Page 154 of Past the Broken Bridges

“I should go.”

“Okay,” he says again.

“Bye.” I pause. “Paxton.”

He parts his lips and then closes them.

He doesn’t want to say goodbye.

So I don’t let him.

I walk away and let my father help me into the car without looking back. I’m afraid of what I’ll see if I do.

“Your mother called again,” he tells me as soon as we’re driving. “You should know that we talked about it, and I’ve chosen to take an early retirement. Your mother and I feel it’s for the best to spend as much time together as a family since…”

I close my eyes and lean my head against the cool window, saying nothing at all.

Since my cancer progressed.

Since we’re on borrowed time.

Tick tock, tick tock.

That night, I ask Dad to drop me off at the dorms after stopping by the closest gas station. I knock on Dixie’s door and hold up a plastic bag. “I know ice cream is you and Banks’s thing, but I think we both could use it.”

She stares at the bag and then at me.

Tears form in her eyes.

I hug her. She hugs me back.

We cry until we fall asleep in her twin bed.

The ice cream melts.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Sawyer

I’m startled awake by the annoying sound of my ringtone. Jerking up, I absentmindedly search for my phone on my nightstand, which is full of water, pills, and other junk that my father put there per my mother’s commands.

When I finally find it, I slide my finger over the green button and don’t even get a chance to see who it is before I hear my brother say, “Youpromised. When you left, you said you wouldn’t let them change anything.”

It’s hard to break past the grogginess as I sit up slowly, with a pain in my ribs that has me cringing, and rub my eyes. “Bentley, I don’t under—”

“I have friends here. A girl I like,” he cuts me off angrily, his voice getting louder even though it’s—God. Two thirty in the morning. “I thought you had my back, but they’re making me give it all up for you. Youpromised.”

It takes longer than I want to admit letting everything he’s saying soak in before I finally get what this is about. “They haven’t said anything to me about this. I swear it. Thelast time I heard them talk about moving was over spring break.”

That doesn’t appease my little brother. “It’s always been about you,” he accuses, voice breaking. “For once, I wanted it to be about me. I did everything I could to make life easier for them.Idid. Not you.Itried to make things better knowing you were going to wreck it. Wreckthem.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat.

The dig is well deserved.

I am going to wreck them.

I already have.

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