Page 47 of Say I'm Yours, Firecracker

She just shook her head against my chest and cried. We stood there long enough for the sun to start to turn the sky bright orange, and the crickets to chirp.

“I can’t.” She hiccuped and tore out of my arms, pivoting and heading for the front door. In two strides I caught her arm, gently wrapping my fingers around her bicep. I turned her around, tears continued to pour from her eyes as she sobbed.

“Tell me what’s going on.” I pleaded, “I want to be here, I think I’ve made that very clear.”

She nodded, but didn’t move to speak.

“Please, Firecracker.”

I’d get down on my knees if I thought it would help. But I needed her to want to tell me whatever it was that was keeping her from finally giving us a chance.

“I’m the reason I have no family.” Her voice broke on the last few words.

“I don’t understand.”

“I killed my family, Finn!” She screamed and fell to the floor.

There it was, my ugly truth.

Laid out at his feet. He knelt down in front of me and lifted my body from the floor. He cradled me in his arms as he got situated on the floor. His back against the wall, me in his lap, tears and snot leaking from my face onto his shirt.

“Firecracker, look at me.”

Guilty and full of sorrow, it was overwhelming, and I knew if I looked at him he would be waiting for more. For me to bare my soul to him now that I’d given him the biggest piece of my past.

“It’s a long story.” I sobbed.

“I’ve got nothing but time, baby.” He said, stroking my cheek with his thumb.

I bit the inside of my cheek and took a deep breath. If I was going to do this I had to look at him. When I looked up, his eyes were open and waiting. Patient and unmoving like a lighthouse searching for its lost love.

“I have a lot to tell you, it’s not pretty, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to stick around after I tell you everything.”

His eyes never left mine, as if he was hanging on every word I had to say.

“I’ll respect your decision no matter what. I swear.” He nodded, giving me the go ahead. “My mother and brother, Lucas, died in a car accident when I was sixteen.”

My voice cracked as I continued telling the only other person on the planet I trusted about my darkest moments. “I was driving, I had just gotten my license and begged to drive us to meet dad in the city for a celebratory dinner. Mom relented, even though Lucas normally drove everywhere. He was so proud of me, he handed me the keys and we took off. I was so happy, singing along to the radio with my brother. I didn’t see the truck merge lanes on the highway, they clipped the front bumper of our car, and we flipped. I don’t know how I survived, all I remember is waking up in the hospital with my dad hovering over me, eyes swollen and void of emotion.”

“Baby,” Finn started, leaning toward me. But I had to keep going, I couldn’t stop, he had to know everything.

“He took me home a few weeks after that, the hospital wouldn’t release me due to my injuries and the way I handled my dad telling me my mother and brother died in the accident. He was never the same, the house was a mess, I remember cleaning up as much as I could before heading to bed. Lucas’s room was still the way it was when we left for dinner. Like a shrine just for him. I fell asleep crying in his bed. Dad got worse, he fell into depression, explosive episodes of grief. And it was my fault, I killed my family.”

Finn gripped my hand with his free one, squeezing. Then he moved back, palm circling over my–our–baby. My breath caught, it was the most comforting gesture that tears flowed again. I didn't deserve the comfort, the warmth of his strong arms around me.

“I might as well have killed him too. He would get so angry, the night he hit me was the worst, and the last night I saw him alive. He knocked me into the floor and I hit my head on our fireplace. When I woke up the house was on fire and he was just sitting in his recliner, staring at a picture of all of us together. I begged him to get up, to leave with me. But it was like he couldn’t hear me. Like he didn’twantto hear me. A firefighter pulled me away from him and out into the fresh air. I didn’t realize the smoke I had inhaled until they put an oxygen mask over my face. They wouldn’t let me back into the house. No matter how much I protested and fought. I watched my house burn down with my father in it. They couldn’t go back in, they had tried but the fire was too bad.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore. Shame and regret built in my stomach and threatened to spill over. “I killed my family, Finn.”

A tear hit our joined hands, my eyes whipped up to his face, he was crying. “God, Ronnie.” He said, voice stuck on my name. “I can’t imagine the pain you’ve been carrying.”

He shifted me in his arms, and held me tighter as we cried together. He let me mourn the loss of my family at the front door of our new house.

“I’m not going anywhere, baby.” He murmured while we wept.

The scariest thing was, I believed him.

I let her cry, let her get out all of the things she had been bottling up for so damn long. I didn’t know how long we sat there. It was dark by the time she wiped her eyes and we journeyed upstairs.

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