Life is hell.

Sometimes I think it would have been better if I had been with my mother in the car that day. For whatever reason, Nolan and Sunday seemed to come out of the tragedy unscathed, and yet it was me who lumbered through these hazy days without my mother just as injured as if I were a passenger. Yes, it was me she was coming to pick up from practice. Yes, it was an accident, but the two facts put together have pressed down on both my shoulders and my soul ever since I got the news.

I haven’t been the same since. I watched Nolan drift in and out of relationships until the big one hit with Misty. He fell in love, head over heels like some textbook sap who couldn’t control the grin on his face. Sunday had puppy love peppered in here and there, no one serious. No necks to break—yet. And me, I fell into bed with one girl after the next, and each and every time it amounted to nothing more than a bodily function. That is, until I met Trixie. That first kiss was pure magic—so was every one after that. Something about those eyes of hers intoxicated me long before she ever landed us in that bathroom. Something new awoke in me, and I wondered if it could be that slippery snake that had wrapped itself around my brother’s heart, love. But I loved my mother with every ounce of my being, and I cursed her with it, too. Or at least it felt that way. I love Sunday, and she’s still walking around, giving me hell when she can. Thank God for that. I don’t know. There’s just something powerful about the way Trixie makes me feel, and it’s a far cry from anything I feel for my sister.

I haven’t called Trixie since that night she begged me to tell her that I loved her—the night that will go down in infamy as the day I officially became a coward. It’s safe to say both Knox and Lawson are morbidly pissed at me. Knox won’t even give me the finger, and Lawson wouldn’t look at me during practice. Grant assured me that Lawson plans on kicking my balls when the time is right. I have no doubt the only reason he’s holding back is because he doesn’t want to get benched.

And Rex? The dude smiled and nodded at me when I accidentally ran into him on campus. It’s clear he’s not in the loop, and for that I’m thankful. Hell, I wish I wasn’t in the loop.

A week goes by and then another. Trixie shows up to the Media Club meetings as if nothing happened. She doesn’t make eye contact with me, though. She’s buddying up to Seth as if he’s her new best friend. A part of me wants to think she’s trying to light a fire in me, throw me in some jealous rage. But the more I watch them, and I do watch them openly, there’s something genuine in the way they react, the way Seth Fucking Baker makes her laugh. Yeah, he’s under my skin. I’ll probably have to kill him long before my brother marries his sister. Sorry, Misty. You’ll be short your only sibling come your wedding day. But it’s just something I have to do. And during those Media Club meetings, when Miranda Smirnoff comes sniffing my neck, telling me how much she misses my cologne on her sheets, I don’t exactly stop her. Maybe this is how it should be. Trixie paired to someone with a beating heart like Seth and me paired with Randy Mandy, someone I can have something quick and dirty with and not have to worry about killing her unintentionally with my love.

Love. God, I hate that word. I wish Trixie had never said it to me. I don’t deserve it. Just like I didn’t deserve her.

But on this Saturday night, Grant and Eli Gates drag me down to the Black Bear for dinner. We had a game earlier against Dunton, a school from up north. The Mustang basketball team hadn’t won a game against Dunton since 1946. So, tonight’s victory was sort of a big deal. Not for me, though. It seemed the whole world came out to cheer us, and, yet, I didn’t see the only face in the crowd I cared about. But I guess in the end it played in our favor. I channeled my rage, all of the pain of not having Trixie in my life, the outrage that she might actually be interested in Seth, as stupid as that sounds, and I ran that ball down the court, shooting and scoring our way to victory as if I were playing against five-year-olds.

“Dude, you’re a hero.” Seth slaps me over the back as we settle into our table. I’m guessing Trixie never fessed up to him about our relationship. I know for a fact she hasn’t told Sunday a thing.

Lawson catches my eye from across the way, and I look right past him at the beautiful girl seated at the end of his table. That organ I wish I didn’t have stops beating altogether. Lawson for one is apprised of this shitty situation. He and Lucky just so happened to be seated with Sunday and Trixie. There she is, looking stunning as ever, stopping hearts all over Hollow Brook with those bewitching eyes, starting with mine.

Hell, I can’t do this. I can’t be in another club meeting with her. I can’t be in a bar or anywhere on The Row with her, that’s for damn sure. Then, in a serendipitous moment, or one ensconced in a nightmare—take your pick—Trixie looks over at me, and our gaze locks strong as steel. A single tear rolls down her face, heavy and weighted as lead—a dying star taking all of my dreams down with it. And even that heartbreaking action only seems to amplify her beauty. Yes, Trixie is a beautiful girl, but it’s who she is on the inside that made me fall for her like a house of playing cards, each and every one of them a queen.

Seth swats me. “Dude, what the hell’s happening?”

