She was going to leave here, leave me, and go home to die.
I’m not a crying man. It takes a lot. But, right now, I want to cry.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I close my eyes, taking breaths to hold it in.
All I want to do is beg her to change her mind. Beg her to stay. Beg her to live.
“I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.” Her soft voice is like a thousand knives plunging into my soul.
I drop my hand, opening my eyes. “You haven’t hurt me. You are hurting me.”
Her bottom lip trembles. She bites it. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”
She stares into my eyes. I see a flicker of emotion. Real emotion.
And it gives me hope.
Then, her eyes shut down, taking my hope away with it.
“I don’t know. But I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to hurt you. Hurting you was the last thing I ever wanted.”
My hands curl around the windowsill, gripping tightly.
I need to get to the root of this. She’s talking, but she’s telling me nothing. So, I go back to the words she said before. The words she yelled at me.
“You said you owe them. That you have to die because you owe them. Who do you owe, Taylor?”
I’m pretty sure I already know the answer. I just need her to say it.
I need her talking to me.
She pulls in a deep breath. “My family.” Her eyes come back to mine. “I owe my family.”
“Why?” I ask carefully. Because I know how easily she can shut down when it comes to her family.
I’ve always known losing them affected her badly. I know how hard it is to lose people you love. That’s why I never pushed her to talk. I always figured she’d tell me when she was ready.
I just pray to God that she’s ready now. Because I have a feeling that their deaths is why she’s doing this.
Her lips tremble again, tears glistening in her eyes. She bites down on her lips, taking in a breath. “They died because of me. I owe them my life because I took theirs.”
“Babe…I don’t understand.” I keep saying that same sentence, and I’ll keep saying it until I do understand.
And then, when I do understand why she’s doing this, I will change her mind.
“The list…I wrote it when I first found out I had a tumor. My mother knew about the list. She knew what was at the top of it—go to London. I had always wanted to visit here. So, she and my dad said we would take the trip when I was better. They expected me to get better. They never for a second believed I would die. Their belief made me fight to live.” She lets out a sad-sounding breath. “I should’ve died when I was sixteen. If I had died then, they would all be alive now.
“When I was eighteen, I recovered from the tumor, and we planned the trip to England. All packed and ready to go, we were due to fly out at five p.m. the next day. I would be starting at Northeastern as soon as we got back, and my best friend, Marie, was leaving for New York. She had a place at NYU. I wasn’t going to see her until winter break. I begged my parents to let me stay at her house, so we could have one last girlie night together. They said I could, so long as I was home first thing in the morning.
“When I was getting my stuff to take to Marie’s, I realized my lucky hoodie was dirty. My dad had gotten me it from Harvard. I’d had it for years, and good stuff always seemed to happen when I was wearing it. Once, when I was wearing it, Brian Packer asked me to winter formal. Then, I was wearing it when I made the softball team. Stupid, but I was young, and I thought good stuff would always happen when I was wearing it. Before I left to go to Marie’s, I asked my mom to wash it for me, so I could wear it on the flight. I was nervous to fly, and I figured nothing could happen if I wore my lucky hoodie.
“But I was wrong. It wasn’t lucky at all. My mom must have put it into the wash after I’d gone to Marie’s and forgotten to put it in the dryer straight after. She must have realized right before bed. The dryer was on…it was faulty…and it caught fire.
“Taylor…”
“They didn’t know the downstairs was on fire because they were all sleeping, and the fire alarm didn’t go off.
“A few weeks prior, the fire alarm had kept going off, and it was driving me nuts, so I complained to my dad. He took the batteries out. Said he’d buy another.
“He hadn’t gotten around to it…and the smoke got to them first. The fire marshal told me that they didn’t suffer…”
“Taylor,” I say her name again, moving toward her.
She lifts a hand, stopping me. “I should have died from the first tumor. This is my second chance to get it right.”
“That…no, that doesn’t make sense to me.”
“It does to me.” Her eyes lift to mine.
The grief and pain in them almost bring me to my knees.
“I need to see them again,” she says softly, agonized. “I need to tell them how sorry I am. I need them to forgive me.” Tears run from her eyes and down her cheeks.
I want to go to her, but I know she doesn’t want me near her.