purses her lips into a half smile, and the thunder between my ribs has turned into a wad of warm mush. Damn it.
“You really are bound for better than her, you know.” And just like that, her smirk vanishes beneath a small surge of new emotion. Something that hits my perception like vehemence. Even violence. “So much better.”
Those last words have me tense again. “Not exactly what I’m worried about, Reg.”
“Then what is it?”
My thoughts are tripping again, all over the pretty girl downstairs who I had no business putting my hands on, accidentally or otherwise. I stopped trusting myself with people a long time ago. Despite the gnawing hunger for contact and…more.
“She’s a nice girl. From what I can tell, probably better than most people give her credit for.” I wince, stopping myself short of saying more. “I just can’t get involved with anyone right now,” I finish with a note of defeat.
“This is about Jesse, isn’t it?” Reg’s voice, while laced again with vexation, holds something new. A hint of challenge.
My only answer is my silence. I stare out across the building tops toward the vast darkness on the horizon that’s the ocean. Normally, that liquid space brings a strange certainty—a calmness—to my spirit. Right now, it signifies everything I don’t know about the world. About myself.
“After all these years, you still haven’t forgiven yourself,” she utters softly.
I brave a look in her direction, ready to explain that I never will. But the quiet ferocity and devotion in her eyes stop me from saying all I want to.
I paralyzed my best friend. I nearly killed him. I’m unforgivable.
I take in a measured breath. Another. Still, I fight to quiet the internal tirade that wants to spill free and replace it with something Reg will accept. She deserves that much, but I’ve never been able to give her the actual words. She and Sarah have never let me down, not since that first day I wandered into the store, wondering if anyone would see me as normal again. Not after what I did to Jesse.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t meant to do it. That we’d only been playing with the rough zeal of typical eight-year-olds. The damage had been done, and I’d never be the same person again.
“Forgive and forget,” I finally say. “But what happens when you can’t forget?” I rub a couple of fingers across my forehead, pushing in until it hurts. “I’m never going to be able to forget what happened. Even if I didn’t see him all the time, I wouldn’t be able to wipe that day from my memory.”
That day.
The one that still haunts so many of my nightmares.
Every single one of its details.
The bees humming over the playground field. The warm wind, bringing the first scents of summer. The heady taste of freedom. School was out, and Jesse and I had big plans.
Plans I’d ended. For good. In one moment. On that day.
After that came more awful days. The confusion. The guilt. The fear. No one would talk to me about what Jesse’s fate would be. I didn’t know until much later that all hopes for repairing the damage to his spinal cord were lost. That he’d be in that wheelchair for the rest of his life. That they’d roll him out of the hospital and he’d start spouting a string of stupid one-liners so I wouldn’t notice every hard gulp in his throat or the doomed sorrow in his eyes…
“It was an accident, Max. You were eight years old!”
“Doesn’t matter,” I grit out.
“Of course it ma—”
“It. Doesn’t. Matter.” I turn from her and hunch over, gaining momentum to drive my fist into the ledge. Instantly I regret the wide crack I’ve opened up in the concrete. For a guy who’s vowed to hang on to control in any way possible, the stuff is tumbling like sand from my fist. “It didn’t change the outcome.”
She huffs out a frustrated sigh. “Everyone makes mistakes, Maximus. Life is full of them. We’ve all done things we wish we could take back.”
“It’s more than that.”
So much more than a simple misstep or an embarrassing moment to keep me up at night. There will never be enough well-meaning words or affectionate stares to douse my self-loathing when it comes to what I did to Jesse.
“Is it? Or are you so determined to martyr yourself that you refuse to make peace with something that Jesse already made peace with a long time ago?”
“How do you know he’s