Eli and Grant lean in and try to garner my attention. They were the only ones I told, and now I regret it. I regret every last detail of my life with the exception of anything that happened between Trixie and me.

Eli butts his shoulder to mine. “Maybe we should go?”

But I’m not looking at Eli. I can’t seem to tear my gaze from Trix.

Lawson charges at me, pulling me out of my seat, knotting up my shirt in his hands, and sends us both stumbling backward into a group of girls who let out a choir of screams.

“You don’t get to look at her!” he thunders into my face, and my eyes close with the reverberation. He gives me another hard shove, but this time I maintain my stance. “You don’t get to be in the same room with her.” Lawson looks at me with that sober expression that lets me know he’s just as sorry that we’ve devolved to this as I am. “You had one job, man—stay away.”

Sunday jumps up, her mouth agape, that look of abject horror on her face lets me know she’s put the pieces together.

“Is this because of you?” She points hard to the booth where Trixie’s face is slicked with tears. But her affect tells a different story. Trixie might be grieving what we had, but she is stone-cold pissed. “Are you the reason my best friend has been up all night for weeks crying herself to sleep?” Her voice breaks, and I can’t take it. “Oh my God, you deserve all of the misery I hope you’re embroiled in. You were always good at accruing the stupid tax—the price you pay for a stupid move.”

The crowd around us hushes. Even the band seems to play a little softer in honor of the chaos. An entire circle of people surrounds us, and there’s no escaping it. There’s no point in dicking around anymore. I need to own this. We both do.

Trixie comes over and wraps an arm around my sister. “I’m over it. Let’s get out of here.”

“No.” Sunday shakes her loose and takes a step in toward me. Her face is red as a pomegranate, her eyes bulging with a rage I’ve never seen in her before as tears of her own begin to make their debut. “You did this. You knew she was my roommate. You had to have known this would end badly because she’s not your run-of-the-mill whore you bed on a nightly basis!” she screams the words so loud the waitresses come out in force, one of them being Serena. The hurt on my sweet cousin’s face says it all. I’ve gone too far. I didn’t just ruin things with Trixie. I ruined things with everybody.

“You’re right.” It takes everything I have to meet up with Trixie’s gaze once again, and when I do, she blinks back as if I struck her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I should have known better. I’ll do my best to stay away from you.” I look to Sunday, to Lawson, to Serena. “I’ll lay low from here on out.”

I make a beeline for the exit, and not a soul comes after me. Not that anyone should. I hightail it all the way back to my place, but I don’t head inside. Instead, I jump into my truck and start the long, winding drive to nowhere.

---

The overlook at the top of the mountain has always been a tourist’s draw. It’s always been the place where couples hang out, where just about anyone in the tri-city area comes to sit and process their thoughts for a while, and that last one is exactly what brings me here. It might be a cold November night, but there’s enough life up here you’d think it was afternoon in the middle of a balmy summer. I used to come up here with Nolan all the time.

I find a flat rock near the fence line just this side of the cliff and stare out at the city below. In the distance, you can see Jepson shimmering like a jewel in the night. To the right, far to the west, you can see Hollow Brook Hills, the place we still call home. After my mother died, we didn’t move. We simply moved on. Or at least my father did. He started dating about nine months after she passed away. It wasn’t even a year.

My arms stretch out behind me as I look up to the sky blooming with stars, so dense and so thick, it looks as if they were layered on top of one another in giant creamy swaths. I used to sit outside at night a lot after the accident and look up at the sky, wondering if my mother had turned into a star, if she could see me, if she was angry with me for costing her life. Of course, she was. I had instantaneously become her one regret. Or maybe I hadn’t.

A full breath expires from me.

Who the hell knows.

“You saving a spot for someone, or can two sit on this rock?” a dude’s voice comes from behind, and I’m about ready to deck him and bolt, but I’m shocked to see I recognize him.

“Nolan?” I sit up straight.

“Sunday said you took off. She went to your place and said your truck was gone. I figured I’d take a risk and see if you were here. Spotted your truck in the lot.” He scratches at the back of his neck before taking a seat next to me. “I heard what happened. Trixie Toberman, huh? Sunday’s roommate. Cute, funny, biting humor, though. I warned Sunday about her the day I helped move her in.” He knocks his shoulder to mine as if emphasizing the fact he’s teasing, even though we both know he’s not. “She’s a knockout. I’m not faulting you for anything. So what happened? I thought you knew how to handle the masses. It sounds like this one may have tripped you up. It happens to the best of us.”

