Page 141 of Catch the Sun

“No,” I croak out. “No, no, no. You’re not real. I–I’m not—”

“I’m real.” Jonah takes me by the shoulders, holding me still while I mentally and physically unravel. Finding my eyes, he forces me to look at him. “Takea deep breath. Breathe, Ella. I’m real. I’m right here. I missed you so fucking much.”

My face crumples. “No.”

Mom squeezes my forearm, sniffling on the other side of me. “Honey, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she chokes out. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up if it didn’t work out… You’d come such a long way. And then the accident happened, and I was terrified. It’s so much to process, and you were barely hanging on. I thought I was getting my baby boy back, only to lose my little girl. It felt like the universe was forcing me to trade.”

Her words bleed into fog. “How…how long?”

A pause.

“January,” Mom whispers.

January.

It’s now April. It’s April and my brother has been out of prison—offdeath row—for three months, and I am just now finding out.

I feel like I might puke. From astoundment, from despair, from heart-sinking disbelief.

“He’s been staying with a friend in Charlotte,” she continues, voice brittle. “I thought it was for the best, until you were fully healed. We didn’t know what the long-term effects of your brain injury would be, or how you would process such a massive shock. I wanted to—”

“How.” The world falls out as a demand, not a question. I’m staring at Jonah in a daze. I’ve dreamt of him so many times, in so many different ways. Brutal and terrifying. Sweet and tender. Fear mulled with memories, pain sweetened by warm nostalgia.

But never like this.

Never real, in the flesh, close enough to touch.

At twenty-two, he looks older. Weathered by time, by barren cell walls, and by God knows what else. A scar ropes along his right cheekbone and dark shadows gray the space beneath his eyes.

I stand.

I find some source of strength and jolt upright on wobbly, stringy legs, my mother’s hand shooting out to hold me steady. “How,” I repeat, emotionclimbing, brewing, swelling to a peak. “Tell me how. Tell me how this is real. I can’t believe it. I don’t, I refuse. This can’t possibly be happening.” Tears fall rapidly, violently.

Jonah’s jaw flickers as he stares up at me. A big hand lifts to sweep through thick, coppery hair. Light brown with reddish tints. Full on top, shaved to the skin on the sides and in the back. His nails are rimmed with dirt, and another scar drags across his knuckles, a puckering of pale, raised flesh. “It’s a long story,” he says.

“I’m sure it is. Tell me everything. Right now.” I can’t stop crying. My voice sounds ten octaves above normal, squeaking with desperation. “I was there, in that courtroom, when they sentenced you todeath,” I screech. “Death, Jonah! People don’t just walk off death row.”

“Sometimes they do,” he murmurs.

“Did you escape?” I tug my hair back with both hands, grateful my mother is still holding on to me. I’m mentally free-falling and can hardly stay standing. “Oh, my God…you broke out.”

“What? No. Jesus, Ella.”

“Then tell me how it’s possible. I can’t even begin to comprehend this,” I cry, shaking my head, my fingernails burrowing in my scalp.

Mom answers first. “I was working on overturning his sentence for a long time, Ella,” she tells me. “This didn’t happen overnight. I’ve been at it from the moment they read off that verdict. All those late nights at the computer, on the phone…that was me, fighting for your brother’s freedom.”

“You didn’t tell me,” I breathe out.

Heartbreak shimmers in her eyes. “I couldn’t, baby girl. I saw the toll it took on you, both emotionally and mentally. You were angry, confused, lost. I chose to keep this hidden from you because I didn’t want you to bear the weight of new disappointment if it didn’t work out. It was my way of shielding you from the unpredictable roller coaster that comes with fighting for justice.”

I lower myself to the living room floor, collapsing and shaking. “But people aren’t just sentenced todeath row,” I grit out. “The…the evidence. I even thought you were guilty.Idid!” I slam a palm to my chest as my gaze pans to Jonah, the guilt suffocating me. My lungs are waterlogged with it,shrinking with it. “Jonah…you were there, at the scene. You were covered in their blood.”

His face is unreadable, eyes skimming across my face. “The DNA evidence was compromised. Mom worked her ass off to prove that,” he says. “And there was jury tampering. Erin’s fuckhead father had a friend on that jury, put there to skew the verdict. The juror admitted it. He confessed.” He swallows, pauses. “The whole trial was a farce, a sham orchestrated to get me convicted. They needed someone to blame, to slap with a guilty verdict, because the entire goddamn world was watching.”

My throat constricts. “But the blood…why were you covered in their blood?”

He inhales, looking away briefly before meeting my gaze and steepling his fingers. “Like I’ve been telling you all along, I tried tohelpthem. Tried to resuscitate them. It wasn’t my crime, but I was there after the fact, attempting to save them. I knew it looked incriminating, so I left the scene. I fucked up, yeah, but I didn’t deserve a goddamn death sentence for it.”

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