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“He had all of us,” she countered.
“You know what I mean.” He shook his head again. “He was dying right in front of me.”
“Us.”
She was right, he knew. Jack’s loss was bigger than how it had affected Sam. He could remember his parents’ agony and worry. The whispered prayers in the mint-green, soulless, hospital waiting room. He saw his father age and watched his mother hold back tears torn from her heart and still... “I couldn’t feel that then,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t feel it. I was watching my twin die and I was so messed up I couldn’t see a way out.”
“But you finally found one...”
“Yeah,” he said softly, looking into those eyes of hers, seeing the sorrow, the regret, and hating himself for causing it then and reawakening it now. “I don’t know if you can understand what I did, Lacy. Hell, I don’t even know if I do, now.”
“Try me.” She folded her arms across her chest and waited.
God, two years he’d been holding everything inside him. Letting it all out was like—he couldn’t even think of the right metaphor. It was damned painful but it was long past time he told Lacy exactly what had happened then. Why he’d done what he’d done.
“After the bone-marrow transplant, after it worked and Jack was in remission, it was like...” He paused, looking for the right words, and was sure he wouldn’t be able to find them. Not to explain what he had felt. Finally, he just started talking again and hoped for the best. “It was like fate had suddenly said, ‘Okay, Sam. You can go ahead and be happy again. Your brother’s alive. You saved him. So everything’s good.’”
He could remember it so well, the nearly crippling relief, the laughter. Watching his brother recover, get strong again, believing that their world was righting itself.
Lacy reached out and gently laid one hand on his forearm. It felt like a damn lifeline to Sam, holding him to this place, this time, not letting him go too deeply into a past filled with misery. He covered her hand with his, needing that warmth she offered him as he finished.
Sam looked down at their joined hands and said softly, “Jack was full of plans, Lacy. He was well again, and after so long feeling like crap, he couldn’t wait to get back out into the world.”
“I remember,” she said quietly.
The snap and hiss of the flames was the only sound in the room for a few seconds. “He showed me his ‘list.’ Not a bucket list, since he wasn’t dying anymore. It was a dream list. A life list. His first stop was going to be Germany. Staying with some friends while he skied the slopes and reclaimed everything the cancer stole from him.”
She didn’t speak, just kept looking at him through eyes gleaming with the shine of tears she wouldn’t allow to fall.
“He was well, damn it.” Sam pulled away from her and scrubbed both hands over his face like a man trying to wake up from a nightmare. “Jack was happy again and on the road and then he dies in a damn car wreck on the freeway? It was crazy. Surreal.”
“I know, Sam. I was with you. We all were.”
“That’s the thing, Lacy.” His gaze caught hers again as he willed her to understand how it had been for him. “You were there but I couldn’t have you. Couldn’t let myself have you because Jack was dead and his dreams with him. I saved him and he died anyway. It was like fate was screwing with us just for the hell of it. None of it made sense. I couldn’t bring him back. So I told myself I had to do the next best thing. I had to at least keep his dreams alive.”
Seconds ticked past before Lacy stared up at him and said, “That’s why you left? To pick up the list Jack left behind and make it happen?”
“He had all these plans. Big ones. And with him gone, those plans were all I had left of him. How could I let them die, too?”
“Sam—” She broke off, took a breath and said, “Did you really think fulfilling Jack’s list was going to keep him with you?”
God, why did it sound stupid when she said it? It hadn’t been at the time. But that’s exactly what he’d thought. By living his twin’s dreams, in essence, his twin’s life, it would be as if Jack never died.
“It was important to me,” he muttered thickly. “I had to keep him alive somehow.”
“God, Sam...” She lifted one hand to cover her mouth and her beautiful eyes shone with tears.
“Keeping Jack with me meant distancing myself from the reality of his death. That’s why I had to leave. I couldn’t be here, facing the fact, every day, that he was gone.”