“She didn’t trip me up.” I press my palm into my forehead so hard you’d think I was trying to cave my skull in. “I fell over my own twisted shit.” I tell him about that first kiss, how she caught me off guard, how I thought for certain it would never happen again. How it just kept happening. “It kept getting better, dude.” I thump my fist over his leg. “And then things got serious. She said she—you know, loved me. I didn’t say it back.” I tip my head to the stars again and wish I had the power to turn back time like I’ve been prone to wish, and, oddly, on this occasion, it would be right back to that night Trixie said she loved me. My heart wrenches at the thought I’ve hurt her. Would I stop her from saying it? Or could I bring myself to join her? Something deep in my bones shakes as if my body were trying desperately to give me the answer.

“It’s simple. You either love her or you don’t. Ball up, dude,” Nolan says it plain as if it were a fact. “Or it would be simple for other people. But this is you. You know, Sunday and I have thrown that word around freely for as long as I can remember, but don’t think it’s gone unnoticed that you’ve never returned the favor. Sunday asked me about it once. She was twelve and hurt that you wouldn’t say it. You remember that?”

The memory comes back like a stone slung at my forehead. “She thanked me for gifting her a diary for her birthday. The therapist gave me the idea.” I shrug it off. I remember that night, Sunday telling me how much she loved me. I could see the pain in her eyes because I wouldn’t say it back. She never asked again.

Nolan takes a breath. “I told her one day you’d break free from the pain you were in and you’d never stop telling her how much you loved her. But in the meantime, I let her know you cared. You backed it up with actions, and that was all that mattered. Sunday and I are okay with it because we know you love us deep down inside. Some people need to hear it, though. And when you don’t say it—they’re not so sure how you feel.”

“I know how I feel. I feel like shit. That’s how I feel.” I glance out toward the hills, toward that sacred spot where my mother’s soul left her body. “I miss her.”

Nolan slings an arm around me, and I lose it. Tears come hard and fast, and I wipe them away with the back of my hand.

“It wasn’t just her life I took that day.” It bumps out hoarse. “It was mine, too. It’s like I turned into some robot. Her death short-circuited me and left me too afraid to feel anything ever again. The only reason Sunday and you were exempt was because I had those feelings in me long before we lost Mom. That’s all I had was the past. There was no moving forward. There can’t be. I killed the person I loved most.”

“Sounds like you’ve been feeding yourself a steady diet of bullshit for way too long. Our mother died because she ran a red light and some idiot beamed her in the right spot. She died instantly, Rush. One minute she was thinking about how much she loved you, how she didn’t want to disappoint you by showing up late, and the next she was flying with the angels. She didn’t suffer for one second, and she wouldn’t want you to either. And if she knew about this crap-fest you’ve been living in, she’d be pissed. She lived to make us happy. There was no way she’d want her death to bring you so much pain. Yes, it hurt. It still hurts. But to put your heart on ice? To lose something great with someone special—she’d be the first to kick your balls in. If you really care about this girl, do the right thing. Our mother would want you to. So I guess the question is, do you love her?”

I push out a hard breath and walk over to the ledge, as the lights below wink on and off like a warning.

Nolan pops up beside me and lets out his own lungful of air. “It doesn’t get easier, does it?”

“Nope. But life keeps happening.”

“You think it’s time to make her proud? I never did think she’d approve of your lifestyle choices. You’re the kind of guy she would have warned your sister to stay away from.”

I tick my head to the side. “She had better.” The last person I’d want Sunday with is someone like me.

I look over at Hollow Brook Hills, toward that very section where fate decided to unravel my family. “I loved her. I loved her so damn much it still kills me on the inside.”

Nolan lands his arm over my shoulders and pulls his head to mine. “You don’t have to stop. That’s the beauty of loving someone. It can go on and on and on. Just like the way her love still goes on for you.”

Something in me loosens at the thought. My mother had never stopped loving me. She loves me still.

I look up toward the sky, blinking back tears, and it feels as if that milky curtain of stars is pressing down all its weight on me, as if my mother’s arms were reaching out from beyond just to offer up one final embrace.

“I love you,” I whisper to the sky, and my body suddenly feels lighter than air. “I said it.” A dark laugh rumbles from deep inside me as Nolan rattles my arm.

“You did it. You said the best words of all, and you didn’t blow off the side of the mountain or whatever the hell you thought might happen. Don’t be afraid to love people, man. And when and if you find the right girl—say it to her loud and often. And then do what you do best”—he pulls me in to a tight embrace—“back it up with actions.”

Nolan takes off, and I continue to stare out at the holy spot where my mother died.

“I love you, Mom,” I whisper. “And I hope you won’t mind, but I love someone else, too.” My entire body swims with relief as those words leave my lips. “I love Trixie. I love Trixie Toberman.”

A roar expels from me as if I just shot the winning basket in the game of a lifetime, and about three people to my left look as if they might need to stage an intervention.

I need to leave. I need to tell Trixie. And if she won’t listen to me, I know just how to get the message across.

Trixie and I may have had a bumpy start, but we are far from finished.