Best I Ever Had

Although she had told me about that night and what happened, I didn’t put the pieces together until I read the file. How could I have known that my actions that night would have a domino effect?

My friends and I were in town partying for the weekend. We’d gotten high and started some fights. My parents threatened to send me to a military boarding school. If I thought my life was bad then, it was about to get worse. I don’t know what I took because it didn’t matter anymore.

The umbrella falls to the ground as if she has no will to hold it with everything else weighing her down. “If I could take away your pain, I would. Let me try.” I step closer in the pause between us. She stays, so I say, “I’m sorry.”

A button is pushed, the words a trigger. Fire burns in her eyes, and she says, “You’re sorry? Stop saying you’re sorry.” Her hands fist at her sides, the paper already falling apart from getting wet, and she yells, “Sorry doesn’t bring back my mother. Sorry doesn’t fix Hank’s truck or take away the ticket that led to my scar and my mother’s death.” The tears she cries are no different than those from heaven above, but they still stream down filled with her pain.

She charges me and shoves me in the chest, and I let her direct her pain at me. I can handle it, but as she’s said before, she might not survive it again. “It was the end—the end of your night, Cooper, led to the end of my mom’s life.”

Turning away, she drops her head into her hands, and the pain wreaks havoc on her body as it wins. This is it. This is when it all ends. There’s no hope of a reconciliation. There’s no getting past this, not when Story can’t even look at me.

“If I could have died in her place, I would have.”

Story sighs, and her spine straightens before she looks down the street one way and then the other. When her eyes find me again, calm has come over her. “Calliope was always meant to die young. A soul like hers was too fragile to survive. But you . . . a cloud will hang over your soul for decades to come. And every time you look up, you’ll remember that you once lived in sunshine. Mine.”

“I’m already burdened with that curse.”

This goddess, my muse, and my savior. She gave me everything I had always been missing, and now I have nothing . . . Nothing more than wanting to die at her feet. But it’s too late to spare her life from the atrocities of mine.

Her sniffling leads to a fleeing sob breaking free from her chest. Then she stops, and I’m pierced with another heartbreaking peek into her windows. I’m not sure what to say—damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I can’t bring her mom back, but I’ll sacrifice myself in her place.

The calm is washed away, and she trembles like a leaf when she says, “Your actions set off a chain of events that led to someone’s death.” She starts walking but stops, too conflicted to make a decision on a direction. Thrashing the umbrella against the brick wall next to us, she takes her frustration out until it’s bent and broken . . . like us.

After discarding the umbrella, she runs back to me, fisting my shirt and pulling me closer—a plea and a push—she begs, “If you ever loved me—”

“I love you, Story.”

“Then tell me,” she says, crying. “I need to hear the truth. Please tell me my mom’s life wasn’t taken because you were bored with yours.”

Darkness has taken hold of her, though it’s still morning. Cupping her face, I plead with her, “I can’t lie to you—”

“That’s all you’ve done.”

“No. I’ve never been more honest than when I’m with you.”

A stifled breath works through her, and she asks, “What does that say about your character?” She pushes off me, and the sudden movement has me stumbling backward. Searching my face for something I can’t give her, her tears stop, and the life we lived, we loved, leaves her eyes for good. “Hank was the match, but you lit the fuse. My mom would still be alive if you had never been out joyriding.”

And there it is—the truth.

I’m to blame for her mom’s death. It only took me having a run-in with the wrong person to set him off on his own personal path of destruction. I may not have been the one to murder with my hands, but my actions led to her death.

That’s not something I can take back or that my parents can bail me out of. They tried to protect me, but secrets always surface.