Forty-nine
One look at his former best friend, bruised eyes seething with hate, sends James backpedaling into the living room. When Sam rushes toward me, I burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry,” I sob. “I should’ve listened to you. I shouldn’t have come back.”
He cups my cheeks in his hands and shushes me, his hard gaze returning again and again to my bottom lip, which has swollen even more under the onslaught of James’s kisses. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells me gently. “You’re safe now. Okay?”
His words trigger another wave of panic. My heart flutters and the room tilts dangerously. When I grab Sam’s shirt, he squeezes me tight, kisses the side of my mouth that isn’t bleeding.
“We’ll be okay,” he whispers and smiles.
All the hell I’ve endured drains away and I press myself as close to him as I can get, trying to ignore how with each second that passes, his body tenses even more beneath my hands. The room is silent except for his labored breathing and my sniffles, but I know James is still here. Still watching and waiting. I don’t want Sam to face him and there’s no way I’ll be able to stop it from happening.
Slowly, as if he’s afraid of spooking my brother, Sam turns around and moves me behind him. “James,” he says.
I peek around his broad shoulder at my battered brother, standing in the middle of the living room with blood-smeared lips, paler than I’ve ever seen him. His eyes sway slowly from Sam to me, back and forth and back again. He looks unsteady and I have the urge to go to him, even after everything that’s happened. As if Sam senses this, he puts his arm out to keep me back.
James still hasn’t said anything. Sam moves closer, his hands raised slightly. That’s when I realize the gun isn’t in James’s pants anymore—it’s in his hand.
“Give me the gun,” Sam says evenly. “You don’t want to hurt Sarah any more than I do. If you want to fight some more, let’s take this out back.”
I gasp. “No!”
Sam reaches behind him for my hand and squeezes, but I’m not reassured.
“Let’s just leave,” I plead. “We can come back after James calms down. Please!”
James shakes himself out of his trance and stares hard at Sam. “Stay away from her.”
Dropping my hand, Sam takes a step closer to James, away from me. I want to scream at him to stop because James looks exactly like our father the second before he snaps.
“You know I can’t,” Sam says.
James lifts the gun and shoots.
Blood sprays everywhere and for a second, I think James shot me instead of Sam. When Sam falls to his knees, I feel the pain explode in my chest. I scream, dive the three feet between us, and barely catch him before he topples to the ground.
“Sam?” I cry. “Oh, God, no. Talk to me, Sam. Please!”
When I lay him down, the hole where the bullet ripped into his chest gushes blood. I try to cover the wound with my hands to stop the bleeding but it seeps past my fingers and dribbles onto the living room carpet. I grab the nearest shredded shirt off the floor, my favorite pink cotton one, and press it to the ugly hole that shouldn’t be there. He groans and closes his eyes.
“We’re going to get help, okay? Hang in there.”
Standing in our doorway, a horrified Mr. Espinosa bellows a stream of Spanish to his wife across the yard. “Lydia is calling the police,” he says to me. “Who else?”
“Liz Donavon,” I say in a broken voice. “Tell the police to call Liz Donavon.”
When Mr. Espinosa nods and runs back to his house, the only sound left is Sam’s uneven breathing and the sound of him gulping. James’s Godsmack is conspicuously missing.
I smooth the hair away from Sam’s blood-spattered face and press my forehead to his. “I love you,” I whisper. “Please don’t leave me. Please.”
His eyes are glassy when he opens them. Fixed on me, but not quite seeing. Choking on the burnt stench of gunpowder, I whirl around to scream at James, “Do something!”
James’s face has gone ashen. Dropping the gun, he sways, then drops to his knees.
Sam’s cold hand on my stomach draws my attention back to him. His eyes, the darkest storm cloud gray I’ve seen them yet, are frantic and afraid. “My mom,” he chokes out.
Any hope I’ve been clinging to evaporates the second he tries to swallow and can’t. “They’re calling her. Hold on, okay? She’s going to be so excited when we tell her about our wedding. Think of all the flowers she’ll order.”
He nods almost imperceptibly and closes his eyes. I don’t want his eyes to close. I want to brand their color and intensity into my brain in case I never get to see them again. I fall forward, my forehead pressed to his again, and pray for the first time in my life.
Please God, don’t take him away. His mom needs him. I need him. Please. Take me, but don’t take him.
He sputters again and my heart breaks.
Behind us, James babbles a stream of apologies I don’t want to hear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh, God. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
“You shot him!” I cry over my shoulder. “What did you think would happen?”
He ignores me. “Leslie said it would be fast. No pain, just peace. She’d die in her sleep, just like she wanted.”
I whirl around, horrified. “You killed mom?”
“She begged me to!” He hugs his knees to his chest and rocks back and forth, back and forth, his eyes fixed on the gun at his feet. “I was going to kill Dad, too, but I fucked up. I tried to save you like she wanted and fucked that up, too. I fuck everything up.”
Turning back to Sam, I gulp back the bile trying to claw its way up my throat. The night before our mother died hadn’t been a dream. I knew it was real, but admitting it to myself before now had felt impossible. I remember her tracing James’s foot through the thin blanket and how he stirred when she touched his jaw.
She’d been saying goodbye.
I bury my face in Sam’s neck, sickened by the sticky blood, and rock softly against him, shushing him like James used to do for me. “I need you, Sam,” I whisper in his ear. “I don’t want to live without you. I love you.”
He tries to say something, but sputters violently. Feeling his struggle, I try to give him space but he grabs my hand. He tugs his father’s bloody chain out from beneath his shirt and wraps my fingers around the dog tags. His eyes are pleading with me. Trying to make me understand what he can’t say. “Love…you.”
The tears I’ve waited too long to shed are like a noose cinched tightly around my throat. I choke before I can breathe in what I’m afraid will be his final words, which makes the tears flow harder and hotter. I need those words. Need to hide them somewhere deep inside of myself where no one can steal them away. Those words might be all I have left.
When his chest spasms one last time, I curl over his body in a feeble attempt to keep him warm and try to hum. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine… The sirens screaming in the distance are too late. They’re always too late.
Behind me, James sings the final verse in a shaky voice.
You told me once, dear, you really loved me
And no one else could come between.
But now you’ve left me and love another;
You have shattered all my dreams.
I can’t look at him. Won’t.
Behind me, the gun scrapes across the floor.
Save James, she had said, but I’m too late. I wait for the shot that will take me to wherever Sam is going. If James ever loved me, he’ll do this one last thing for me. It’s the only way to make everything right.
The gun fires again and thuds, lifeless, to the floor.
I melt into Sam and close my eyes.