Page 110 of My Brother's Best Friend

I hadn’t wanted anyone to die or to kill themselves. I just hadn’t wanted to get raped.

The line shuffled forward again, and we moved along with it. I gazed at the students bent over the casket, my eyes burning with tears.Why did this happen? Why would she fucking kill herself over this?

My gaze landed on Allie Hall, Jace Harbor, Imani Abara, and Poison about halfway to the front. Poison looked uncomfortable in suits, or maybe they were uncomfortable from being here. Who wanted to go to their dead classmate’s funeral?

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Mom said, cutting the line to stand beside me.

Maddie glared at her through tears but then turned back to Vera. I side-eyed her, wondering why the hell she had decided to come to Piper’s funeral. They hadn’t known each other at all. Mom had maybe seen her at a couple of hockey games.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked quietly.

Mom pressed her lips together, her eyes soft. “I’m here for you.”

“You don’t give a fuck about me, Mom. Why don’t you leave?”

“Alec,” she whispered, looping her arm around mine, “I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t the place to talk about our problems,” I said.

“When you get home,” she whispered, “can we talk?”

After a moment of silence, I gulped and nodded. “Sure.”

We waited for twenty more minutes until the couple cleared ahead of us. I urged Maddie to go first with Vera because Piper had been her best friend and because I didn’t know if I would be able to look down at Piper and feel anything pitiful.

Maddie collapsed at the foot of the casket as Vera stood behind her and wiped tears from her own cheeks. I stared at the girls, my stomach tight in knots and my thoughts rushing through my head at lightning speed.

The girls cried for what seemed like hours but was only several minutes.

And when Blaise finally tugged them along so other people could pay their respects to her, I froze in my spot. A sudden chill rushed over me, my mind blank. It had just been rushing, just been hurting, but … now, there was nothing.

“Come on,” Mom whispered, taking my hand and pulling me toward the casket.

I almost didn’t let her pull me up there, but I stumbled forward with shaky hands. Mom didn’t know what Piper had done to me. She didn’t know the fucking pain that Piper had caused me and Maddie that night at the party.

When we stopped in front of her pale body, Mom wiped a tear from her cheek. I peered down at her, a hole still in my heart. Just because she was dead, nothing changed inside me. I still hurt, still feared that it’d happen again if I wasn’t careful.

I didn’t heal.

I had hoped and hoped and hoped, but it didn’t happen.

Once Mom finally pulled me away, I walked with her to the side of the room, where Maddie, Vera, and Blaise stood. While I wanted to stay with Maddie and support her, my mind was all over the place. I couldn’t stand around in this room anymore while the woman who had raped me lay in a casket, dead because she couldn’t live with the things she had done.

If anyone should’ve killed themselves, it should’ve been me.

I balled my hands into tight fists. Piper had taken the easy way out.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into Maddie’s ear.

She gave me a quizzical look through her tears, but I walked through the crowd and toward the exit of the room. Mom went to follow me, but I shot her a glare because I was still pissed at her, and she stayed put near Maddie.

Once I left, I walked through the quiet hallway toward the exit of the funeral home. My chest tightened by the moment. I didn’t know what all these feelings were, but?—

Fuck!

I hurled my fist at the wall, smashing right through the drywall and bruising my knuckles. My chest heaved up and down, and I clasped my bleeding hand as I shoved my shoulder into the door to leave this place.

It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fucking fair.

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