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“She saved me.” He sounds like he’s this close to falling apart, and my whole being aches to put him back together. “She saved my fucking life, and it wasn’t…”
Worth it?
I want to finish for him but decide against it. A million questions clash in my head, the obvious one being what exactly happened that day? I want to know how she saved him, what caused the accident, but I also know the last thing Finn needs right now is an interview on the worst day of his life.
“And I know it’s fucked-up—” He shoves a hand through his tousled hair, gripping a handful like he’s trying to get his mind straight. “—but I need to know how she felt. Did it hurt? Was she scared? Did she… hate me?”
My first instinct is to hug the breath out of him. Problem is, my pity won’t help him. I’m sure the boy who watched his mother die has had more than enough people pity him in his lifetime. What he really needs is for someone to open his eyes.
“You’re full of shit, you know that?”
He looks at me, shock all over his face.
“You act like you don’t want this, but you like feeling this way, don’t you?” I close in on him and watch his shoulders sink under the weight of the truth. He doesn’t speak, but the resentment in his eyes conveys the impact of my words.
“Why else would you keep putting yourself in these situations?” I come to a stop before him. “You like punishing yourself. You get off on it.”
He sucks in a breath when I cross the void between us and press my hand to his torso. I feel his chest heaving up and down, his heart hammering against my palm.
The near proximity forces him to lower his head to look at me, the lines I drew between us getting blurrier and blurrier. The moonlight gleams in his eyes, and for a short moment, I almost forget we’re three hundred feet away from imminent death.
“You feel that?” I apply pressure to his chest. “The air filling your lungs?”
He waits for me to carry on.
“That’s privilege… And what you’re doing right now? It’s wasting that privilege.”
There are tears in my eyes, but somehow, they feel foreign.
Like they don’t belong to me.
Like I’m feeling everything he refuses to.
“What happened to your mom…”
From the moment I bring up his mother, he pulls away.
Emotionally, physically—in all the ways that matter.
He starts closing himself off.
Looking away.
He starts to run.
Because that’s what he’s always done.
“Hey, stay with me.” I recycle the line he used on me the night he took my first kiss and surprise myself when I grab his face between my hands. “What happened to your mom was not your fault. Do you hear me? It wasn’t.”
He doesn’t want to hear this, but he needs to. He needs to hear it before he does something stupid again and gets himself killed. I’m not nearly foolish enough to believe that I can save Finn Richards from his demons, but maybe, if I’m lucky…
I can get him to save himself.
“Don’t you get it? Every time you put yourself in danger like this.” I fail to swallow the pit in my throat. “Every time you punish yourself because you think that’s what you deserve… you risk throwing away the one thing she died to save.”
I know I’m getting through to him when he squeezes his eyes shut as if to stop himself from showing vulnerability.
“Don’t you dare throw it away,” I choke out.
