I thought of me and Ella. How close we’d gotten with our flirting. I told myself I wasn’t going to cross that line again, and I wouldn’t have. Even in the basement, when I was desperate just to touch her.

But then she broke up with her boyfriend, showed up in my room, and called my bluff. I was out of excuses. It was just me and Ella, free to act on our feelings. And I chumped out on her. Because still, somewhere deep inside, I didn’t believe that a girl could like me—really like me—for me. Just me. All of me.

“What happened next?” Gabby broke me from my self-pity.

“I don’t know exactly. To this day, the details are still shady. There was a truck in the next lane over, hauling ass. I must have veered over the line and we sideswiped each other. I lost control of the car—we were sent into a tailspin.”

I shut my eyes and relived that moment. The brunt of the impact. The sound of crunched steel, shattered glass. Losing control of the wheel. Amber screaming.

“My best friend flew out the side window. My air bag went off, and his girlfriend . . . she smashed her head against the dash, but her seat belt saved her.”

“So it was an accident,” she said very quietly.

I felt my anger building up but not to an all-consuming intensity this time. “I was being careless, not paying attention, and my best friend paid for it with his life.”

I placed my head in my hands and rocked back and forth. “He died and I’m still alive.”

“And that kind of devastation is the hardest to bear,” she said with such empathy in her voice. “I know.”

She said it like she really did know. Like she’d been through it, lived it, carried it inside her.

“What happened to the truck driver?”

“He survived,” I said.

I wouldn’t tell her that my parents had paid him off.

I had shared so much with her tonight, so why was that once piece of information so hard?

Because it was humiliating.

The truck driver had said he was sketchy on the details as well—who had swerved into whose lane. But then my parents became involved, spoke to the police, to Sebastian’s family, to the driver, whom they paid off, to make it all go away in a neat and tidy package. Like it never happened.

Except that one person was gone forever.

And another was broken and lost, possibly for eternity.

I should have yelled and screamed and told the police to put me in jail. Even Amber had blamed me. Asked me why I hadn’t seen the truck sooner as she cried over Sebastian’s body on the side of the road, a huge knot protruding her forehead.

It was the worst sight I’d ever witnessed in my entire life. One I’d never forget. Like it had been singed into the backs of my eyelids. I’d felt so horribly responsible that I’d retched right there in the grass near a blanket of shattered glass.

But a couple of nights later, my father came into my room, slapped me across the face, and told me to get ahold of myself. Said I would not ruin my life and his chances of running for office. Said the driver agreed to take the lesser plea and get the hell out of town. That Sebastian’s parents agreed it would all be for the best and wanted to put it behind them.

They never blamed me and they never would. The driver had taken responsibility.

Didn’t he realize that by paying people off, he was already blaming me? Me, his only child. It was the same as saying, You’re a fuckup. I don’t believe in you. I’m going to pay off someone to make sure it remains a secret—the real you remains a secret.

The following day, Aunt Gabby came over while I continued to barricade myself in my room. I listened to their muffled argument through the door. She told her sister that I deserved more. And then Mom kicked her out of the house.

Their relationship had been strained ever since. Not that it hadn’t been before that. Aunt Gabby and Mom were different as night and day and sometimes I’d lie awake in bed and wish I’d been born into Aunt Gabby’s family instead.

“What keeps you going, Daniel?” Gabby asked in a dreamy, faraway voice. “You haven’t ended your life, and I’m thankful for that. So what is it that makes living worth it?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” I thought about how I was trying to make it up to Sebastian’s parents. My drive to do that had replaced my desire for my parents to see me succeed.

“Sometimes . . . I mean, really, all this time, I’ve been trying to keep myself alive for his parents.”

“For your best friend’s parents?” she asked, with an incredulous tone in her voice.

“Yeah, I mean, so that I guess . . . so they’d have someone to check in with. So that I hadn’t abandoned them, too.”

“Wow, Daniel that’s really . . . selfless.”

