AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why’d it make you sad?”
“You don’t know about Christian?”
I shake my head. I’ve not heard the name before.
“It happened before I met Alex,” he says. “Christian was my cousin, and his sister’s called Kennedy. Christian was the same age as Saxon and Kip.”
I know they’re a couple of years older than him. I met them at the twenty-first birthday party that Damon and Alex held together at Damon’s parents’ house. It was a huge do, with hundreds of friends and family, and it went on long into the night, long after Dad and Sherry had taken me back to the hotel we were staying at.
I don’t miss that he’s speaking about Christian in the past tense, and my pulse picks up speed.
“We’d gone camping to the beach,” he continues, “and the guys decided they wanted to swim out to a cave on the headland. Kennedy and I were only ten, but we weren’t going to be left behind. So we all swam out, and we spent an hour in this cave, fucking around. In the middle was a large rock pool, only about three feet deep. Behind it, rocks were piled up against the back wall of the cave. Christian was like a monkey, always climbing. He decided he wanted to get to the top of the rocks and began climbing up them. He’d almost gotten to the top when he slipped, and all the rocks came tumbling down.”
My mouth forms an O. “Oh no.”
“He came crashing down to the bottom, and half the rocks fell on top of him, and on Kennedy, who was sitting on the edge of the rock pool. He went under the water, beneath the rocks. We tried to get him free, but the rocks were too big and heavy. Saxon went under to try and blow air in his lungs, but eventually he came back up and just said, ‘He’s gone.’ Kip swam out to get the adults, and Saxon and I started moving the rocks off Kennedy. They’d crushed her arm—she was crying, and there was blood everywhere. It was fucking awful.”
“I didn’t know,” I say softly, my heart breaking for him. “I’m so sorry. So Christian…”
“Died, yeah. He was gone long before the paramedics turned up.”
“What happened to Kennedy?”
“She lost her arm. She has a prosthetic one now.”
“Oh! Is that why you and the guys got into designing them?”
“Yes. We wanted to help her. She’s fine now. You’d love her, she’s bright and bubbly and funny.”
I smile at his obvious affection for her. “You’re fond of her.”
“Yeah, she’s one of my favorite people in the whole world. She’s married to Jackson, he’s great, and they have a baby, Eddie. We catch up most weeks.”
“That’s nice.”
“Least I can do.”
I survey him for a moment. “That’s a strange thing to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“The least you could do? Why did you say that?”
He shrugs.
I frown. “Damon? Do you mean the least you could do because of what happened to her and Christian? Because you couldn’t save him or stop her losing her arm?”
“Yeah, I dunno, maybe.”
“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
“Fifteen years of therapy have tried to convince me of that.”
“But they haven’t succeeded?”
He hesitates. “I know it wasn’t my fault. Of course it wasn’t. I was ten years old, and so was Kennedy. Christian was twelve and thought he knew everything—he and my brothers would never have listened to me, even if I’d said I didn’t think we should go to the cave, which I didn’t. I couldn’t have stopped him climbing the rocks. And I couldn’t have saved him—the rocks were so heavy they had to call the fire brigade to come in and get them off him.”
“But it still haunts you.” It’s a statement, not a question.
