our grandparent’s to recover before school.”
Pieces are falling together, and I don’t want them to. I don’t want . . . “This is why you think Tyler killed himself. Because of that one time?”
He nods. “That car didn’t hit him, Sam.” Holden’s eyes don’t release me. “I know this, because after he killed our mom in the wreck, he went down. Harder than I’ve ever seen him. He was drowning in guilt, and it was killing him.” He clenches his hand into a fist. “I should’ve told someone the truth. I thought I was looking out for him, but if I had, he’d still be here. He might be in prison, fuck, I don’t know. But they would’ve gotten him help to deal with it. I wasn’t there for him. I just went back to my life.”
My heart is aching so badly I can’t hold back the tears. I drop my head in my hands and have to release them. I feel Holden’s arm around me, then cradling me to his chest. Like at the funeral, I feel ashamed. I should be comforting him, not the other way around. Inhaling deeply, I breathe in his strong, masculine scent. “I’m sorry,” I say.
