Turning, I lay her down and look at her.
“Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” No more blood on my hands.
Not your blood on my hands.
Touching her face, I put my head on her chest to try to hear over the groans of the house, over the bellowing of the fire. But I can’t hear, and her chest is still. I smear my brother’s blood on her face as I try to rouse her. It’s on her mouth, her too delicate hands and wrists.
“Breathe. Breathe. Hate me but breathe.”
But she doesn’t. She won’t move and when I lift her hand, it just drops down to her stomach when I let it go. Rope still dangles from her neck. It’s done. What my father wanted. Too soon, though. She didn’t get that year Annabel had.
Dead.
No.
No, no, no.
Please. Fuck. No.
“Damian!” Tobias screams in the distance. I don’t look up. I don’t care.
“I’ll let you go,” I whisper close to her ear. “Just breathe. Just breathe.”
“Fuck! We need to move!” He’s closer.
Something crackles and bursts behind me. I smell burnt meat and feel the brand of an iron on my shoulder. But I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.
“Just open your eyes and I’ll let you go. I promise.”
“Damian!” Arms pull at me. “Leave her. She’s gone. The fucking house is coming down!”
And as he says it, a beam big and heavy flies through the sky, flames like wings as it lands too close.
I get to my feet, but I don’t go when Tobias tries to drag me. I bend to lift her body. Limp, dead weight, she hangs over my shoulder like a ragdoll as I run.
An ungodly sound deafens us. When I look back, I watch the house topple, watch what’s left of it disappear into the flames, my brother’s dead body in its belly. His flesh soon to be ash. Dust.
Dead.
Like he wanted.
For a long moment, I can’t see through the thick smoke. Through the debris and dust.
I shift my grip on Cristina and drop to my knees on the ground. I lay her on her back, and even now, even in death, all I can think is how beautiful she is. How innocent. How she didn’t deserve any of this.
I push hair from her temple, but when I try to wipe the ash from her face, I smear blood along her cheek instead. I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. I think about how Lucas was right in his prediction. I break everything I touch. And she’s broken beyond repair.
“I love you,” I whisper in her ear. Apart from Annabel and my mother, I’d never said those words to anyone before Cristina. “And I’m sorry.”
A sadness like I’ve never felt twists inside my chest.
I wonder why people say they loved someone in the past tense when that person dies. Do they stop loving them then? Is that what happens? How conditional their love.
“I love you.” Present tense. “Do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me!” I shake her. Hurting her still. Even now.
Blood on my hands again. Always blood with me.
When I loosen the rope from around her neck, I notice how it cut into her skin. I pull it over her head, but before I can lean down to kiss her lips again, before I can whisper again that I love her, her body jerks violently. Her eyes fly open as she gasps for breath, hands to her neck, desperate for air.
She opens her mouth and I think she would scream if she could, but she can’t get enough air in.
Another choked sound. Me this time.
She clutches at me, hands falling away, grasping at nothing. I lift her to sit as she wheezes not believing my eyes. Not believing this miracle.
She’s alive.
Cristina is alive.
Her hand closes around my forearm and pain makes me hiss.
I look down at it, beneath her hand is the raw, red skin burned anew. Freshly charred flesh. The smell is mixed in with all the rest of them.
But even through the pain all I can do is look at her and hold her to me. And I remember what I promised her just now. What I said I’d do if she’d only breathe. If she’d just open her eyes and take one more breath.30Cristina“Just open your eyes and I’ll let you go.”
I do as he says and open my eyes to see Damian standing over my bed. I blink, sitting up.
“Hey,” I say, touching my hair to smooth it, wondering what I look like in my hospital gown while he’s standing there in a dark suit looking as impeccable as ever. Apart from a bruise on the side of his jaw, stitched cuts on his face, and the bandage around his hand and arm, he looks the same.
There are more bandages underneath the clothes, though. And he’s not quite the same. There’s a little more gray in the five o’clock shadow and along his temples. And as put together as he is I know the exterior masks the depth of the loss he’s feeling.