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There was pressure at my hand. I looked down at the sloping script ‘Isabella’ at the top of my brother’s large hand, jumping out from all the other ink there. He gave me a firm squeeze, silent support, silent acknowledgment of the fact that I wouldn’t talk right then.
I couldn’t.
I squeezed back.
“Whatever version of you you’ve become, I’m just happy to have my sister back,” he said quietly, once his hand left mine.
I didn’t reply.
Did he really have his sister back?
The room smelled of death. They’d tried to cover it up with all sorts of cleaning products, so strong it stung my nostrils, but you couldn’t cover up death. Not to the people who were used to the fragrance.
It froze me. Right in the doorway.
I never froze. Not in the face of gunshots, blood or violence. Or even death. All of that was the backdrop of our childhood.
Well, not never. Even never had its exceptions.
Once, I had.
Frozen completely and utterly. In a moment not unlike this, me, standing in a hospital room, watching a desperate man bend over a small, prone form in a hospital bed. The air stale and rancid with despair.
Death wrapped around me like a coat. Too hot, uncomfortable and scratching every inch of my skin.
It wasn’t my death.
It wasn’t even Lucy’s.
It was Laurie’s.
Six Years Earlier
I watched the grim reaper twitch, moving rapidly up and down. It would have been comical really. But standing here in this doorway, watching that grim reaper on Bull’s cut move with the force of his sobs, I didn’t think anything would be funny again.
Every part of me was glued to the door, unable to move into the room, unable to run out. I knew if I walked in there, I’d have to face it. The loss. The grief. The wretched and ugly reality lying in that bed, the remains of my beautiful and remarkable friend.
If I went back into the crowded and somber waiting room, maybe I could trick myself for a little longer. Convince myself that this was all some sick dream, and I’d wake up hungover on the sofa at the clubhouse to see Laurie and Bull walk in, hand in hand, smiling, the soft glow of true love enveloping them. I’d watch them, certain that something so pure, so perfect, was bulletproof.
That fantasy was ripped away from me with brutal quickness as the room and the death inside it beckoned me.
Something that pure, that beautiful, it was the opposite of bulletproof. Like a flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, it was beautiful, remarkable even. But it wasn’t supposed to be there, and eventually someone stepped on it.
Crushed it.
I continued to watch the grim reaper’s journey.
Bull’s mammoth form hid most of her. Laurie. It always had. He was like a massive jigsaw piece, and she was the tiny one that slotted in just so.
The only one who would.
And now she didn’t fit.
Because she wasn’t there.
Her body was. Broken and battered and ruined.
But her beautiful spirit was nowhere to be found. I would know. A room wouldn’t feel this horrible and cold if Laurie’s light was still there. The only sound, beyond the deafening roar of death and the silent scream of Bull’s sorrow, was a mechanical beeping informing the room that Laurie’s heart was still beating.
Just because a heart was beating didn’t mean someone was still alive.
They’d had her for twenty-four hours.
I tasted bile.
Laurie—the real Laurie, not what was being measured by that machine—died twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes before.
She was never coming back.
Agony ripped through my body as the thought took root in my broken heart. I was only standing underneath the weight of the pain because I didn’t move. I was perfectly poised between life and death. In my spot, Laurie wasn’t quite alive, but she wasn’t quite gone either.
Gentle hands at my waist shocked me from my silent suffering. My eyes met the gray gaze of my brother.
I flinched when I looked into those eyes and saw nothing. Every inch of Cade was stone, like a walking robot. Despite what people might think, there was never a time when Cade was emotionless. He had made an art of making it look that way, but I’d known him my whole life and knew better.
There was always something working. And he was as kind as he was tough. That kindness shone through only on rare occasions with people he adored.
Me, for example.
Laurie, for another.
Cade, like everyone else in the club, treated her differently than even me. She was like a sheep that had wandered into the lion’s den. Instead of harming her, those lions made it their mission not just to protect her, but to ensure the sheep never knew the brutality of the jungle.
Cade had been different with her. Had a connection. He’d loved her like the softer, more innocent sister he never had.
