Page 40 of Unethical

That means he’s not the horrid monster everyone has made him out to be. Including me.

I can’t look at this scene anymore. It feels as if the ghost of Maxim’s brother still haunts this dark space. I hurry to my feet and scramble up the stairs, desperate for sunshine and fresh air.

When I emerge from the hole, I’m a shaking, shivering mess. I’ve been torn in two, and I don’t know which half of myself to listen to. On the one hand, Maxim told the truth about his horrific childhood. On the other, he hurt me in a way that is difficult to brush past.

I rush to my car and stare at the file sitting on the passenger seat. It stares back, urging me to make a decision. Do I turn Maxim in, or do I let him remain a free man?

Chapter Thirty

Maxim

With each beat of my heart, I ache for her. The blood in my veins seeks her out. I smell her on every inhale, and every exhale without her is torture to my soul. I’m sick with a terminal disease, and my need for her is killing me.

My love for her is killing me.

That’s what will be the death of me. Not the abuse I endured as a child. Not the long hours spent confined to a tiny prison cell. Though I’ve walked through the fires of hell and come out safe on the other side, this disgusting human emotion will be my downfall.

I never thought I’d feel this ache after my brother passed. After closing off my heart for so long, I never imagined someone would open a fresh wound on a body part that has long since died. When I pushed my brother into the well, it was a final act of love—an emotion I swore I would never allow myself to experience again.

But here we are.

I feel it, and I hate it.

I sit in my car a mere block away from her house. My foot itches to press the gas pedal so that I can glimpse the woman who stole a piece of my heart and stomped on it.

As she should have.

Pushing my brother into the well was an act of love, but what about what I’ve done to Sarah? Love isn’t selfish, and I’ve been far too selfish where she’s concerned. Why is it that I can only realize this now? Why am I only capable of seeing the error of my ways after I’ve crossed a line into territory I can’t come back from?

Wild desire draws me toward her now. If I pull out of this parking lot and go left, I can be at her house in less than three minutes. I can take what I want. Since when have I placed someone’s needs above my own?

Not since my brother, and this is the reason why. It hurts too much.

I pull out of the parking lot and make a right turn, heading to a place I never thought I’d see again. Winding roads drag onward as I drive toward the country.

After numerous turns, I finally return to the main road and keep driving. A tall black fence comes into view, with sharp points aimed at the sky at the top of every vertical bar. My car slides through the gates and continues up the perfectly paved road surrounded by well-manicured grass.

By memory, I follow the narrowing curves until I glimpse the smallest headstone jutting from the ground. Our parents refused to pay for something decent, but the funeral home took pity on my brother and donated a small memorial for his burial site.

The sun has begun to set, casting an eerie evening glow over the cemetery. I climb out of my car and sit in the grass in front of the stone. A river rushes nearby, but I can’t see it. I only hear the muffled gurgle of water against immovable earth. Flowers, bothfake and real, adorn most of the graves, but my brother’s space is barren.

I’m sure he feels abandoned. No one visits. No one remembers him.

But that isn’t true. I think about him every fucking day, and I know he’s at peace.

A grave is such a sad, terrible thing for so many people, but for my brother, it was a gift. If I could have found some other way to save him, I would have. I would have done anything to dry the tears in his eyes or mend his broken body after all the senseless beatings. But I couldn’t, so this hole is his sanctuary, even if it doesn’t seem like it to anyone else.

Because I’m an asshole, I rise to my knees, lean over, and snatch a carnation off the neighboring headstone. With shaking fingers, I place it on the grass just below his name.

“I’m sorry, Caleb,” I say.

I’m not sorry for killing him, though. I’m just sorry I didn’t do it sooner.

We wasted too much time trying to get help from the useless adults in our lives, but no one listened. They just nodded and jotted down the lies our parents told to explain away each bruise or medical emergency.

People say children like us slip through the cracks, but maybe we wouldn’t if the cracks weren’t so wide and unwitnessed. If someone heard our cries for help as we gripped the edge and tried not to fall, maybe we wouldn’t have slipped at all.

I get up, brush the dirt from my pants, and head back to my car. A bottle of warm vodka calls my name from beneath a pile of dirty clothes in my trunk. I fish it out, lean against the car, and uncap the bottle so that I can take a long pull from the glass neck.

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