As we walk across the parking lot, I expect him to ask me again about what happened to Griffin. But he doesn’t. He’s silent, his hand firm in mine, as if he’s giving me both strength and time.
In that moment, I remember the thing that I loved most about him. The way he’d take care of me and support me. He treated me like I was special. Like my wants and dreams mattered.
All these years, I’ve thought of him as dangerous. But maybe he wasn’t the danger at all. Maybe the danger was all inside me.
We reach Blue, and as we walk beside her, I run my fingers over her waxed surface, then stop and lean against the hood. Wyatt releases my hand and stands in front of me, his hands sliding into his pockets.
“He gave her to me,” I say without preamble.
“The car?”
“I call her Blue.”
He eyes the Mustang and nods, his eyes bright with amusement. “Not the most original name, but it suits her.”
“It does,” I say defensively. “It’s a perfectly good name.”
He holds his hands up in surrender. “The best name. And Griff gave her to you? She’s gorgeous.”
“He found her in a junk yard, did the restoration work himself, then gave her to me for my twenty-fifth birthday. I—”
I break off because tears are threatening again, and I refuse to cry.
“I totally baby her,” I continue when I’m sure I’m not going to start weeping again. “Griff says I baby her too much, actually. That I need to put her through her paces on the highway or in the desert or something. He thinks I need to cut loose.”
“Maybe you should. Sounds fun.”
“Maybe.”
“Then why don’t you?”
I lift a shoulder, but I don’t answer. I don’t really need to. Even though he says nothing, I’m certain Wyatt knows that I don’t cut loose that often. As in, pretty much never.
I push away from the car and start walking again. “At any rate,” I say as Wyatt falls in step beside me, “he’s so good to me. Like the best brother in the history of brothers. And I know it’s hard for him—just every day stuff, you know—but he hardly ever complains, and he’d do anything for me. I mean, he does do anything for me. And it’s wonderful, but it’s horrible, too, because—”
I stumble on the words, my throat clogged with unshed tears and my heart racing from the emotional weight of everything I’m saying.
I draw a breath and force myself to finish the sentence I’d just left hanging. “Because it’s all my fault.”
Wyatt doesn’t look like he believes me, but to his credit he doesn’t try to tell me that I’m wrong. Instead, he just listens as I tell him the whole story.
He already knows about the party, of course, and I explain about Griffin, and how he wanted to make s’mores and melt the marshmallows over the fire pit.
“I never thought he would without me,” I say, my throat tight with the memory of that night. Of my father telling me so brutally about what Griffin had done. Telling me it was my fault because I’d left him. Because I’d gone off to whore myself out.
Telling me that my brother might die because I’d been bad.
And me believing it, because of course he was right.
I lick my lips as we reach the sidewalk in front of the studio. I want to keep walking, but there are shoppers out this morning, and I’m feeling raw and exposed.
“Is there a class?” Wyatt asks, nodding toward the studio and obviously reading my mind.
“Not for two more hours. But Anita—the next teacher—usually comes in an hour early.”
“Then we have time.” He reaches for my purse without asking and pulls out the studio key, then opens the door for me. He follows me in, locks the door, and looks around. A moment later, he’s dragged out one of the tumbling mats used for the early morning Mommy-Baby classes. He spreads it out, gestures for me to sit, then joins me.
“I’m going to guess Griffin decided to make those s’mores.”
“He still likes them,” I say. “I can’t look at one without feeling sick.”
“What did he do?”
“After I left, he tried to light the fire pit, but he didn’t know how. And he turned on the propane, but couldn’t get the igniter to work. So he got gasoline from the garden shed. Which was bad enough by itself, but he also didn’t turn off the propane.”
Wyatt winces, and I press my lips together as I nod.
“He used a match,” Wyatt says softly.
“The flame jumped. At least that’s how he describes it. The firemen say the propane was concentrated around the fire pit because there was no wind. But he had some gas on his hand, and then it caught the sleeve of his shirt.”
“Long sleeves for a chilly night,” Wyatt says. “Even in the summer.”
“That’s all he remembers. The firemen say there was a cloud of flame. He must have turned, because it got his right arm and back and shoulder, and also that side of his face. He doesn’t have the outer part of his ear. Did you see?”
Wyatt shakes his head. His silence is solemn.
“It burned off a chunk of his face. He was lucky it missed most of his scalp, so he’s still got his hair. But it burned him so much. And so deep. All the way down to the bone. He lost his pinkie—you saw that. They had to amputate it.”
“That’s not uncommon with fourth-degree burns,” Wyatt says, and I must look surprised because he adds, “I did some volunteer photography work at a clinic years ago. I saw a lot.”
“Then you get it. At least some of it. How horrible it is now. How terrifying and painful it was then. And it all happened because I wasn’t there. I was—”
I cut myself off; he nods. “You were with me.”
I wipe away an errant tear and nod miserably. “Losing my virginity while Griffin almost lost his life.”
He moves beside me and puts his arm around me. I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes as he strokes my hair and my back. “I get it,” he says softly. “I do. But it wasn’t your fault.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But that only makes it horrible. It doesn’t mean you’re to blame. Me either, for that matter.”
I pull back, surprised.
He exhales. “You must have blamed me, too. At least a little bit.”
“Did I? I don’t think so.” And the truth is, I didn’t. I made the decision to go. I broke the rules. I was a bad girl, just like my dad said. Wyatt was just being Wyatt. He tempted me, sure. But I’m the one who left my baby brother alone.
I look at him. “If you’re thinking that I didn’t call you because I was mad at you, that wasn’t it. At first, I was scared. And in trouble. I didn’t have phone privileges for months.”
I hug my knees to my chest, remembering those awful days, my head filling with the memory of the sickly sweet smell of the burn ward, a combination of infection, flesh, and sterilization chemicals.
“I pretty much lived in the hospital. And even when I could call—well, how could I hold onto something good in my life when I was the one who did such a horrible thing?”
He takes my hand and squeezes it. “I get that. I do.”