Page 56 of Let the Light in

“Because I was two seconds away from knocking you off your horse, you dense cowboy!”

I catch up to her easily, because her legs are significantly shorter than mine, and it wasn’t like she was running either. It was more of a fast stomping.

“Did you just call me a cowboy?”

She whirled around her brown eyes turning into slits as she points a finger at me.

“That’swhat you took away from that?That’swhat you’re choosing to focus on?”

When I shrug, she growls at me and gives me a push—as if we aren’t twenty-six and almost twenty-one-year-old adults. I narrow my own eyes at her and stick my hands in the pockets of my jeans before I do something I’ll regret.

“What was that for?”

“Do you remember the night Mom died?” she asks me.

“Of course, I do.”

“She sent all of us out of the room a few hours before she finally passed, and then called each of us back in, one a time.”

“I remember, Willa. I was there.”

“She spent the longest with Dad, but do you want to know what she said to me?”

I look at my little sister’s face, her cheeks are red and flushed from anger. From pain. Her hands are in fists at her sides and her eyes are still slits. Her chest is heaving, and I swallow.

“I don’t know, but part of me kind of wants to leave you here to cool off,” I say slowly.

Willa takes a step until she’s directly in front of me.

“Mom told me to fall in love, Wyatt. To go to college and major in whatever the heck I want, and to go to stupid parties. She said to follow my heart, and to always trust my gut. And when I meet a man one day, who doesn’t just bring me flowers, but my favorite bag of candy for no other reason than he was thinking about me, the man who opens my doors and offers to pump my gas, the one who doesn’t try to stifle any spark inside of me, but fans it instead . . . she said to marry him. You know what else she said?”

“What?”

She sticks her finger in my chest and I finally see how bright her eyes are and the way they’re glistening. “She said to look afteryou, Wyatt. That you were going to need me one day. She said, and I remember her exact words,‘He feels so much, Bee. But I’m afraid he’s not going to know how to feel this. So, he’ll push it away until he doesn’t, and I don’t want that. He will feel so much until one day he doesn’t feel at all. And when that day comes, I need you to remind him.’”

A tear slides down her face and I’m clenching my jaw so tight I’m giving myself a headache. Willa’s finger falls back to her side and she’s looking up at me with so many different emotions I don’t even know which one to look at first.

“Remind me of what?” I whisper.

Willa takes a deep breath, but she doesn’t say anything. Just takes one more step until her arms are wrapping around my middle. And, because I have become this awful shell of the man I used to be, I can’t even bring myself to wrap my arms around her in return.

“Remind you what it’s like to be loved,” Willa says so softly I barely hear her.

“You never stopped loving me, Bee. I know that,” I say, almost impatiently.

“No, I didn’t. But I let you have your distance. For five years, I’ve watched you die slowly, Wyatt. I have watched all my favorite parts of my big brother disappear. That’s what grief does, when you ignore it, it kills you. It’s a parasite that will take every ounce of joy and life from its host if they let it. And you let it take all the good parts, Wyatt. I watched you.”

“Willa . . .”

She shakes her head and I finally wrap my arms around her.

“You never let yourself grieve, Wyatt. Really grieve.”

“What? Willa . . . of course I grieved. How could you say that?”

“Because I’m your little sister.” She pulls away just enough to look up at me, tears steadily streaming down her face. “I saw you go through your first breakup. I saw how excited you were when you got your first home run. I was there when Emily Ashton broke your heart— really broke it—for the first time in high school. I have seen almost every one of your highs and lows, Wyatt. And I saw you when Mom took her last breath. I saw you almost every day after that and you know what I saw?”

“Don’t.” My voice is barely a croak.

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