She stops and turns back to me. "Don't you understand? He should be in trouble. He did something terrible, too. He covered up the murder . . . the death . . . the . . ." She squeaks and bites her bottom lip.
But I never wanted to ruin his life, too. I'd already destroyed so much, and I couldn't be responsible for more. Even now, even with Mia's anger filling the room, I can't figure out how I could have made another choice without destroying someone else. Maybe I should have said that I made Coach cover it up. Would they have believed me? "I couldn't live with myself. I couldn't turn myself in and I couldn't stand to look at my own reflection, so I had to find a way to get in trouble-to take some sort of punishment-without hurting anyone else and without telling the truth. They took away football and gave me fucking house arrest."
"That makes it okay?" She's still not looking at me. Her hands are clenched at her sides and her voice shakes hard. "You got your punishment and now you can just, what? Let it go?"
"I lie in bed at night and I can't breathe because I know what I've done. Brogan lost everything. I wanted to suffer the same, and if I thought killing myself would bring him back, I would have done it months ago."
She flinches as if I struck her. "I'm not saying that I think you should have."
I push off the bed and stand in front of her. Her face is blank and hopeless, like some asshole's been beating on her and she's given up. That's my fault.
I need her to understand. I can take any punishment. I can give up my freedom and my life, but I need her to understand. "Then you were here, Mia. And suddenly I needed to live." Bile rises in my stomach at the memory of her vacant expression as she waited on my family. "I needed to stop punishing myself for the same reason I couldn't come forward after Coach covered it up." I press my palm to the ache in my chest. "I'd already ended two lives. You were the walking dead. I had to wake up and wake you up, because I couldn't handle the thought of a third life ending because of what I did that night. I couldn't change things for Brogan. It was too late for him, but if I could save you, if I could wake you up, it would have been . . ."
She cocks her head to the side. "So you fucked me to soothe your conscience?"
I nearly double over from the pain of that accusation. "I know. I'm a piece of shit. But I'm a piece of shit who was trapped in a corner, just doing what he thought he had to do."
"I have to do this." She rushes from the room, and I move to go after her and stop.
I'm so ready to be done with these lies. I'm so ready to be released from this purgatory.
All I can do is get dressed while I listen to the sound of her junky old car pulling down the drive. Jeans, a T-shirt, maybe my last outfit outside of jail. I miss the emptiness I felt before I returned, the numbness that got me through the months after the accident. Because right now I feel everything. Ugly. Hurt. Angry. But mostly I just feel the wake of her hatred, so intense it threatens to plow me over long minutes after she's gone.
All I can do is sit and wait for what happens next.
I drive on autopilot and park the car in the lot. This weather reminds me too much of the night of the accident. The rain falls in thick swaths I could hardly see through on the drive here.
I let the windshield wipers run even after I put the car in park, finding some odd comfort in the rhythmic whoosh whoosh of their dance.
I keep waiting to wake up. I feel like I've been living the last four months of my life just waiting to wake up.
That's not entirely true, though. There were moments when I was alive. Awake. Moments when he was touching me. Making me smile.
How could he have kept this secret?
Yanking the keys from the ignition, I stumble out of the car and toward the only place I could come after what I learned this morning. As much as I told myself the police station was the right place to go, I'm here instead.
The whole drive, I kept thinking, I should go to the police. I should do what's right. But I couldn't make myself do it.
I walk through the rain past the tall monument statues and to the modest plot in the back where my brother is buried. I drop to my knees in front of his gravestone and run my fingers over his name etched into the granite.
I've been wishing for a way to clear his name, and now I have the opportunity.
Brogan didn't die because my brother was mixed up in drugs again. He died because some irresponsible college kid drank too much and got behind the wheel. Such a cliché. Such an old story.
Rain and tears mix to blur my vision, but I don't feel like I've been able to see clearly since the day I met Arrow. As much as I miss my brother and want to bring him back, as much as I wanted someone to blame for the horrible thing that happened to him, and as much as Arrow's story leaves little doubt as to who's responsible for everything we lost that night, Nic was the fucking idiot throwing punches in the middle of the road on a pitch-black night.
"I can set the record straight," I tell my brother's grave, but I can't hear myself over the pounding of the rain on the gravestones around me. "You worked so hard to stay clean, and they should know. But if I do that, I'm choosing your reputation over Arrow's life."
Is it any wonder Arrow spun out of control the way he did? This is a man who's always done the right thing, and Coach cornered him into keeping a secret he didn't want to keep about a horrible thing he can't even remember doing.
Nic never gave a shit about his reputation. That was me. My pride. My insistence on the world knowing my brother wasn't the scum they believe he was. I know without a doubt Nic could forgive me for staying quiet. He understood secrets better than most. But why does that have to be a choice?
I'm drenched, and I stand with every intention of going to my car and driving to Bailey's apartment to get a hot shower. Instead, I find myself at Brogan's grave. Yellow barriers surround the fresh mound of dirt, and being blocked from his grave breaks something inside me. It's just all too much.
Brogan would know what to do. He was my voice of reason. I just wish he were here to tell me what I'm supposed to do next.
"I think Crowe's gonna be good," Chris says between bites of pizza. He and Mason showed up a few hours ago and they've been here ever since, making themselves at home and unknowingly distracting me from obsessing over Mia. Not that it's working, but it's better than being alone.
"You could paint a thunderstorm with sunshine and rainbows," Mason says.
I've only been half paying attention, and I look up. I don't want to hear them fighting over whether or not my replacement is good enough.
The rain's still coming down, and thunder claps over the house. Out the window, a zigzag of orange cracks open the middle of a gray-black sky.
"You guys, will you go?"
They both stop talking and look at me.
"What?" Mason asks.
"We'll get out of your hair," Chris says.
I shake my head. "It's not that. I want you to go find Mia." I look out at the rain again, the weariness in my gut growing. "I just need to know she's okay. Don't tell her I sent you."
"Yeah," Mason says.
"Of course," Chris agrees, pushing his plate aside and standing.
"Anywhere we should look?" Mason asks.
"We'll start at her dad's trailer," Chris says. "I bet she's there."
"Then we'll go to Bailey's," Mason says.
"Of course you want to go there," Chris says.
"Fuck you, I'm trying to help."
I hold up a hand. "Stop. Start at the cemetery." Another clap of thunder booms over the house, and suddenly I know without a doubt that's where she is. Bailey was telling the truth about her not being there. Mia wouldn't have wanted to face her dad while she was so upset. And the police would have been here by now if she'd gone to the station. Should I be grateful that she didn't? But if she doesn't, we're both trapped in the hell of knowing this horrible secret. "Start there," I say. "If she's outside, talk her into getting out of the rain. But if she's not there and you find her safe inside somewhere, leave her alone. All I want is to know she's okay."
"Yeah," Mason says. "We'll let you know what we find."
"Thank you."
I pace the long wall of windows in the family room while I wait for them to return. I know they'll find her at the cemetery. I just know. Like the night she caught Brogan cheating on her, I stayed in my room because I knew she was coming. I've always felt that connection to her-like our souls are hardwired together, no matter how much I try to let her go or tried not to care when she was with Brogan. Our connection is some cruel cosmic joke.