“Sorry for the rambling,” he says. “I-I just feel like I’ve needed to get this out for so long.”
“No,” I tell him, “don’t be sorry, Luke.” He’s sharing a part of himself with me that he hasn’t been able to share with anyone else and I can’t find words to explain how much that means to me, how deeply it breaks my heart but also fills it with a sort of tragic joy. I feel special to Luke in so many ways—that he’d trust in me to understand and care about his deepest, darkest feelings, that he’d allow me to be the one to help him carry the burden.
He looks at me, and there’s a level of intensity in his eyes that holds my gaze firmly in place. “Landon’s least priority in life was money. He gave all of his up, just like that”—he snaps his fingers—“because he didn’t need it. He was the free-spirited type, didn’t care much about material things, or how much simpler life could be with more of it. But not me. I couldn’t let it go and I couldn’t understand how he could. And the point of all this is that … because I was weaker than my brother, I let money destroy us, destroy me, and now he’s dead.”
I scoot across the bed to sit beside him. He puts me between his legs instead. “I do understand why you feel guilty. I do. And I know that if it were me, I’d probably feel the same guilt.” I curl my fingers around his and tug on his hand. “But you know you can’t do this to yourself because it’ll kill you inside. Because you feel guilty, because it hurts you so much, is proof that it wasn’t your fault. The truly guilty just don’t care.”
“But I should’ve been there to check his pack,” he says, pain choking his voice. “If I had been there—”
“If you had been there,” I cut in, “he probably still would’ve died—when it’s our time, it’s our time. And there’s no way you cared more about money than Landon. You may have convinced yourself of that, but I’m not blinded by the guilt you’re blinded by, and I know he meant more to you than anything ever could.”
His strong arms squeeze me gently.
“How did it happen?” I ask carefully, wanting him to be able to get everything out, but not wanting to push him too far. “If you feel like talking about it.”
“I told you I wanted to,” he says, and then takes a deep breath. “I told you I’d tell you everything. It happened in China. Tian Keng. The Heavenly Pit. His chute didn’t open. He plunged two thousand feet to his death. It hasn’t even been a year.”
My heart stops for a moment, and it feels like a fist is collapsing around my stomach. It takes me a few long seconds to gather the strength to speak, but I don’t know what I should say, and so I just say what everyone seems to say when confronted with something so tragic.
“I’m so sorry, Luke,” I begin, but it doesn’t feel sufficient enough for me, and I add, “I can’t possibly know what you’ve been through, or what you’re feeling right now, but it hurts my heart to know that this happened. To your brother. And to you.”
I feel his lips on my hair again and then he traces his fingers along the top of my leg.
“What I feel right now,” he says with the side of his face pressed against my head, “is that I’m glad you came back.”
I turn sideways, drawing my knees up together and curl my body against his. His skin is so warm and smells faintly of salt and paint and soap. The heavy rain becomes a light shower and though the stereo has been on the whole time, I’m only now noticing it in the background as it carries lightly through the speakers in the living room. But mostly what I hear is the rain and the sound of Luke’s heart beating as I lie against him with my head buried in the crook of his neck.
“Sienna?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t know much about BASE, do you?”
I’m sensing something dismal in that question, something I feel like I should prepare myself for.
“A little,” I say. “I know it’s kind of like skydiving, but more daring.”