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From the moment I answer the phone, I feel like I’m going to be sick and I lose focus. The words cried on the other end shatters me into pieces. It takes a second for it all to sink in. As soon as it does, I drop to my knees.
Surely, this dream has turned into a nightmare. Surely, it has.
CHAPTER 5
Still Go
Lynn
“He’s here again,Cakes. I think you should talk to him. Your sister… she… Brooke is… was.” My mama can’t even get the words out.
Brookewas.She no longerisanything to anyone, she has become a past tense. Was.
She was my sister, she was my best friend, she was Trevor’s best friend. I haven’t been able to look at him since that night. He sat beside me at her funeral, holding my hand the entire time.
However, I still couldn’t look at him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at him again. I sit up on my bed, clenching my pillow to my chest.
I don’t even bother to wipe my tears away. I give her a short nod.
“Let him in. I’ll talk to him,” I whisper.
“Good, she would want you to. You two are her… her best friends. She’d want this,” Mama chokes out before turning and rushing from the room.
It’s been a week since we buried my sister and I still can’t stop crying. It’s like a fresh hell every single morning. I wake ready to run into her room and pester her and then it hits me. She’s not there.
My bedroom door creaks open and Trevor steps his big body through the door. He has that Stetson held up over his heart. That’s as far as I’ll let my eyes go.
He also seems to be frozen as he stands with his back pressed to the door he just closed. He drops his arm to his side. I tighten my hold on the pillow.
“This ain’t right, Lynn, and you know it. I can’t lose you both. Why are you shutting me out?”
“I should have been there. If I weren’t with you, I would have been there. I would have been on the side of that road to hold her flashlight while she fixed that stupid broken down truck,” I sob.
“Don’t do that. We couldn’t have known she’d break down. She should’ve called me. I would have been there. I would have helped,” he replies with so much pain in his voice, but I still can’t look at him.
“I should’ve been there. Period. Brooke was always there for me,” I shout back at him.
My heart hurts so much as I think of my sister dying on the side of that road without me. A broken sound comes from Trev, causing my eyes to snap up to his face. Tears stream down his cheeks.
“I should’ve been there,” he says. “I’m her best friend. I’ve always been there when she called.”
“She’s my sister. I should have been there. To protect her, to die with her. I should have been there.”
He drops his hat to the floor and moves to sit beside me, pulling me into his arms. I lean against him and break down. I allow him to give me the comfort I don’t deserve.
I don’t know how much time goes by as he holds me. What I do know is that it still hurts. I’ll never get to see my sister’s big, bright smile again. She’s gone.
“We can blame ourselves ’til we’re blue in the face. It’s not going to bring her back, and it won’t change the fact that that bastard was on that road driving drunk,” he murmurs into my hair.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “If I were there… I could have warned her he was coming. I could have covered her,” I whimper.
He places his fingers under my chin and turns my head until I face him. “Please, Cakes, look at me.”
I lift my eyes to his blues. He searches my face. “Brooke wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want you locked in here crying for days. She wouldn’t want you blaming yourself. I know it’s hard. I wake up every morning thinking of how I should’ve been following her home like I always did?—”
“But you didn’t because you were with me.”
“I was where she wanted me to be. Brooke told me to go after you. She told me to be happy. She’s the reason I had the courage to tell you how I felt, how I feel. We weren’t doing anything wrong,” he says.