“Selfless? I just . . . I’ve been filled with so much guilt, I figured it’s the least I could do,” I said. “But that doesn’t really answer your question. It certainly doesn’t make my life worth living. Not really. I don’t know what the fuck does anymore.”

“I hope when you figure it out you’ll call back and let me know,” she said, like she wanted me to make a promise. And maybe in her mind, it was a promise to keep me alive. Even still, for the first time in a long time, it was one I was willing to keep.

She gave me the names of a couple of therapists in the area. She asked me to at least set up an appointment with one of them. I wasn’t sure if I would, but I took the information anyway.

“Oh, and Daniel?” she said. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting someone in. I feel privileged that you chose me.”

It was as if the noose around my neck had been loosened. And I’d been allowed a few clean breaths. Maybe going home for spring break would be tolerable after all.

Yeah right. I might need to have Gabby on speed dial.

* * *

I flipped the light on in my parent’s garage and inhaled deeply. It was the smell I’d come to love most—besides a certain mysterious almond scent. It was like a mix of oil, metal, and paint—and, fuck, how I’d missed it.

I stepped farther inside and allowed my fingers to grasp the sheet that covered and protected one of my greatest accomplishments. I gently hauled the cloth over her bumper and my breath caught in the back of my throat. She was a beauty and I’d helped restore her.

And it had been too damn long since I’d laid eyes on her.

I squatted down, picked up the can of paint near the rear wheel, and blew the thick layer of dust off the top. I’d had such big plans for her. Had I continued my renovation the last couple of years I’d be taking her for joy rides by now.

But after the accident it just seemed wrong to refurbish the same kind of machine that was instrumental in my best friend’s death. And for me to find any kind of solace in it. All I could see was Bastian lying in the wreckage on the side of the road. The desire to rebuild anything, especially cars, had been zapped away. As if my livelihood, my spirit, had been vacuumed out of my soul.

But standing here now, I couldn’t keep the foreign feeling welling up in my chest at bay. As if it couldn’t be contained any longer or it would consume me. Permeate my skin, latch on to my bones, and flow through my veins.

I’d been too damn afraid all this time. Terrified it would taint Bastian’s memory. Make me a disgrace.

Instead, it was slowly killing me. I was withering away to nothing. A hollow shell.

As I rolled up my sleeves and reached for the screwdriver on the worktable, I allowed a singular emotion to take hold and it was so fucking potent that I felt tears burn the back of my throat.

I didn’t bother to swallow them down. I just knew I had to do this. Take this first step.

In order to survive.

Chapter Fifteen

Ella

The two days I’d been home, I’d been busy with an endless list of chores to help my mom ready our house for Saturday-night dinner. We always celebrated with relatives the day before Easter because my parents believed Sunday should be reserved for church and immediate family. The Easter Bunny didn’t figure into our traditions anymore, but there was plenty of food and sweets to keep us satiated.

One of the reasons I’d decided to leave home to live with Avery was because our family was close. Too close. Like know-all-of-your-business close. And they’d always set high expectations for us. And that’s why I didn’t know how Christopher could have slipped past us undetected. We were very involved in each other’s lives.

My father admitted that he sometimes suffered from bouts of depression. I wished he hadn’t been too proud to come clean earlier. Maybe Christopher wouldn’t have felt so alone. According to the journal I’d found after his death, he’d been depressed for a long time. He’d felt like he didn’t belong to our family. The only thing that had made him feel halfway sane was playing soccer. Because he’d found something he was good at.

My parents had certainly changed since Christopher’s death. Especially my father. He was more quiet, introspective, and protective of us.

One of the reasons I’d become a psychology major was because I’d wanted to understand why my brother had taken his own life. And in the process, I had helped heal my family. As much as a family could mend when one member was lost to you forever.

That morning, I was helping my mother prepare dinner. We were having all the Polish fixings—sauerkraut and kielbasa, cabbage and noodles. Each year, Mom made pierogies from scratch by rolling out her own dough at the kitchen table. One of my jobs was to add flour whenever the consistency became too wet. And later, to indent the dough with the bottom of a drinking glass, so it could be formed into soft pillows of goodness.