Page 252 of Burn Bright
I tug off my gloves, combing my hand through my hair. “Charlie?—”
“She’s not here, Ben. Harriet isn’t in Alaska. Which means that the ‘only one’ in your life is no longer a part of your life.”
“She has all of you,” I reason. “She has the Cobalt Empire. She will be okay.”
“What kind of Empire are you leaving her?” Charlie retorts with heat. “What do you think happens if the sixth born never returns?”
I slip my fingers back into my gloves, needing to move. My ribcage squeezes around my lungs. “I think it’s better this way.”
Silences bleeds. Charlie pulls off his beanie, then mutters, “I wish I brought Beckett.”
“Beckett can’t kn?—”
“I’ve told him nothing.” He glares. “No one knows where I am. I’m being brutally honest with you because Idon’t know how to be soft enough for you. But you’re stuck with me forat least another hour.” He plants his ass on the tree stump, stretching out his leg.
An hour.
I can last an hour.
“So you put thousands of miles between us.” Charlie rubs his knee, then looks up at me. “You planned to limit communication to letters so no one would worry. Maybe mail a fun postcard. Maybe you bought some from different states—welcome to Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana—just so we’d believe you were traveling. There’s Ben Pirrip on his great American backpacking adventure. Having a wonderful time away.” He slow-claps.
He’s not wrong.
Charlie continues, “The letters would eventually slow down, until they stop arriving altogether. You’d hope we’d forget about you. Grow disinterested in what you were up to. We would just move on without you.”
Yeah.
I can’t even nod, but he’s not asking for confirmation. He knows he’s right.
His intense gaze stays fixed on mine. “Now you’re really alone. What’s next when you start imagining what could happen to us? You have an intrusive thought of Beckett drowning. Now you’re panicked because it might happen. You thought it, now you caused it. Then what are you going to do to protect us, little brother?”
I stare haunted at the snow. It takes me a minute to speak. “The existence of me is more harmful than the absence,” I say what has kept cycling in my head for so long.
Charlie’s eyes redden, his gaze tunneling in me. “The loss of you is the most catastrophic event our family willeverendure. You could explode on another planet, and we’d all still feel the impact like you’re a single inch away. Our parents will neverrecover. Our mom will grieve you for the rest of her life. You will haveirreparablychanged us all.”
I can’t catch my breath. “I almost caused Audrey’s death. Better me gone than her.”
“She’s not going to die if you come home,” Charlie refutes. “And if she does, it won’t be because of a bad choice you made.”
“You don’t know that.” I jump to my feet, pressure compounding on my chest. “You think I can’t survive out here, but Charlie, I can’t survivethere.Literally, if anything were to happen to one of you…”
“You will lose this battle if you stay here,” Charlie says slowly, forcefully. “I amcertain.I am also certain you have a chance to win if you come home.”
It freezes me in place.
Charlie picks himself up, bracing his weight on the hiking pole. “You think Beckett doesn’t understand that fight? He’s battling compulsions every fucking day.”
I grimace up at the sky. “I don’t even understand how this is OCD. It’s not like Beckett’s rituals with symmetry or the contamination thing. It’s not the same.”
“It’s similar. There are different types of OCD. Some are all up here.” He points to his temple. “Do you have intrusive thoughts about negative outcomes or causing harm to others?”
I swallow. “Yes, yeah.”
“Do you feel a compulsion to protect others from yourself?”
Clearly.I nod.
“Do you have the irrational belief that your thoughts or actions can control the outcome of events?”
