Page 44 of Where He Ended

Though her frown remains, her eyes begin to water. “Because I need to know if I'm so broken, so twisted and full of self loathing, that it's possible for me to be in love with a killer.”

My heart stops beating. I had to have heard her wrong. “You're in love with me?”

“Of course I am,” she whispers, and her laughter is tormented. It darkens me down to my soul. “Dominic, I've loved you since the moment I met you. I didn't know it then. I wasn't sure until it was too late to tell you, because you'd left for school. I waited for that first winter break, working myself up, corkscrewing my brain over how I'd tell you my feelings.”

The fire ripples beside us. It turns her blue eyes purple, reminding me of the night sky after the first time we'd slept together. She doesn't blink. Neither do I.

She pulls her blanket tighter. “You never came. I was so sure you would, and you didn't. I spent years feeling my heart jump every single time I heard a car pull up in the driveway, or the front door open. Still, you weren't there. And when I finally thought I was over you - over theideaof you - you came back into my life and picked at my heart until you had more of it in your palm than I had in my own chest.”

“How?” I whisper, my voice drier than the crackling logs. “After everything I did, not just the things you heard, but things Iactually did to you,how can you love me?”

Laiken splits the blanket and towel open, enough so I can watch her fan her fingers over her ribs. “Because as much as you've changed, this part of me hasn't. It remembers the real you. Even now. That’s why . . .” She can't finish, a sob ending her beautiful words. Tears turn into more coughing. She’s falling apart inches away from me.

I'm the only one who can keep her together.

“I'll give you what you want,” I whisper, my shoulders sloping from the weight of what I'm about to do. My voice cracks when I start again. “I promised him I'd never tell a soul what happened that night on the mountain.”

Laiken's eyes glisten. She doesn't move closer, yet I feel her hanging onto me with every atom of her consciousness.

Looking into the fire, I say, “Bernard had been struggling with boarding school since the beginning. It wasn't easy for him—the drills, the rules, the decorum. I adapted to it, he didn't. I knew he was having a hard time and one day, right before we were both supposed to go home for holiday break, he confided in me that he wanted to quit.” I grimace, knotting my fingers in my lap. I need to squeezesomething.

“I didn't come home because I knew he needed me. I thought I could cheer him up, keep him excited for going back after the break. And, I worried if I wasn't there watching over him, he'd feel less guilty about quitting. He respected me, you know? He couldn't back out so easily if I was constantly at his side.

“I should have been supportive, but I wasn't. I was so fucking caught up in my own drive for my parents' approval, that the very idea he'd bow out made me sick. I was obsessed with success. Him leaving would mean he'd failed, and I cared about him too much to let him fail.

“For five years I pushed him. Day in, day out, I hovered over his every move to make sure he passed his classes. That he didn't dare give a whiff of giving up. I watched him so closely that he couldn't hide anything from me.”

A memory splices its way between the gaps of my ribs. I unclench my hands, gripping my scalp. “The first time he started using heroin,” I mutter, “I caught him. And I told him . . . I fucking told him to stop, or he'd be expelled when a teacher discovered it. All he did was hide it better.”

Laiken cups her palms over the lower half of her face. The only sound is the occasional pocket of air exploding in the fire. Gathering myself, I keep talking, because it's too late to stop anymore. “Since he was performing better, working harder, I turned a blind eye. I pretended I didn't notice all the signs of depression.

“The ski trip was his idea of a graduation gift for us before we enlisted. I was excited to be done with school, ready to join the military for real and show my father what I was capable of. I was also ready for a much needed break. We flew out for a week, reveling in every aspect of our youth - and my naivety.”

Visiting Switzerland with Bernard was wonderful.

I didn't know it was his way of saying goodbye.

“That night, he told me he wanted to go for a walk. There were so many stars out, just miles and miles of glittery hot spots. We shoved through the snow, all the way up this path through the trees. I told him we should go back, there was no reason to hike up the mountain. We could do it in the morning. Bernard kept pushing me, throwing my words back at me about not giving up. I climbed that trail to the top.”

Inhaling, I remember the burn in my lungs, like I'm still on that mountain. Part of me was definitely left there. “It was beautiful,” I say softly. “We stood on the ledge, gazing out over the trees, nearly blind if not for our flashlights. I was freezing, said we should head back. Bernard said he wasn't going back. Not then, not ever.”

Laiken makes a tiny sound that her hands muffle. She knows how this story ends, but I think, as I told her, she almost forgot.

“Bernard admitted he never quit using heroin. He was never going to get into basic training. They'd drug test him, then he'd be blacklisted - an embarrassment to his friends and family. He was so calm as he told me this. Just this far away smile. I begged him to go back with me. I swore everything would work out and we could get him clean. He could start over.”

Heat builds in my skull. I rock forward, splitting open from the migraine. I won't cry. I refuse to cry. Monsters like me don't deserve tears. We get nothing. “He said that he wanted to be strong like me. After all those years of doing his best, he realized he wasn't. It was a revelation he couldn't live with. He couldn't even see a reason to go on, and I tried to tell him he had . . .” I slow down, catching my breath. I shouldn't be telling Laiken any of this, but at the very least, I can keep some of my cousin's private life a secret.

I press on, my head throbbing the whole time. “Nothing I said could convince him. He sat on the ledge, just dangling his legs over the abyss. Since he'd done me the favor of sticking it out through school, he wanted a favor from me.”

I'm sweating now. I wish the fire was gone. I fight the urge to rush out into the icy evening outside the cabin. Pulling in more air, I wait for it to give me strength. It doesn't, as if I have a pinhole leak somewhere inside of me. “He was going to jump,” I say, “But he didn't want anyone to know he'd committed suicide. It would be my job to tell the police that it was all an accident . . . that he’d just slipped and hadn't meant to.”

“No,” she moans.

“What was I supposed to do? I promised him. I don't know why, because here I am, breaking my word now.” I laugh and my throat constricts, like my body is reminding me I don't deserve laughter of any kind. “The second the phrase ‘I promise’was out of my mouth, he tipped forward off the mountain. He didn't even scream.”

Tears slip from Laiken's wide blue eyes. There's enough for both of us.

I touch my shoulder, tracing the tattoo that readsFaith. “Bernard and I got the same ink at the same time while on that trip. Faith, because he told me I should remember to have as much faith in myself as I had in him.”

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