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I hesitate when my focus lands on Luke, heaviness settling over me again. “Or maybe it won’t.”

“‘Step back, fast, I’m coming for you. Step back, you can’t handle what I’ve got.’”

Callie’s voice carries through the silence as if she’s visualizing the hockey opener.

“That’s it,” I say with a quick smile before the humor drains away again. There’s nothing soft or funny about that bitter anthem. “People think it’s an aggressive song. A challenge to someone, and the hockey link certainly doesn’t help.”

Her gaze shoots to me. “It’s not?”

“No. That’s not what Luke’s saying at all. It’s actually saturated with self-loathing.”

“Saturated with self-loathing?” she echoes in a dry tone. “What do you mean you’re not good with adjectives?”

I fire a smirk in her direction. “I’ve been known to string a few together. Anyway, the part you know is just the hook. The chorus is, ‘I’m the anchor drowning you. I’m your infection, better get back. I’m the hurricane, angel, shred those wings. Step back, better get back.’”

The lyrics swirl around us like they’re caught in that deadly hurricane.

She shudders. “And that was even before Elena’s suicide?”

I flinch and go numb.

My chest tightens until it feels like my heart is being stung by a thousand needles. Guess she’s learned more of the story.

“Yes. Elena was…”

Words flood in, jumbled and raw. They press on my throat with a strange urgency.

I don’t get to talk about Elena anymore. Not in a way that matters, the way Ineedto. The media wants superficial soundbites. My therapist wants breakthroughs for my file. Even my family deals with her loss like she was a beloved miniseries they watched a while ago and remember fondly. Everything sugarcoated and “glossified” into a completely different reality that doesn’t help anyone.

Luke was the only one who understood my pain the way I felt it. Who was willing to face it head-on and let it bleed him dry like it was doing to me. It hurt like hell but it felt good at the same time. Necessary. Elena was still real when we were together. Her death happened and meant something. She was a three-dimensional part of our story, beautiful and flawed and angry and sad and strong.

When Luke left, he removed the only true connection I had to my sister and my grief.

“She was a beautiful person, inside and out,” I explain, desperate for her to understand. “Deep down, he never thought he deserved her.”

I study Luke’s sleeping face. He looks like a completely different person than he is. He looks like the person he could be. “I think that’s why he did the things he did.”

“What things?”

I flinch again, kicking myself for going down this road. Ishould have just left it at that. I avert my gaze, but end up with a direct hit in the mirror.

“You know, things,” I hedge. “There are a lot of temptations out there. On the road. For us.”

“He cheated on her?”

“A lot,” I confess in a hesitant tone. “He never should have married her and he knew it. For her sake. He couldn’t be the person she deserved. Not with the way things were for us. He couldn’t forgive himself before, but especially after. God, you want to see a person who hates himself?”

She follows my stare back to Luke. A knife twists through my heart like it’s happening all over again.

“And what am I supposed to do?” Now that the words are flowing, I don’t know how to stop them. “What do you say to a monster you love who’s finally figured out what he is?”

Fuck.

The unintentional mic drop sucks any remaining light from the room.

But I can’t take it back. I shouldn’t and I won’t.

I also can’t sit here and do this anymore. I’ve stalled enough anyway.