“Okay.” Kassidy grinned, glowing under the attention. “Watch this, Ryan!”
She lined up the ball and stepped back a few paces. She looked at Ryan and smiled happily before running at the ball, putting her boot hard into the underside. It flew wide, out over the lawn. Ryan’s eyes watched as it curved and fell down with a loud thwack onto the street.
He turned to Kassidy. “Wait here, I’ll go get it.” But he was talking to air. “Kass! No!” he called out when he saw her little legs pumping hard towards the street to retrieve the ball. “Kassidy!” he screamed.
His pulse racing, he took off after his sister, hearing the squeal of tyres and the sickening thud of her body slamming hard into the ground before he saw it.
Ryan’s legs flew across the thick grass, barely noticing the stones cutting into his feet. His heart lodged in his throat when he knelt by her twisted body. She was covered with so much blood it hurt just to look at her.
She blinked her eyes open. “Ryan? I don’t feel so good.”
Someone was shouting behind him, but the loud roar in his ears blocked it all out. He looked into her big brown eyes. “You’re gonna be okay, Kass.”
She tried nodding and winced. “Did you see my kick?” she whispered.
“I did,” he replied, tears falling thick and fast down his face. “You kick a ball better than I do.”
She coughed and flecks of blood spattered his shirt.
“Oh God,” he moaned as he heard the wail of sirens in the distance.
Kassidy swallowed. “Ryan? Are there kittens in Heaven? Daddy never let me have one and it’s the only thing I ever wanted.”
He sniffed messily and wiped his face with his sleeve. “There are kittens in Heaven, but you’re not going there, you’re staying here. Stay here with me, Kass. I’ll get you a kitten, I promise.”
Fin’s chest heaved with sobs as she turned and grabbed him in her arms.
“She died before the ambulance arrived. That was the day I lost my entire family. My mother didn’t come out of her room for weeks and Dad blamed me for all of it. I let him. I wanted to take her place, just like I did with Jake.” He wrapped his arms around Fin and buried his face in her neck as the guilt flooded to the surface. “If I could take his place, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I would, Fin. Jake wasn’t meant to die. It should have been me.” His voice broke and he let the tears fall down his face and drip into her soft hair as he held her tightly. “It should have been me,” he whispered hoarsely.
Fin pushed him away and he forced himself to meet her eyes. They flashed with anger. “Don’t say that,” she ordered, her voice fierce. “Don’t you say that. It shouldn’t have been either of you ... but you came home, Ryan,” she choked out. “You came home and God help me, I’m so relieved you’re here that it burns me from the inside out.”
His heart beat wildly at her words and grabbing her face in both hands, he crushed his lips against hers. She responded frantically, clutching at his shoulders as he pulled her against him. Ryan squeezed his eyes shut at the sweet agony of holding her in his arms. He kept kissing her until he thought he’d pass out, knowing even then it would never be enough.
She broke away, breathless, and rested her forehead against his. “I love you so much, Ryan.”
“I love you too.”
“Will you come home now?”
Ryan wiped her tears away with his thumbs and nodded. “Of course.”
He held Fin’s hand in his as they walked towards the car park, and as he opened his car door, he paused to watch her.
She opened her own car door and turned. “Ryan?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have any photos of Kassidy?”
He nodded. “I have one I carry with me, but Mum gave me some today.”
“Maybe we could put them up on the living room wall next to Jake?”
Warmth flooded his body. “That would be nice.”
Fin gave him a brief wave and slid into her car, and as he pulled out of the car park behind her and onto the main road, a soft deep sigh breathed cool air through his body. He shivered because it almost felt like Jake was sitting right there in the passenger seat.
“Brothers forever, right, Kendall?”
Ryan grinned. “Brothers forever, Tanner.”
“Baby, I’m home.”
Despite sounding tired and gruff, a thrill of excitement at his words gave Fin goose bumps. Four weeks of having Ryan in her house and it still felt shiny and new. How easy it was to see now that her reason for pushing Ian away was because this was the dream she had buried deep inside her heart.
Hearing Crookshanks greet him in the hallway, Fin scrambled madly through the mess on the kitchen bench. Grabbing the tin she’d just filled, she flung open the oven door and tossed it recklessly in the direction of the wire rack.
“What are you doing?”