Page 236 of Tell Me Something True

How heavy that had been for him to carry all these years.

“What?”

Miles wiped his palms down the front of his uniform pants. Forced himself to hold his brother’s gaze. “Mom didn’t want to go to the game. She had papers to grade, and Silas had gotten into trouble at school that day, and Verity was being clingy, and Mom thought she was coming down with something, plus she was worried about her and dad driving that far in the snow…”

“She called me while I was getting on the bus,” he continued, “and told me they were going to skip the game. I got pissed. It was a playoff game. Could be the last one I’d ever play in high school—”

“And you wanted them there,” Urban said quietly.

Taking in a careful breath, Miles nodded. “Instead of saying that, I started mouthing off. I brought up how they went to all your games, home and away, when you were in high school. How they drove into Happy Valley to watch you play at college. How they made time for everyone else’s shit but mine. She tried to talk to me, but I wouldn’t listen. I told her to forget it then I… I hung up on her. I hung up on her and I didn’t talk to her again. They waited for me after the game, but I blew them off. I figured the only reason they’d showed was because Dad had talked her into it, or she felt guilty. And then, at the accident scene…”

His voice cracked. Tears filled his eyes. Memories flashed through his mind. The snow. The cold. The flashing lights. His parents’ crumpled truck.

Urban stepped forward and clasped one hand on Miles’s shoulder, the other around the back of his neck. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. Miles wasn’t sure it ever would be.

“They wouldn’t let me see or talk to her.” His whispered words were raw with anguish. Thick with guilt. “I didn’t get a chance to tell her I loved her. That I was sorry.”

“She knew.”

“She didn’t. She died thinking I hated her.”

“She had six kids—three of them teenagers at the time. She taught high schoolers. She knew teens sometimes lashed out.”

Miles shook his head, all his guilt, all the shame he’d been carrying for thirteen years pressing on his shoulders, the burden becoming too much to bear.

Too heavy for him to carry alone.

“It was my fault,” he rasped. “It was all my fault. If I’d told her it was okay, that they didn’t have to go or if I’d talked to them after the game, they would have left earlier. They wouldn’t have been at that corner when that truck came around it.”

“No.” Urban’s grip tightened on his shoulder, his gaze steady and serious. “It was an accident. It was not your fault. You hear me? You are not to blame.”

Miles had no idea how badly he’d needed to hear those words, especially from Urban, but they were what set his tears free. They streamed down his face, his entire body shaking. Urban pulled him in and Miles… fuck… he clung to him. He didn’t hold back.

For the first time since his parents’ funeral, he let himself cry.

He cried for everything his parents had missed out on—their graduations and career successes and Ian’s birth. For everything they were never going to be a part of—weddings and more grandkids and lives well lived.

He cried for the responsibility Urban had to take on, for how quickly he’d had to grow up. For his brothers and sister and what they’d lost that day.

And he cried for himself. For the kid he’d been. For the mistakes he’d made and the guilt and shame he’d held onto all these years. For the fears he still struggled with.

Maybe, now, he could finally start to let some of them go.

Miles had no idea how long they stayed that way, but finally his tears slowed, and he was able to catch his breath. Sniffing, he straightened, his head aching, his entire body stiff and sore, like he’d been hit by a train and not a crying jag.

But he also felt lighter. Better. That pressing on his shoulders still there, but not as oppressive.

With one final squeeze of Miles’s shoulder, Urban let go then turned to grab a paper towel off the dispenser next to the sink. Handed it to Miles. “What do you need?” Urban asked, his own eyes suspiciously wet, his voice gruff.

Part of Miles wanted to tell him he was good. That this breakdown was all he could handle.

Was all he needed to be magically cured.

But he couldn’t keep pretending he was okay.

And he couldn’t do this on his own.

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