Page 78 of Branded

“What happened? Did I hurt you?”

She leans over and flips on the bedside lamp then looks back toward me and shakes her head.

“No, Isaac, you didn’t hurt me. You’re amazing. This has nothing to do with you.”

I glance over her shoulder to the small alarm clock on the nightstand and see that it is barely four in the morning.

“What’s the matter?” I reach across to wipe her tears with my thumb. “You can tell me.”

“I don’t want to drag you down with my shit, Isaac. The past two days have been incredible.”

“Talking to me about why you’re crying won’t drag me down, Sawyer. I love you,” I say honestly. “A lot.”

She smiles the smallest smile then leans over to kiss my lips. “I love you too.”

I wrap her up in my arms and settled back into the pillows with her head on my chest.

“Tell me what’s happening in that beautiful mind of yours.”

She doesn’t say anything for a minute, simply opting to trace shapes over my stomach, but when she finally speaks, her hands go still.

“I had a dream about my brother.”

“Fuck,” I say under my breath. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize. It was a good dream. They used to make me sad, but I’ve tried really hard to be better. I can’t live my life the way he would want me to if I’m upset all of the time. The way he died was so... traumatic for me. I had a hard time reconciling it in my head and heart, and I don’t even know if I have yet.”

“What happened to him?” I ask, because I want to know what she is thinking in her head. I want to know everything about her so I can help her in whatever way I’m capable of. I don’t expect her to answer me, honestly, but when she does, I let her speak until she’s completely finished. I don’t interrupt. I don’t ask questions.

“I was living in LA. He had just turned seventeen years old, and started making incredibly wrong choices in his life over the course of a year. He kept getting in trouble with the police and we found out he was on drugs, and my parents didn’t know what to do or how to help him. He was pushing back, getting worse. The last straw was when he stole money from my parents for more drugs. He and my father got into a fight. I had to step in and help, so I told him I would let him stay with me as long as he got help. He agreed. I guess I was naïve.”

I can hear the emotion in her voice with each word, but still, I don’t speak, I just rub up and down her spine so she knows I’m here and I’m listening.

“He moved in with me a few months before the wildfires.”

My hands go still.

“The first month was hard, but he seemed to be doing okay. We had a few job interviews lined up for him and he’d been seeing a recovery therapist. I was so proud of him. Then a couple months later, the fires started. They happened so quickly. I mean, you know how fast it happens. It’s what you do for a living. I was watching the news and I thought we were safe. I was just leaving work when I got a call from Jason’s boss, who was a guy I was dating at the time, to tell me Jason hadn’t shown up to work. It didn’t take me long to figure out he had swiped my debit card and took hundreds of dollars from me.”

I can hear the anger and sadness in her voice, and my stomach is in my throat because of the things she must have gone through.

“I knew what he had done before I even pulled into my driveway. When I got inside, his bedroom door was locked. I pounded and pounded, trying to get him to open it but he kept telling me to go away, that he was sorry, and I didn’t need to see him like that. I refused. I sat in the hallway because I wanted him to have to face me when he finally opened the door. Hours passed... and I guess I had fallen asleep because the ringing of the smoke alarms woke me up. Everything after that happened in a blur. My house was on fire. I remember feeling the heat from the flames and not being able to breathe the smoke was so thick. I pounded on his bedroom door, but he never responded. I never heard his voice again. I tried to use my body to break it down, but between the exhaustion and the amount of smoke in my lungs, I had no power left in me. I stumbled my way through the halls to try to find something to pry the door open, but I ended up falling, cracking my glasses and gashing my head open.”

It’s like a cold bucket of water has been poured over my entire body. Somewhere, deep inside, I know what she is going to say next and where this story is going to go, but I think I’m in denial.

There’s no fucking way.

“I was still trying to get him to respond or to get the door open when the firefighters got there. I kept screaming at them that my brother was in the room and he wasn’t answering. They kept trying to make me leave, but I couldn’t go without him. I couldn’t leave him there. Everything kept spinning and I couldn’t stand up anymore. Eventually they finally fucking listened to me and one of them started kicking in the door while the other dragged me down the stairs. I was kicking and screaming. I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t. But when that door opened, the entire room flashed and went up in flames.... and that was it. I remember sitting on the front lawn for just a few seconds before EMTs were trying to take me. All I could do was tell the fireman how much I hated him. They just wouldn’t listen to me at first, and if they had, maybe they could have gotten to my brother.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

So many things flash in my eyes like a montage scene out of a goddamn movie, but I am doing anything in my power to discount or disprove everything that connects because there is no fucking way Sawyer Westbrook is the woman I saved from the LA Wildfire. There is no way.

“I found out later, once we were able to get his body, he was already dead when the ceiling caved in. Overdose, of course, but that didn’t seem to temper my anger. I tried to stay in LA for a while, working through insurance stuff on the house and looking for a way to move on, but I quickly realized I needed something new. A fresh start across the board. So I changed everything about myself. I had short blonde hair at the time, so I let it grow out long and colored it brown. I lost my glasses and had LASIK eye surgery so I’d never have to wear them again. I put on the weight I’d lost from the stress of helping Jason... then losing him. I found a job in Sunset Valley, made the move, and the rest is history.”

I feel like I’m going to be sick. This has to be a joke from whatever higher being exists in this world, because otherwise, this is a fucked scenario I have stumbled my way into.

I’ve fallen for a woman who associates me with the reason her brother died.

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