Page 6 of As the Rain Falls (Sainte Madeleine #1)

The rescue team wouldn’t give us any details, not until she got taken out of the car with no heartbeat. Someone stupidly tried CPR and nearly broke her rib cage in the process.

Beckett had to beg them to stop.

Like, actually beg.

He didn’t speak a single word as he carried Lucia away from the river, and we all blamed the shock at the time. He just… sat. Beckett sat on the muddy ground and hugged her dead body for a very long time. He ignored everyone who came close and tried to talk to him.

I don’t like to think about it—about how he had to be physically dragged away from her.It felt heartless and almost exploitative to watch while doing nothing to stop it. Nobody moved a finger, not even as he cried, asking to keep her for longer.

The police just covered her face, and Beckett kept gritting each word like it took everything in him to be able to do so. His mind had completely shut down, and he wouldn’t stop stuttering.Beckett does that a lot, especially when he feels nervous.

“I know I’m, like, younger.” I place a strand of hair behind my ear, gesturing around as I speak. “By a few years, and all that.”

Two years precisely.It really isn’t all that much.Beckett still gives me a side-glance, his dimple popping again as the corner of his lips twitches.

“And all that, huh?”

I roll my eyes and bite my lips before I speak again, “I’m just saying. I’m here for you if you ever want to talk.”

He doesn’t look at me, and I start to feel like I might be pushing it. I bite my nail, wanting to bite my tongue.

“I mean, only if you want to say something. It’s not like you owe me any—”

“Angelina got released from the hospital,” Beckett cuts me off, his voice sounding more strained than before. “Her mother gave me a call the other day.”

I make a surprised sound.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How is she?” I ask, genuinely feeling curious about it.

“We haven’t talked much since she got admitted,” he tells me, sounding almost ashamed of it. “I wanted to call her, but then I didn’t.”

“Oh.” I nod in understanding. “I’m guessing she’s not coming back to school anytime soon.”

Beckett shakes his head and says, “I don’t know, Cass. I guess not.”

Angelina Cardoso is, well, she was Lucia’s best friend.The two girls were often seen together and shared the same bad reputation.Even now that Lucia is gone, it’s still hard for me to picture one without the other.

In my eyes, Lucia and Angelina are still a pair. I always saw them as the average cool girls in the movies. Cool girls who looked older, dressed older, and behaved older sometimes too.

Unfortunately, that kind of attitude never works in a small place like Le Port, where people are quick to make assumptions that somehow last forever and everybody knows everyone. Now that Lucia is gone, I mean. Her name is kind of being dragged through the mud.

It’s the spectacle effect of it all, I think.They’re vultures, and Lucia…

She is definitely a carcass.

Angelina becomes one too by association. That’s what happens when things get out of hand, which is why it’s so important to keep some things about ourselves private. The less people know about you, the less they can ruin, and all that.

Lucia was never one to care about what others had to say about her, but she would have cared a little more, I guess, if she had known how much it would turn out to hurt others. She just wasn’t given enough time.

“She was really sick for a while…” Beckett trails off, sounding lost.

After a moment of silence, he clears his throat and speeds up to pass another truck headed to the city. I stare at the window, watching as the scenery around us turns into a green blurry sight.

“I thought, you know, after Lucia’s death…”

Angelina went through some kind of mental breakdown after the accident. The doctors called it a psychotic break. My mother called it demon possession. She had to be locked in the psychiatric care aisle by the end of the summer, no visitations allowed.

The rumors going on about her are brutal. People talk like she’s a bit of a freak.

“I don’t know. Kayla might’ve said something the other day,” I speak in a gentle way, tucking my hair behind my ear again. “I’m really sorry she’s hurting, Beckett.”

I’m sorry you’re hurting too.

I wish I could take all the pain away.

I add, “It really sucks how everything is not that simple, right? I mean. That we can’t fix things just because we really want to.”

“You’re absolutely right, and the worst thing is, I know it’s my fault,” he lowers his voice, sounding remorseful. “She claimed for the longest time that Lucia wasn’t drunk that night, but I read the autopsy and totally freaked out on her for lying. It’s all on me.”

I stare at him. “Don’t say that.”

