Page 251 of Burn Bright

I look up at my oldest brother. Seeing him clearly through the scalding sheen of tears. “What’s wrong with me, Charlie?”

He stares at me in ways he only reserves for Beckett. “It’s the butterfly effect.”

“What is?”

“What you believe in.” He lets go of me as I sink back on my heels like I’ve been shoved. “Even the smallest actions you take can have extraordinary consequences. The wings of a butterfly flapping can cause a tornado halfway around the world. A single fallen domino will tip over a thousand more. Cause and effect. Everything changes everything. It’s the chaos theory. And maybe it manifested when you were little. Your responsibility to protect the earth. You recycle—you save the entire forest. You don’t eat meat—you save the animals from extinction. Then maybe it grew into something worse.”

A chill snakes down my spine. “What do you mean?”

He’s not irritated for me not “getting it” fast enough. He’s not even pulling me to my feet. Snow tries to bite through my pantlegs, but I can’t feel anything but Charlie’s words as they try to unlock a chain around my body.

“I mean when you started feeling like you were the source of all the terrible things that happen in our family. The one responsible. The butterfly causing the storm. When was that?”

I stare off at the snow. All I see is the car crash. Slamming into the median. The flip. The violent crunch of metal. My hands slipping off the wheel. My family I’d hurt, the ones in the car with me. I’d never felt so responsible for the pain of others until that point.

It overwhelmed me. Consumed me. Haunted me for weeks into months into…

“I think the car crash.” The monster grew beneath me and began shaking my bed. “I was driving, Charlie. I literally caused the accident.”

“It was raining. Paparazzi were chasing us. They caused it. But I can tell you this a thousand times, and you’ll still struggle to believe me.”

How is he in my mind? “Why do you know that?”

“Because…” He has trouble now. He falters, tipping his head to look at me with more care and concern he’s ever given or offered or extended before. “I’m almost certain you’re dealing with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

My brows pinch. “No.” I reanimate, pulling myself to my feet. I walk over to the tree stump, my gloved hands on my head. I let them slip to my neck. “I would’ve known.” OCD runs in our family. “Dad would’ve known.”

Charlie is standing. “He’s not around you enough. He’s not a figure in the sky watching our every move. He can only see what you show him, and even then, you would only have these occasional breakdowns. You wereobnoxiously—and I mean it inthe rudest sense—vague. It was a clever way to lie, but not clever enough because I’m clearlyhere.And you’re not dead.”

I go cold. “That wasn’t the plan,” I assure him. “I didn’t set out to take my life.”

“You think you can survive out here? On nuts and berries? With a growing, feasting mental illness?”

My nose flares. My brain spins. I have to sit or I might pass out. I take a seat on a tree stump around the firepit. “You’re all safer away from me.”

Charlie forces a tight smile. “Right. So you purchased a plot of land in Alaska. To live here for…?”

I clench my jaw, the alarm not subsiding. Restlessness rattles my whole body. It’s taking everything not to shoot back to my feet. I open my mouth to offer him the actual answer, but it’s trapped inside me. “I can’t…” I gaze unblinkingly at the peeling bark of a tree. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just physically feel like I can’t…” I heave for more oxygen in the biting cold.Fuck.“Like I’m afraid what happens if I do tell you everything.”

“I know that you plan to live here for the rest of your life. You fear if you share this knowledge—which I already have because I’mme—then it’ll compromise my safety. You’ve been trying to protect us from your own mind. Your illness was never going to allow you to tell usexactlywhat was happening or this elaborate plan to help us.” He narrows his piercing yellow-green eyes into me. “You realize that?”

I’m starting to.

I unzip my heavy blue jacket. “I was able to tell Harriet things. More than I could share with anyone else.” I shake my head as thoughts whirl. “I told her how I felt…how nothing was making sense to me.”

Charlie studies me. “You weren’t trying to protect her as well?”

“It’s not that.” I think back. “I didn’t feel like I had to.”

“You weren’t afraid of causing her pain?”

“Never,” I realize, and I blink away the burn in my eyes. “I kept telling myself I was doing good by her. I was good for her. