Page 48 of The Beginning and End of Everything
Her steel gray eyes, branded in my mind like a familiar scar, meet mine. Her face washes white like she's just seen a ghost, and in a way, she has.
The shattered fragments of my heart pitifully attempt to pull themselves together as a thousand memories flash through my mind—every single one revolving around Connor. And that hurts. It hurts so much. She might as well have doused me in petrol and set me on fire.
Someone cuts between us, blocking my view and breaking the debilitating hold she has over me. I drag in a lungful of air as though surfacing from deep, dark waters. In an instant, I’m past the ropes and shouldering through the packed room until I finally fall into the storeroom.
The door closes with a heavy thud, muting the cries of the basement beyond. And in the silence, the pounding of my pulse against my skull is like a drumbeat I can’t stop. I brace my back against the wall and close my eyes, willing calm.How the hell did she find me?
The door against the wall opens, and I know it’s her without looking, so I keep my eyes closed, a bleak attempt at avoiding this inevitable train wreck.
"Brandon Patrick O’Kieffe!"
My stomach clenches at the sound of her voice. I can't do this with her. I’m not ready. Heels tap over the concrete floor, and as suddenly as it started, the noise stops right in front of me. The familiar, floral scent of her perfume almost brings me to my knees. Maybe, if I don't look at her, if I stay just like this, maybe she'll go away.
"Brandon!" She pokes a finger into my chest, and I react on instinct, swiping her hand away and meeting her startled gaze.
"You…" Her jaw clenches, and she inhales an unsteady breath.
I don’t even see her move, but in the next second, her palm meets my cheek. The clap bounces around the room as the sting sets in.
"I thought you were dead!"
I tear my gaze away from the only girl I’ve ever loved, focusing on the wall behind her. "Well, I'm not."
"You should go, Poppy," I say, feigning indifference I wish I felt. But the truth is, every second that I stand here feels like a sick form of torture.
"I'm not leaving," she whispers.
I don't say anything because, in truth, there’s nothing left to say. Poppy and I were once best friends, and now we’re strangers.
She grabs my face, her fingers digging into my cheeks as though she could anchor herself to me permanently. "Look at me, Brandon."
Dark circles linger below her eyes, and her face has sunken with weight loss. It's as though everything that made Poppy, Poppy, has withered and faded away. Connor would be rolling in his grave. I promised, should anything ever happen to him, I would take care of her. But I can't even take care of myself. The guy that made that promise—he's long gone.
Tears well in her eyes. "Connor’s gone.” At the mention of his name, those tears fall. “And you left me.”
Guilt eats away at me, though I can't hate myself any more than I already do. If I were a better person, I would try to shoulder her pain, but the fact is,I can't see past my own grief. It's too big, too all-consuming. I’m drowning, slowly suffocating under the weight of it. I can’t help her when I can’t help myself.
She forces me to look at her again. "Say something."
Pulling out of her hold, I step around her to retrieve my clothes from the storeroom. "You shouldn't have come." My back stays to her while I shove my shorts down my thighs. "Whatever it is you came here looking for, you aren't going to find it."
Long moments pass in unnerving silence. I’m fully dressed before her voice breaks the stifling tension.
“Did he suffer?"
I stiffen and take a deep breath, holding it before air slowly hisses through my teeth. “No.”
“What happened, Brandon?”
"He died. I didn't." And isn't that the shitty truth of my existence summed up in four words? I should have offered her more, but what was there to tell that Poppy would understand—she’d never get the truth of war.
Her footfalls cross the room, and she grips my arm in an unforgiving way—the way a widow deserves to hate the last man who saw her husband alive. "Why’d you leave him?"
"I…" The words stick in my throat. I want to punch something until my knuckles rip open and bleed, then drown myself in whiskey, all in the hope that my mind will switch off for justonesecond. "He was dead," I say in a strangled breath. "And I left him because there was nothing to stay for. Just bodies." I pull on my tracksuit bottoms and finally turn to face her. "I'm sorry about Connor."
"Sorry? That'sallI get? Sorry?"
"I try not to look back. There was nothing left but bodies."