“But it is,” he insists, muttering to himself. “Everything’s just… just falling apart. I’m still trying to understand, uh, but I don’t get it.”

I frown. “Understand what?”

Beckett drags the back of his hand below his nose, sniffling quietly. “How we got here.”

“Like, what happened to Angelina?”

He hums, and we fall into comfortable silence again.I start thinking about changing the topic, but Beckett scoffs self-deprecatingly after a while.

“Well, no, actually. I was lying just now. I know exactly what happened to Angie. I happened to her,” he says, probably referring to an argument they shared at the funeral. “Me and my big mouth.”

I was there to watch it happen. The whole thing was… terrible.

“Beckett.”

“I’m just saying,”he cuts me off again, shoulders tensing. “What gets me is… I don’t even know what got Lucia to drink so much that night. She wasn’t like the papers are saying. She wasn’t.”

“I know.”

Beckett still insists, and my heart starts to break a little for the guy the more I listen.

“A beer here and there. Fucking shots at the beach for Angelina’s birthday. She is a teen for goodness’s sake. Was,” he corrects himself. “She was a teen, but she wouldn’t drink herself to death.”

“I—”

“Something happened to her, Cassandra,” Beckett confides with a broken whisper. “I know it.”

I can see that the question is wearing him out, sucking the life out of him. Struggling to find out what to say next, I swallow hard and consider the possibility. Tragedies are not just things that happen. I mean. There is always something setting the motions at play, right?

“Brother’s instinct?” I point out, wanting to lighten the mood.

He takes notice of that attempt.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry,” Beckett tries to laugh it off, but his attempt is weak. “I’m so sorry, I must sound crazy to you.”

“You don’t,” I reassure him that he doesn’t, shaking my head lightly to emphasize what I’m saying. “Who am I to call you anything?”

Beckett knew Lucia better than anyone. I’m sure of that. To me, Lucia was a happy girl most of the time. Loud, outspoken. She wasn’t the type to be easily beaten down, but the devil is in the details, isn’t it? Something that seems good on the outside can be totally different on the inside.

I clear my throat. “Maybe you’re not so far off.”

“You’re being too kind,” he smiles weakly, his gaze softening. “Thanks for… I don’t know. Listening.”

Something painful twists in my guts. Beckett sounds so tired, like he’s made this argument in his head a couple of times.

“It’s nothing, really,” I answer honestly.

Another song starts and ends before he speaks again.

“I don’t think I’ll know what to do with myself if I turn out to be right.”

I fix my hair, tucking it behind my ears. “Like, about Lucia?”

“Yeah,” he clears his throat. “It was my job to protect her.”

I wince, eyes fixed on the road.Beckett doesn’t add anything else.

The car stops at a red light before his gaze snaps back to me.

Songbird echoes through the sound system.

Rain is still falling, but considerably less so than it had been before, and the smell of his scent is comforting and safe.

I feel my eyelids drooping as I let out a small yawn, my upper body stirring.

“Isn’t this your favorite song?” he asks, checking the scratches on my knees again. I’d completely forgotten about hurting myself. The wounds don’t even sting anymore, but he’s still fixating on it.

“It’s yours,” I recall, eyes dropping to my lap, where I know myself to be playing with my fingers, plucking the pink nail polish off. “I like the second track better.”

“No, you don’t,” Beckett retorts, sounding certain of it. “Songbird is your favorite one. You always sing to every single word.”

I blush, not knowing what to do with the fact that he’d notice something so stupid about me. He moves to press the button, wanting to go back to the second track, but I stop him before he gets to it.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

Because Songbird might just be my favorite now.

“We should listen to it in proper order.” I bite my lips, picking at the skin with my front teeth. “I don’t like to rush things.”

Feeling too self-conscious, I draw my hand back, turning my body so that I’m facing him. He blinks once or twice as the song continues to play.

“Hey, Becky?”

“Yes, Cass?”

“The lights are green again.”

“Oh, right.”

He stretches his arms before yawning too.

The car behind us starts honking, wanting us to move. I snort lightly when Beckett curses out loud, rolling the windows down and telling the man to kindly fuck off or drive around us.