Page 129 of Catch the Sun

“You can’t know that.”

He leans in until our noses touch. “Then I’ll carry you if I have to.”

My lips wobble with grief, fear, and trapped guilt. “Max…”

“I found you, you know,” he says, curling his palm behind my neck and pulling our foreheads together. “I found you at the bottom of that cliff. Me, Brynn, and Kai. We thought you were dead. I thought I’d never see these eyes again. Never get to touch you, hold you… Itkilledme.”

My whole body shakes as I cry. “I’m sorry.”

“I’msorry. I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t there with you.”

“You couldn’t have known. Nobody could have known.”

Inhaling a hard breath through his nose, Max’s grip loosens on my neck as his head moves side to side. “Fuck, Sunny. I can’t believe you’re here.”

Am I?

I feel half here, half gone. Half the girl I was and half this scared, empty shell. I must look terrible. Chalky and ghostlike, feeble and bruised.

I pull away from Max and roll onto my back, glancing at the bedside table. The potted crayon stares back at me. “I thought it would be a carrot by now,” Iwhisper hoarsely. He doesn’t respond and I wonder if he feels rejected. Shunned by my pullback. I keep my eyes pinned on the orange crayon and try to ignore the ache in my chest as I murmur, “You brought me my stone.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I thought it might help.”

“It did.” I curl my fingers around the little stone, letting it anchor me. Letting it soothe my anxious heart like it always has for some strange reason. “Where’s McKay?” I inquire. The question falls out stupidly and out of place, so I quickly try to cover it up. “And Brynn? And Kai?”

He pauses before answering. “They’ve been here. They’re worried about you.”

I swallow. “All of them?”

“Of course. McKay asks about you every day. If you’re awake, if you’re making progress. And Brynn has been a mess. Every time I see her, she’s crying.”

My lips purse into a flat line as my eyes shift to the darkened window. I can see a sliver of moon peeking out through the treetops. I should reply but my lips feel numb. My tongue frozen.

McKay isn’t worried about me, Max. He’s worried about himself.

Another silent beat goes by and then Max asks, “Do you want me to go?”

His tone sounds wounded, and heartache grips me like a noose. He’s waited a month for me to come back and I can hardly look at him. I can’t look at him without seeing his brother, without feeling the heat of my secret burning into me like a red-hot poker.

And this is exactly why I never wanted any of this. I never wanted these feelings because Iknew. I knew that falling leaves you with broken bones and shattered pieces. I knew that falling leaves you in ruins and sometimes dead.

I never wanted to be conquered, overthrown, another victim oflove.

But I fell anyway, despite everything I knew. I fell for him.

I fell head over heels for Max Manning, and now I have to live with the knowledge that his twin brother tried to kill me.

My tongue darts out to catch a tear dangling on my upper lip. I refuse to look at him as I mutter, “I’m a little tired. I should probably rest.”

Silence permeates the space between us. The kind that chafes and scratches like a mosquito bite that can’t be soothed.

“All right,” he finally says, inching his way off the mattress. “I’ll let you sleep.”

The bed shifts and his body heat dissolves, leaving me colder than ever. It takes all my effort not to look at him, not to pull him back to the bed and let him hold me until dawn.

A zipper whirrs and rustling ensues, but my eyes stay locked on the window. A solid minute ticks by before I feel something placed beside me on the bed.

“I brought this for you,” Max tells me before his footfalls retract from the hospital cot. “I’ll come see you tomorrow. If you want me to.”

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