Page 183 of When the Storm Breaks
I stare at the floor. The bar. Hishands.
And suddenly, it all starts to make sense.
She talked about everything except that summer. I thought it was just a breakup. A bad decision. Something small she couldn’t let go of.
I didn’t realize she was guardingeverything.
“The police came back to us,” he says. “Told us they’d been searching the wrong area. If they’d known the truth from the start, they would’ve searched differently. They said maybe… maybe they could’ve gotten to her in time.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“They didn’t say it outright—that it was Jules’s fault. But we all knew what they meant.”
It’s like hearing the verdict before the trial even starts.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. I can see it anyway.
Willow, terrified. Lost.
While Jules ran back to the fire she thought would keep her warm—even though it was already burning her down.
I want to scream. To cry. To hit something—anything—just to stop this aching, burning feeling from spreading.
And still, part of me wants to defend her. Wants to believe it was a mistake. That she panicked. That she didn’t know what could happen.
But that part is smaller now. Almost silent.
“She ghosted me after Willow died,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Like I didn’t exist. I tried to talk to her a few times, but she just… vanished. Wouldn’t answer texts. Stopped coming around. And when she did, it was like I wasn’t even there.”
He shakes his head, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Like cutting me out made it easier to pretend it never happened.”
Haiyden moves past me. Drops onto a barstool, elbows on his thighs, hunched like it hurts to hold himself up.
“My parents—”
He clears his throat, like the words burn on the way out.
“My dad, especially. He blamed Jules. It was like the second Willow died, his grief changed into something else. Not sadness… but resentment.”
He pauses, his jaw tight.
“They blamed me, too. Said if I’d just gone with her, likethey asked, she’d still be here. That I didn’t protect her.”
I think about speaking. About saying anything.
But the look in his eyes silences me.
“I found out my dad had something to do with it the day they identified her body.”
His voice cracks, and the sound of it makes him seem… smaller.
“We were watching the news. And one look at him—I knew. He wasn’t shocked. He was a stone.”
The ground shifts. The air turns to ice. And even though I don’t want to believe it, the pieces are starting to fall into place. I’m just not sure I’m ready for what they’re building.
“I kept it quiet. Convinced myself it wasn’t my truth to tell. I was afraid—afraid of what it meant, afraid of what it would do to my family, to me. I’d already lost my sister, and I was scared.”
He swallows.
