Page 112 of Atone

“Don’t say her name.”

“She was dead when I got there, Mila. She was dead the second her head hit that table. That’s why Torin ran and why I pulled you out.”

“No.” I try to shake free, and he grabs my chin.

“Yes.”

I’m fighting for air. Choking on the smoke in my memories. Trying to make sense of the pictures reeling through my mind. Torin grabbed her, so I threw my knife at him. He shoved her to the side.

She fell.

Hard.

But she was alive.

Her eyes were open.

Her mouth was moving.

She was screaming.

Right?

I close my eyes, but now, all I hear is silence.

Remi was gone.

Alex releases my chin like he senses my defeat. But he doesn’t step back, and we don’t break gazes. His thumb brushes my cheek, and I realize I’m crying again. The same hands that pulled me from the fire try to comfort me now.

Hands that forced me to live, when I spent so many years after that wishing I didn’t.

“You should have let me burn,” I say, finally.

A sad smile crosses his lips. “I never will.”

That, I believe. Through all the lies.

“When I left Oregon, I never expected to see you again.” Alex brushes his hand back into my hair, delicately. “Until you walked into Montgomery with my sister, and I thought I was seeing a ghost. The angel of death, dragging me home.”

My angel.

It’s the only nickname he uses for me because that’s what he thought I was.

“You found me.” He holds the back of my head in his hand. “You pulled me from the darkness.”

“When you ask me why I couldn’t stop this from happening, I’ll tell you it was your fault for caving in on yourself in the direct path of my attention.”I recite the words from Alex’s journal back to him. “You were in flames, and I was shivering. I held my hand over the heat for too long. Held my heart over the destruction. I got lost in you.”

He nods.

His journal entry was about me.

It was all always about me.

“For all I’ve done, I don’t deserve you, Mila. But there you were. Wandering into my path one more time when I was at my weakest.” He pulls my hand to his chest and holds it over where I know seven marks are carved into his skin. “You asked me why I kept going after I ended up in a psychiatric ward. The truth is, for a while, I didn’t. I stopped talking, and I gave up. But then you walked into my room and changed everything. A girl who would die to try to save her best friend. A girl with a heart so fucking big I can hardly stand it because it makes you vulnerable. I was dead in every way that mattered, and there you were, still fighting.”

“I couldn’t just let it go.”

His lips turn down. “I know.”