Gilly sighed, leaning back in her chair. I saw her age then. The way the years of stress and grief had carved their way into her face. How her shoulders curved in on themselves more than they had years ago. I framed the shot in my mind. Captured the story her body told without uttering a word.
“He’ll never get over it,” she said quietly.
“I know he won’t. I’m not saying he should.”
Gilly waved me off. “I know you’re not.” She looked me dead in the eyes. “You’re not the only one he blames. It’s all of us.”
The burn was back. I heard Jax’s hysterical voice, echoing off the hospital walls. “Why did you make him go?” It still hurt so much that it stole my breath. Guilt eating away at my insides. If I’d never insisted that we check up on Jax. If we’d just gone back to my house, instead of heading to that stupid party. If we’d only waited another five minutes before leaving.
I drowned in what-ifs. We all did in one way or another. Our once tightly bound group of friends had shattered. Scott had lost himself in a bottle and then more, the drugs finally taking him from us. Another coffin in a line of too many.
Marisa had stuck by Scott until she found him getting high in a motel room last year, half-naked with a woman that neither of them knew. Now, she was trying to rebuild her life piece by piece while ignoring the rest of us.
Lisbeth had lost herself in work. Taking legal case after legal case and barely coming up for air. Whenever I ran into her in town, it was as if we were strangers.
Isaac had retreated from everyone. Even though I knew he still lived in Wolf Gap, I rarely saw him. But I had never pushed to, either. I knew the temptation to hide away from it all and didn’t want to hurt him by forcing him to remember.
Mitch had almost instantly replaced us all with new friends. A slightly rougher crowd. He went from his construction sites to the bar in a rhythm that I knew was an attempt to numb his pain.
And I’d all but lost the family I’d built for myself. I desperately held on to Kay and Chip, even though I felt them slipping through my fingers, too. I missed Serena like a limb. I would’ve even settled for her screaming at me for being an interfering bitch, rather than the silence. I even missed cleaning up Jax’s messes.
But most of all, I missed the warmth of how things used to be. Jax as an annoying big brother with his teasing. Serena asking me for advice about her latest crush. Kay and Chip’s care.
Guilt had slowly eaten away at every last relationship. The friends. The brother and sister I’d gained through Jase. The second parents—ones who actually gave a damn. I held on as tightly as I could, but I felt the ties fading.
It was none of our faults. It was the responsibility of a man who’d gotten high on meth and lost himself to rage. He had ended all of our lives in one way or another. None of us could fully figure out how to put the pieces back together after that night—even if we had survived.
“Laiken?”
Gilly’s voice pulled me from my spiral. “Sorry,” I croaked. “Just thinking about everyone. How much we all carry.”
“Loss has a way of carving itself into your bones. It shouldn’t be any other way.”
She was right in so many ways. I could still feel Jase, but his memory was blurry now. I couldn’t grasp onto the love that had once felt so real. Maybe because I was a different person now. I wasn’t the girl who had promised him forever. I’d been made into something new through fire and ash.
“I miss him.” The thing I missed most of all was my best friend. The one who knew all my secrets and scars. The person I was most comfortable with in the world.
“Me, too, Cherub. Me, too.”
“We’ll celebrate all he was to us. We’ll have cake and tell stories. It’ll be good.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand. “That’s my girl.”
2
Boden
I easedmy foot off the accelerator as the speed limit dropped to twenty miles per hour on the edge of town. “Here’s home for the next bit.”
I glanced over at Peaches, who had her snout pressed to the window. “All right, but no jumping out of my truck,” I told her with a stern look.
I lowered the window, and Peaches instantly stuck her head out, nose in the air. I did my own survey of the town. One thing was for sure—it was tiny. I’d learned that could be a good or bad thing. If the town was on your side, you could find refuge. If they posted selfies and stealth shots on their social media accounts, the paparazzi would be here in no time.
I struggled to unclench my jaw, working it back and forth to loosen the muscles as I scanned the street. Even though it was barely forty degrees, people were out and about, ducking into shops and restaurants. The buildings had an Old West vibe to them, and that carried to the street itself. Antique lampposts lined the way, still adorned with lights from Christmas in the shape of snowflakes.
“What do you think?”
Peaches let out a happy bark that only made her look goofier. No one, not even my vet, had any idea what different breeds were in this dog. She was her own unique creation with dark fur around her nose and eyes and lighter on her body. She should’ve been a big dog, except her legs were comically short and stubby.