Page 103 of Whistle

The strong emotion in me had me shooting forward, my chest pressing into the edge of the tabletop. “Not by blood. Not by DNA. When she died, it was like…” I inhaled deeply and shook my head.

“Like what?” He pushed, staring at me like it was a dare.

“It was like half of me died too. You have no idea what that feels like. To be walking around alive but feeling dead. To have your parents look at you like a consolation prize and reminder of what they lost. To hear them talking at night when they think you aren’t listening, saying they wished it was me instead of her.”

Rush abandoned his food and gripped the edges of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. “They would never say that.” He was vehement.

My voice was sad. “Just like I’d never blame you for murder, right?”

He sucked in a breath.

“They moved all the way to Italy and made it clear I wasn’t welcome,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes trained on the corner of a paper napkin. “You weren’t the only one they blamed. They blamed me too. I wasn’t there that night. I should have been. They blamed me for not saving her, and then they blamed me for living when she didn’t.”

“Bodes.”

The nickname was a dagger to my heart. But even stabbed, it kept beating. Much to my parents’ disappointment, I lived, and my heart continued to beat even around the wound of everyone’s dagger-like words.

“Don’t call me that,” I whispered. That was a name from another time. Another relationship.

We weren’t those people anymore.

“Maybe that’s why it was so easy to blame you,” I said, partly surprising myself with the stark confession. “Because if I blamed you, I wouldn’t be the only one responsible. Because bearing that crushing weight of guilt alone might literally have killed me.”

The table wobbled when he leaned over it. “What do you mean?”

“I should have been there that night,” I said, all of it spilling out as though the dagger he’d plunged into me hadn’t just hurt but caused the contents of my deepest secrets to spill out. “I knew she was upset about you. She was pregaming at the house. I told her to stay home. She told me to choose.”

“What?” His voice was raw. I understood that sound… because it was the way I felt.

I shook my head, fighting back the welling tears. “She was drinking and upset. She didn’t mean it. But it was the last conversation we ever had, and it left its mark.”

“What conversation?”

My watery eyes met his dark ones. “Brynne told me to choose between you and her. She said I shouldn’t be friends with you anymore because it hurt her too much. She didn’t want to see you if she couldn’t have you the way she wanted. She said if I really loved her, then I would cut you out.”

Rush’s throat worked, and he reached up to rub a hand along his jaw. “That doesn’t sound like Brynne.”

“And the stuff she did and said to you that night… was like her?”

His face turned grim. “She kissed me.”

My head whipped up. For a moment, shock overrode all other emotion, and fuck me, was it a relief. “What?”

He nodded. “I didn’t tell anyone. But yeah, she kissed me, and when I pushed her away, she lost it,” he explained. “I never meant to hurt her.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” I whispered.

His entire face changed, shuttered in a way that made me feel like I was looking at a stranger. Rush was good at protecting himself, better than I could ever be.

He didn’t believe me. I couldn’t fault him for that. I didn’t believe a lot of shit he said in the past. But maybe I had. Maybe it was just what I thought before—him or my sister. In some sick sense, in my head, it kind of became her dying wish. Maybe deep, deep down, I’d always known he didn’t do it, but I convinced myself he did because it made it easier.

“She told me to choose, and I told her I wouldn’t. I told her she was selfish to ask me. And then, so I wouldn’t have to be in the middle, I met up with some hookup I found on Bangr. I was screwing some nobody while my sister was dying.”

Silence blanketed the table. The kind that even blocked out the music and other people around us. The kind that left me teetering but also weighted, unable to get up and run, forced to sit there and float in the truth I’d just vomited up.

“So when I was accused…” Rush finally said, voice like gravel.

“I chose her.” I confirmed. “If I had only stayed that night. If I’d only been there. The truth is, Rush…” I paused, his name so heavy to speak. It took a moment for my heart to pump enough blood through my veins to give me the strength to finish. “It’s not your fault Brynne is dead. It’s mine.”

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