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“Luke, hurry, go tell Mama to call 911!”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. He was already racing across the field faster than his twelve-year-old legs should have been able to go.
The other boys were still in the treehouse, but I didn’t pay them any attention. How could I when the world was crashing down around me? Tears poured down my cheeks and I couldn’t have cared less that they all saw me crying.
Every part of my heart and soul was breaking into a million pieces and when I heard my mother’s wails as her small frame raced across the field, screaming out for her baby, I knew nothing would ever be the same.
“Please…. Please, Jelena, you have to wake up.” Holding her hand in mine, I rocked back and forth. “I promise I will take you everywhere with me always. Just wake up for me.”
But she didn’t open her eyes or make a sound.
My baby sister never woke up again.
And it was my fault.
* * *
I lookedover at Braxton and Gyth as tears streamed down my face while I recalled the events of that day. The sorrow in their own eyes made it ten times harder, but I kept on.
“We’d already lost my father who’d died while serving in the Army. That was the reason I’d chosen that branch. My sister had only been one at the time so she didn’t remember him, but I did. And because of me, my mother lost her daughter too.”
Nausea and guilt swept through me.
“My mama was sick with grief, but she never made me feel as if any of it was my fault. She would tell me time and time again it was an accident and accidents happen. But it didn’t have to. If I had told the other boys not to come at all. Or I had been behind her on the ladder. If–”
That was when I was interrupted by Braxton. “You can’t predict the future and you were a kid yourself. I am so damn sorry about your sister. I can’t imagine if anything would have happened to Alley when we were kids what I would have done. But your mama was right.”
I was shaking my head. How could I ever agree or forgive myself for that day?
“That day shaped me into who I was from that moment on. Luke stood by me even when I changed. I didn’t let anyone in. I certainly didn’t talk about my feelings. And I closed myself off to everyone but him and my mother.”
Even they didn’t get all of me after Jelena died.
“Untilher.”
Brinley had shaken me up that’s for sure.
“Brinley showed up when her mom went to work for Luke’s family. She and her mom lived in a small room in their massive house, off the kitchen. Luke being Luke, took her under his wing. It became the three of us instead of just him and me.”
“Brin was with us all the time, whether I liked it or not, and at first I was irritated. But just like she had with Luke, she finally nuzzled her way into my heart and carved out her own spot.”
My jaw was tight as I kept going and a headache started to surface from the tension. There were good reasons I didn’t talk about that kind of stuff.
“I can see how that could happen from just the times I have been around her,” Gyth told me.
While I knew he meant nothing by it, a little jealousy crept in at his comment. Which was silly, he had a gorgeous wife and an amazing little boy.
“She is a sweetheart,” he added. My dumbass breathed a sigh of relief when all I heard was a friendly tone in his voice.
Get a grip.
“She didn’t just bury her way into mine though. Brin also stole Luke’s for a time. I tried to steer her in his direction but something was always brewing between us. I just couldn’t ever let it happen.”
Which was another reason I had to get away as soon as I graduated.
“After a while, Luke realized that he and Brin would only be friends. He’d tried to get me to give Brin a shot, claiming there was always something simmering between us, but I couldn’t. And later, when I finally told her about my sister I think she realized just how broken I was. It also didn’t help that every girl in school seemed to be falling at my feet.”
“Casanova,” Gyth muttered.
