I say, brushing back his sweaty blond hair. No emotion in my voice. Just the impossibility of it. “Everything is going to be okay, James.”
• • •
Luckily the cuts aren’t too deep, and I help James clean and cover them with a bandage and a long-sleeved shirt. I go through his dad’s medications until I think I find something that will calm him down. I clean his room, trying to scrub the blood out of his carpet but then opting to cover it with a chair when I can’t. I take the knife and throw it in the trash, considering hiding all the knives in the house, but I don’t want his dad to be suspicious.
James stares up at the ceiling, shaking even under the covers. I get into bed next to him, glancing at the clock and knowing his dad will be home soon. I wrap myself around James and hold on tight. I wait until the pills take effect, and when he’s asleep, I slip out. I hope that his father hasn’t heard about Miller yet. I hope that he’ll get home from his date and go to sleep, and then leave before James wakes up in the morning.
Then I’ll come over and get James ready for school. He’ll need time, need me to keep him normal, but then he’ll be fine. James will be eighteen in five months, and then after that they can’t take him away.
I’ll keep him safe, just like he kept me safe after Brady died. Because that day at the river when my brother killed himself, I almost went with him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MY BROTHER AND I WERE ONLY ELEVEN MONTHS apart, yet oddly enough, we never fought. Brady was my best friend, one of my only friends other than Lacey. And even though he had James, he never shut me out.
In the weeks before my brother died, James and I had been meeting secretly. When he’d stay over, he’d show up in my room at three in the morning, kissing me quietly while everyone slept. He’d leave notes under my pillow when I wasn’t home. We’d become completely infatuated with one another.
We didn’t tell Brady, not because we wanted to keep it secret, but because we didn’t want it to be awkward. And if everyone knew about James and me, they wouldn’t allow us constant access to each other—sleepovers, camping trips.
Brady had been seeing that girl Dana, but they broke up. She told James that Brady was acting strange, that he was cold. James waved her off, but when he confronted my brother, Brady just said it wasn’t a big deal. That she had bad breath anyway.
My brother had made it his personal mission to teach me how to swim, always going to our same place by the river. There isn’t much of a current there, just a deep pool of water. But this one afternoon, he took me and James to a new spot.
“It’s really beautiful there,” he said as he drove. “It’s perfect.”
James snorted in the backseat. “Just so long as I get to see your sister in a bikini.”
Brady smiled, his shadowed eyes glancing in the mirror, but he didn’t tell him to shut up. Instead he kept driving, like he had all the time in the world. I looked back at James, but he just shrugged. I remember thinking that maybe we’d tell my brother that day, that maybe it was time for him to know about me and James. I even thought that maybe he knew about us, but James didn’t think so. He said Brady was just stressed about finals.
We never got the chance to tell him.
I was in my bathing suit as Brady stood at the edge of the drop, looking down at the rushing water. A soft smile was on his lips.
“You can’t swim in that!” James yelled to him as he laid out his towel far back in the grass. “We should have gone to our usual spot.”
Brady looked over, the light reflecting off his black hair. The sun made his pale skin look sallow and shiny. “I didn’t want to ruin it for you,” my brother called.
James pulled his eyebrows together, and then laughed. “Ruin what for me?”
“The usual spot. I figured you’ll still be able to go there after. Maybe you can teach Sloane how to finally swim.” He darted his eyes to mine and smiled. “She might listen to you.”
I paused then, and stared at him. “What are you—” Ice-cold pain ripped