Prologue

Axel

Amaris sleeps like she always does when she’s finally exhausted enough to stop fighting the world, curled on her side with one hand tucked under the pillow and her hair everywhere like she spent the night arguing with it. I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her breathe longer than I should, because every second I stay makes leaving harder, and every second I stay feels like I’m stealing something I don’t deserve anymore. 

She’d kill me if she knew I was sitting here staring at her. 

Not actually kill me. 

Probably.

She’d shove me off the mattress, call me a creep, then tell me to get the hell out of her room before she changed her mind and made sure we finally got separated in the foster system for something other than aging out. The thought almost makes me smile. Almost.

My fingers tighten around the folded paper until the edge digs into my palm. I spent half the night writing it, crumpling it up, starting over, trying to find some combination of words that won’t destroy her. There isn’t one. That’s probably the cruelest part. Nothing I write is going to make this okay for her, and nothing’s going to keep her from looking backward and wondering what she missed because Amaris has spent her whole life believing it’s her job to notice everything that hurts me. She watches people too closely. She listens when I say I’m fine like she’s waiting for the lie underneath it. She shows up beside me without asking whenever she thinks something feels off, and I still managed to hide this from her. 

Not because she didn’t care enough. 

Because I got really damn good at hiding. 

There’s a difference, and if she remembers nothing else I write tonight, I need her to remember that.

I pull my hand back when she shifts beneath the blanket. “Ax?”

My whole body freezes, but she doesn’t wake. Her eyes stay closed and her face smooths again as she settles deeper into the pillow. For half a second, I almost answer her anyway. 

I’m right here. 

I’d be telling the truth right now, and that’s the problem. I look down at the paper again and unfold it even though I already know every word.

Amaris,

First, I need you to hear me and, for once in your life, actually believe me instead of deciding you should’ve somehow known everything I never told you. You didn't fail me. I know you’re going to think you did. I know you better than anybody, which means I know exactly what you’re going to do with this. You’re going to take every bad thing that happened to me and start looking backward for the exact moment you think you could’ve stopped it. Don’t. You can’t fix something I wouldn’t let you see. I hid it from you. I lied when you asked if I was okay. I laughed when I wanted to cry because if you’d known how bad things were getting, you would’ve burned the whole damn world down trying to protect me. I love you for that. But this isn’t yours to carry.

My eyes burn, and I blink until the words clear again. That first part took me six tries because every version sounded like I was asking her not to be mad at me. She gets to be mad. She gets to hate me for leaving her with this. What she doesn’t get to do is blame herself. I keep reading.

Some of this started way before school ever got bad. You know enough about the homes we’ve been in, so I’m not going to spell every ugly thing out. People get brave when they think nobody’s looking, and kids like us learn pretty damn fast which adults are actually safe and which ones just know how to look safe when somebody important is watching. School was supposed to be easier. For a while, hockey was. I liked being good at something people could actually see. Then guys started figuring out exactly how far they could go without leaving bruises anybody would ask about. The jokes got worse. Then the shoving. Then the locker room. Then stuff I still can’t make myself put on paper because writing it down makes it feel like it belongs to me forever. It doesn’t. What they did belongs to them. Please remember that too.

I stop there, my throat working around nothing while the room feels too quiet. Amaris has one of those cheap little fans running because she can’t sleep without noise, but tonight even that sounds far away. I force my eyes back to the page and read the next part anyway.

There’s one person you need to talk to if you decide you want answers. Kenton Clearwater. I know exactly what you’re going to think when you see his name, so don’t decide what happened before you actually talk to him. He saw some of it. Not all of it. At least I don’t think he saw all of it. He shut some guys down when they were screwing with me after practice. He made them stop. For a little while, they did. I tried to tell him there was more going on. I don’t know if I did a shitty job explaining it or if he only heard the part he knew how to deal with. Maybe both. He asked questions for a while. Then he stopped. There was one night he saw me coming out of the locker room when I know I looked like hell. He asked what happened. I told him nothing. He let me say nothing. I don’t know why. Maybe he believed me. Maybe somebody told him to back off. Maybe he figured he’d already done enough. I honestly don’t know. But he knows more than he ever said. If you want somewhere to start, start with him.

My grip tightens around the letter again. That’s the part I almost took out, not because it isn’t true, but because I know Amaris. She’s going to read Kenton’s name and go after him like he personally set the whole world on fire. Maybe he deserves some of that. Maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know anymore. I know he helped once. I know he stopped asking. And I know there were times I wanted somebody to ask again even after I said I was fine. That’s not the same thing as him knowing everything. It’s not nothing either.

I look at Amaris again when she makes a little irritated noise in her sleep and kicks one foot out from under the blanket. A laugh slips out before I can stop it, quiet and broken but still real. “You’re such a pain in my ass,” I whisper, but her face doesn’t change. I hate that she can’t hear me, and I hate that part of me is relieved she can’t. The last part of the letter is shorter.

I’m sorry, Ris. I know those words don’t fix anything. They can’t. I’m sorry because I know what this is going to do to you. You’re my favorite person in the whole damn world. You always have been. You were the one good thing that followed me into every bad place we ever landed. Please don’t let what happened to me turn you into somebody who only knows how to survive. Live anyway. Be mean when you need to be. Laugh too loud. Leave places that make you miserable. Love somebody eventually, even if that sounds disgusting right now and you’re already rolling your eyes at me from the future. And please, please stop thinking it was your job to save me. You were my sister. You weren’t supposed to be my whole reason for staying alive. 

I love you. 

More than I know how to put on paper.

Axel

I fold the letter back along the same creases, and my hands shake when I slide it under her pillow. For one stupid second, I picture her finding it tomorrow while I’m downstairs making coffee. She’d stomp into the kitchen holding it, furious, and demand, “What the fuck is this?”

I’d shrug because apparently I’m incapable of dealing with anything like a functioning human being, then she’d make me sit down. She’d ask questions. She’d yell. She’d probably cry. I’d probably cry too. 

Maybe if I picture it long enough, I can make myself believe that’s what happens next. 

But imagining another version doesn’t make me capable of living it.

There’s nothing beautiful about that. Nothing peaceful. It just hurts. I lean down and press my lips to the top of her head, breathing in the stupid coconut shampoo she buys because it’s always the cheapest one at the store, and the familiarity of it nearly breaks me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. Her fingers shift under the pillow and for one terrifying second I think she’s going to touch the letter, but she only settles again.

I stand before I can change my mind. At the doorway, I look back one last time. Amaris is still asleep, still breathing, still here. There’s nothing noble about knowing I’m about to hurt her. There’s just the unbearable fact that I love her and still don’t know how to stay. I turn off the hall light she forgot to shut off because she always forgets the damn hall light. Then I leave.