Brogan's mom and younger brother stand at the foot of the casket, shaking hands and hugging people as they come by. Mr. Barrett stands at the other end, his jaw working like he has to swallow back tears he's determined not to shed in front of this crowd. Lying in the casket in between is Brogan, half the man he used to be, his cheeks hollowed out, his shoulders narrow, his body a weak imitation of the powerful force it once was.
The funeral is tonight, and I still can't bring myself to promise I'll sing. Mrs. Barrett is being unbelievably patient with me and told me the organist will play either way, but she hopes I'll do the vocals.
Arrow's there, and I'm so relieved to see his face and have his strength so close. He's not Brogan's competition. Not his replacement. Here and now, he's a reminder of what Brogan once was.
Wordlessly, he takes my hand and threads our fingers. Just a squeeze, and then he pulls away. The gesture seems to reassure me it's all right, and at the same time remind me that I have to let Brogan go. This is what he would want.
"She asked me to speak tonight," he says, his gaze steady on the front of the room and the overgrown line slowly crawling its way past Brogan. "And I just keep thinking the last time I spoke with Brogan, I wanted to punch him. He wanted to punch me. I keep thinking, should I really be the one to speak at this guy's funeral?"
I hate that I can't touch him here. I want to curl into him. We should hold each other while we talk about this. "If Brogan could choose, I think he'd say yes."
He grimaces and swallows hard, as if the idea of Brogan making the request hurts him somewhere deep. "You don't understand the irony, Mia."
"I know Brogan," I say. "He'd tell you that a moment of anger doesn't change the fact that you spent most of your lives closer than brothers. Because as much as your fight sucked and as angry as we were with each other, it was a moment among thousands and thousands of moments. Any regrets you have from that night are nothing in the scope of your bond."
Arrow stares at some point beyond my shoulder and lifts his chin. His eyes glisten with tears, and I stare with some sick fascination with seeing them fall. He needs to cry-if not for Brogan then for himself and what he lost last night. Maybe privately he's shed as many tears as I have, but I doubt it. Crying is a luxury Arrow would deny himself.
"It's okay to be scared," I say. "No one wants to give the eulogy for someone they were close to, because it's an invitation for everyone to see all your vulnerabilities."
"Brogan would call me a pussy." He releases a puff of air and his lips curl into a soft smile.
"You gonna do it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I've gotta."
"She wants me to sing," I say.
He levels his gaze on me with no judgment or expectation. "Will you?"
"I don't know if I still can. I don't remember the last time I sang. It was . . ."
"Before?"
I hold his gaze and nod. "Before."
"I think it's time, then, Mia. Maybe it'll help you let him go." He brushes my hair behind my ear, and the soft touch makes me waver toward him. "You have to forgive yourself. You weren't driving the car."
Pulling back, I stand up straighter. "I'm looking for the person who was."
His face hardens. "What?"
"The police don't care. They haven't even looked. I'm doing it myself. I need to find out who was driving the car. Sebastian's helping me."
"Arrow!" Mrs. Barrett calls, waving her hand in the air. "Can you come over here a minute? I want you to meet Brogan's cousin, Eddy."
He nods and looks to me as he steps away. "Mia, we need to talk. Soon."
I don't need another guy telling me that answers won't bring my brother back, but I'm not going to pick a fight with Arrow. Not here. "Okay. You know where to find me."
This day has been surreal. Sure, there are the assholes who crack jokes about how "lucky" I am for this day of freedom from my house arrest, and there are the guys on my team who seem to be willing to go to any length to make each other laugh. But then there's Mia telling me she's looking for the person who hit Brogan and her brother. And now there are all these people filling the church pews in front of me, waiting for me to speak.
"Brogan was . . ." My voice cracks and the mic reverberates through the church speakers. I clench my fist and ignore the fact that there are more than one hundred people staring at me and waiting for me to say something that will help make this horrible moment more bearable.
I never cared for public speaking.
When you're a hotshot football player, it comes with the territory. You talk to your team. To the press. You give a speech at high school graduation when they recognize you as the senior athlete of the year. At the draft, you stand behind the podium and say your thanks to the team that took a chance on you.
In December, I thought a potential draft acceptance speech was the scariest thing I'd have to do in the coming year.
Until this. This is hell. I'm supposed to talk to all these people about a man I loved like he was my own brother. A guy who was closer to family to me than anyone else in my life. I'm supposed to talk about the man whose girl I stole and whose life I took.
Fuck. It's my very worst crime, my ugliest sin, and I can't even remember it. I keep waiting for flashes of being in the car, the screeching tires. But I get nothing.
The whole congregation stares at me, waiting for me to speak. I let them wait. I need a goddamn minute.
"Arrow?" Chris asks from the front row. "You okay, man?"
I nod. I need to tell Mia.
How can I speak about Brogan when that's all I can think on repeat? I need to tell Mia. Mia needs to hear it from me. I have to figure out how I can do that without fucking up Coach's life, how I can tell her the truth without her going to the authorities. If it were just me, it would already be done. I'd be serving my time, and Mia would be hating me as she should. But Coach doesn't deserve to be punished when all he was doing was trying to protect me.
I have to tell her.
Women shift in their seats, and men clear their throats, filling in the silence as they wait.
"We're all here to say goodbye to Brogan," I say, "but most of us don't have a clue how to do that. Putting a man like Brogan in the earth before his life had really begun feels like burying a dream. It feels like choosing the nightmare instead. It feels like staying in the cave, cold and shivering, and knowing that all you have to do to feel the sun is walk outside. So many of us have spent the weeks leading up to this moment talking to Brogan and holding his hand and lying to ourselves that the sun was waiting out there for us. That we could wake up from the nightmare at any minute."
Lifting my eyes, I'm greeted with a sea of my teammates in black suits. These are the men who show no fear on the field, but right now their faces show all the fear I'm feeling. I clear my throat and turn to look at Brogan-maybe the only guy here who doesn't look half terrified.
Looking at him helps me go on. "Part of saying goodbye, I'm learning, is accepting that there is no choice. We don't get to choose the sunlight over the cold inside the cave. We don't get to choose the dream over the nightmare. Part of saying goodbye is accepting there are things in this world that are out of our control."
A sob rises from the crowd. Trish is curled into Coach's chest, and he's stroking her hair. Mia's sitting between Chris and Mason, her face pale, her cheeks dry. She's not even holding a tissue.
"Someone told me that faith isn't about trying to understand why God did what He did. It isn't about trying to make sense of His plan for us. It's simply the acceptance that some things are out of our control and that's okay. Maybe that's why Brogan gave us time. He took the slow way out of this world, and we had months to say our goodbyes. Or maybe he just didn't want to let go. This is a guy who was so full of life and so full of love. He and I were like brothers before I even understood what that meant. We liked all the same things. The same teams, the same position in football . . . the same girls."
That gets a few laughs, and I smile.
"I'm an only child-or was until a couple of months ago. Brogan taught me what family is. Family is letting someone make a mistake, letting them hurt you without it changing how you feel about them."
In front of me, Chris meets my gaze and nods. Two rows back, Trish pulls out of her father's arms and wipes her eyes.