Page 187 of Carrick
My hands curled into fists in my lap, shaking. He stood in front of me like he was waiting for the bullet he deserved.
So I gave it to him.
I pushed to my feet—slow, unsteady, every muscle screaming in protest. My knees threatened to give, but I rose anyway. Barefoot. Raw. Splintered. Shaking with the weight of everything building inside me. Then I shoved him. Hard. My palms hit his chest with more than anger—carrying heartbreak, betrayal, and a grief too big to fit inside my body. He staggered back a step, but didn’t lift a hand. Didn’t grab my wrists. Didn’t try to stop me.
So I did it again. And again.
“You were supposed to protect him!” I cried, my voice breaking on the edges. “You were supposed to save him!”
Still, he stayed rooted. No flinch. Not a single blink. He just stood there and took it—every shove, every scream, every ragged breath that left my lungs like a curse hurled straight at him.
And when my hands finally dropped—when the push dissolved into a sob so sharp it ripped my lungs in half—I collapsed into him. My fists clenched in the front of his shirt, pulling him close even as my chest tried to shove him away. I sobbed into him, loud and broken and full of sound I didn’t recognize as my own. My forehead hit his collarbone. My knees buckled again.
And still, he stayed silent. Didn’t move. Just held me. And I hated him for that, too—for being steady, for being soft, for being the arms I craved even now, especially now, when I knew they couldn’t fix a damn thing. When they were the same arms that had failed to hold on to my brother.
But I stayed there. For one terrifying, furious, grief-drenched second… I stayed.
His hands came up—slow, like he was afraid they’d scare me off—and settled gently on my back. Not gripping. Not possessive. Just there. Anchoring. Offering. And I hated how badly I wanted to sink into it. How much of me still wanted to believe that arms like his could rewind time? That if he held me tight enough, if I didn’t let go, maybe none of it had happened yet. Maybe we were still back in the hallway. Still making promises we hadn’t yet broken.
But time doesn’t stop. And it sure as hell doesn’t reverse. I wasn’t the kind of girl who got to stay safe just because someone meant to keep me that way. And Carrick—no matter how much his arms made me feel like I could breathe—had left my brother in the dirt.
That truth settled into my ribs like stone.
I pulled back, breathless, sore, shaking. I didn’t meet his eyes.
“I can’t—” My voice cracked, brittle and breaking in the middle. “Carrick, I can’t do this right now.”
He went still—not in the way a person freezes in panic, but in the quiet, resigned way that comes when you already know what’s coming. He didn’t speak, didn’t let go. Just stood there, holding me like maybe if he didn’t move, everything might hold itself together for one more breath.
My fingers were still curled in the fabric of his shirt, not out of need or comfort, but because I didn’t know how to make myself say the words I needed to say. I didn’t know how to ask him to leave, when I wasn’t sure I could survive being alone.
But I also knew I couldn’t survive this—not with him here. Not with the scent of smoke still clinging to his jacket, or the weight of what he hadn’t saved pressing in from every angle.
He was a living reminder of what I’d lost.
“I need to breathe,” I said, the words barely audible.
He loosened his arms, not fully, just enough to give space. “Then breathe,” he whispered. “I’m here. That’s all. I’m just here.”
But that was exactly the problem—he was here. He was close. And all I could see was the fire. The heat. I took a step back, and this time, he let me go completely. His hands dropped to his sides like they no longer had a purpose. I looked up at him, and the moment our eyes met, something inside me pulled taut, stretching toward the snap.
The burn in my throat rose fast and sharp, and I knew it wasn’t from crying anymore. It was from grief—raw and deep—and the kind of rage that comes when there’s no one left to blame except the person standing in front of you.
“I don’t hate you,” I said, and my voice had steadied, even if everything else was shaking.
Carrick’s jaw tightened. Just a flicker. A muscle jumping beneath his skin, like he was preparing himself for something worse.
“But right now…” I hesitated, forced the words out anyway. “Right now, I need you to go.”
He didn’t move. Not at first. He just stared at me, like he was memorizing the curve of my mouth or the shape of my sadness. Like he understood that whatever was between us—whatever had been growing—was being set down now, gently, painfully, like a weight we couldn’t carry anymore.
Then, slowly, he nodded. A small, almost imperceptible motion.
“I’ll be just outside,” he said quietly.
“No.” The word escaped before I could stop it. “I don’t want to know you’re waiting.”
He froze. Just for a second. His eyes flicked to mine, and something shifted in them, something hollow and bruised.
