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I was the tipping point.
I see that now.
I feel it.
In every shove turned fierce, clawing grip on my arm.
In every hitch in his breath, and broken wail into the night.
In the way his lean body curls inward, clenching, twitching with the onslaught.
My ass hits the damp, hard pavement, with Jeremy crashing to his knees, his upper body practically collapsing in my lap. Holding him to me, I bury my face in his hair, my own grief and anger and disbelief shoved to the backburner, making room for nothing other than the need to keep him here. Right here. In my arms and safe enough to shatter.
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself murmur, too quiet for him to hear over the screams that have now broken into chest-heaving sobs.
His face is buried in my chest—his tears hot and damp through my thin t-shirt. My arms loop around his upper back, hugging his slim, quaking body to me tight.
It takes me a moment to realize the wetness sliding down my cheeks is from more than just the rain falling down on us. Sniffing, I squeeze my eyes shut, ducking my head into his neck.
Like that, we stay there, lost in the cyclone of our grief—of misplaced anger and misplaced blame and misplaced heartache.
He holds me like I’d imagine he’d hold his sister if she was here.
And I hold him like I’d hold my girlfriend, whispering sorrys in her hair.
Apologies for not doing enough to find her—irrational that that may be.
Apologies for being so weak and selfish lately…for being relieved when I thought, tonight, that she’d finally found peace, and that we could too…
Apologies for that brief moment I had inside where I blamed it all on the boy in my arms, the one we always vowed to protect.
All for one, and one for all…
“I’m so sorry.”
Fingers dig into my neck. “M-make it stop,” he sobs.
I hold him tighter, rock him. “I can’t, I can’t…”
I can’t fix this.
I can’t protect him from this.
The sound he makes against my chest is unlike anything I’ve ever heard—inhuman and terrifying in its devastation.
And I find myself pleading. Praying.
For once not for her…
But for him.
Make it stop.
Please, make it stop.
This can’t be happening
It can’t.
