Page 105 of A Wish for Us

I bent down and pressed my forehead to hers. It only made her worse.Wracking sobs fell from her mouth. Mr. Farraday had said Easton had had an accident, but I was pretty sure that Bonnie knew the truth.

Easton, for whatever reason, felt displaced in this world. No one knew this better than his twin.

“Bonnie,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and just held her. Held her as she fell apart. The moment that was meant to be a celebration had turned into a tragedy in her eyes. In all of ours.

I held her that way as she cried so hard I worried something would go wrong. She’d just woken up from major surgery, but I was sure that nothing but finding this had all been a nightmare would take away her pain.

Bonnie cried until she fell asleep. I didn’t go anywhere. I held her hand, just in case she woke up. Her parents went to the waiting room. They had things to handle with the police and the hospital. I couldn’t imagine having to cope with all of this at once. How do you celebrate one child being spared from death only to lose the other in such a devastating way?

Right now I felt numb. But I knew what would come. I couldn’t have all of these emotions warring within me and them not bubble to the surface. But for now, I pushed them down as far as I could.

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to the feel of fingers in my hair. I blinked my eyes open and looked up.

Bonnie was looking at me. But just as before, her eyes were wet and her skin was pale and patchy from crying. “He took his life…didn’t he?” Her words were bullets to my heart.

I nodded. There was no point in lying to her. She’d known it from the minute she’d woken up. Bonnie held on to my hand. Even now, only a couple of days after surgery, her grip was stronger.

She was stronger.

I was sure, somewhere, Easton had a flicker of a smile on his face at that fact.

Bonnie breathed in deeply, her lungs filling with such a large amount of air that color immediately sprouted on her cheeks. Her hand took mine with it as it went to her chest. I heard the new heartbeat. The strong and rhythmic heartbeat under my palm.

It was magenta.

When I’d listened to Easton’s heart under the stethoscope, it had been magenta.

“I have his heart, don’t I?” Bonnie’s eyes were closed when she said it. But then they opened and her gaze fixed on me.

“Yes.”

Her face contorted with pain. Something seemed to change in Bonnie at that instant. It was as if I watched her happiness and her soul flee from her body. The color that surrounded her switched from purples and pinks into browns and grays. Even her hand, which had been holding mine so tightly, slackened and pulled away. I tried to take it back, but Bonnie shut down like the gate of a fort.

Impenetrable.

I stayed in her room for two more days. And with every passing second, the Bonnie I knew and loved pulled further and further away. I wanted to cry when I played some Mozart on my phone and she turned to me, eyes vacant, and said, “Could you please turn that off?”

Bonnie was healing, but her mind was broken. One night, I thought she’d come back to me. She’d awoken at three in the morning, put her hand in mine, and rolled to face me. “Bonnie…?” I’d whispered.

Her bottom lip shook, her exhausted eyes barely open. “How can my heart be fixed but already be broken?” I moved beside her and held her close. Just holding her while she fell apart. It was such a small thing, but in that moment, I’d never felt more useful to anyone in my life.

But the next morning she pulled away from me again. Back to the Bonnie that was trapped in her head, in her pain. The Bonnie that was shutting everyone out. Physically getting stronger but emotionally falling apart.

The nurses gave me big smiles as I passed by their station on Bonnie’s new ward. So far, her body wasn’t rejecting the heart and she was doing well, well enough to leave intensive care. I took a deep breath as I approached her new room. Only when I got there, Mr. Farraday was standing outside. “Hi,” I said and moved to open the door.

He stepped into my path. I frowned. His face was pale and sad, filled with regret. “She’s refusing to see anyone, Cromwell.” I heard the words, but they didn’t sink in. I tried to move past her dad again. But he only blocked my path once more.

“Let me through.” My voice was low and threatening. I knew it. But I didn’t care. I just had to get in there to her.

Mr. Farraday shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. But she’s…she’s finding life real hard at the minute. She doesn’t want to see you. Any of us.” I saw the agony on his face. “I’m just trying to make things better for her, son. Any way I can.”

My jaw clenched and my hands started to shake. They curled into fists. “Bonnie!” I called, my voice loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the ward. “Bonnie!” I screamed. Mr. Farraday tried to usher me back. “BONNIE!” I dodged Mr. Farraday and burst through the door to her room.

Bonnie was sitting in bed, her back propped up against pillows. She was staring out of the window. Then she turned to me. “Bonnie,” I said and took a step forward. But I froze mid-step when Bonnie looked away. When she turned her back on me completely.

And then they came. The floodgates opened, and all the emotions of the past few weeks came hurtling forward like the heavy crescendo of a bass drum.

I stepped back and back again as I pictured Easton with his wrists slit. Bonnie having a heart attack in my arms. Easton on the gurney, the rope hanging from the tree. Then Bonnie…finding out Easton was gone, that his heart now beat as hers.

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