Raine (Gods of the Fifth Floor #2) - M.V. Ellis Page 0,92

I received the call from my mom, to say he’d killed himself, was the single worst moment in my life up until that point. I’d been at work, and apart from her exact words, and the feeling I had as hung up the phone, I can’t remember anything.” Fuck.

The urge to make my way to her side of the table and gather her up in my arms was so strong, I had to dig my thumbnail into the palm of one of my hands to remind myself to stay where I was.

“I got home—I’m told they called me a rideshare—and fell apart. I managed to get it together over the next few days to help organize the funeral and all of that stuff, but even in the early days, I knew I was never going to be the same.

“My job was really great about the whole thing. They gave me a four-week leave of absence, and even offered to extend it by another two weeks if I needed it. In the event, I was fine to go back after the month, so I did. Well, on the face of it, I was fine. In reality I was there in body, but in spirit, I was nothing but a shell. An empty replica of the person I’d once been.

“The new Noa looked like me, she spoke like me, and for the most part she acted like me, but... she wasn’t me—not on the inside, anyway. On the inside she was broken. There was a gaping hole in her psyche that nothing and nobody could ever fill.

“Seventeen months passed, and I was coping. Some days I even felt normal, like my old self again. Other days I felt like shit, but those days were getting further apart, and I dared to think that I could survive his loss. So much so, that when I got the opportunity to go and work in the Paris office of our company for six months, I took it.

“A change is as good as a rest, as they say, and ‘they’ are right. Not a day went by when I didn’t think about my brother—it was multiple times most days—but it made the world of difference to be somewhere that I could make new memories, ones that weren’t tainted by my loss.

“At home, every recollection—even ones that didn’t involve him—was categorized in my mind by whether it happened before or after he died. And so many places in this city reminded me—and still do—of him, in one way or another. I didn’t want to forget him, and I never will, but at the same time, I wanted to be able to live my life without being paralyzed by my loss. Paris provided a way to do that. I was making new associations, and taking new brave steps in the grieving process every day.” She took a deep breath and looked down at her hands. When she looked back at me, the hurt on her face nearly broke me.

“All of that changed about halfway through my stay, when I got what actually turned out to be the worst call of my life—to say that Kai had also killed himself. As much as I thought it had hurt the first time around, this was so much worse. Like pouring acid on a gaping wound.

“A piece of me truly did die that day, and over the next days, weeks, and months, the rest of me was consumed with guilt. I asked myself over and over, how I could have let this happen, and what kind of awful sister that made me.”

“Hold on.” I put a hand up toward her, confused by her words. “How is any of this your fault? They were grown men who obviously had things going on with them. You had no hand in their deaths.”

“I know that now, but it’s taken two years of intense therapy to get to this point. I just kept asking myself how I could have missed the warning signs—not once, but twice. How I boarded a plane to Paris like everything was okay, when it clearly wasn’t. What kind of selfish, blinkered asshole does something like that?”

“Look at me.” She stared resolutely at her hands. “I said look. At. Me.” I waited until she complied, though I almost wished I hadn’t. The anguish in her soft brown eyes was almost too much to bear. “It’s only been a minute, but what I know of you doesn’t fit with that picture of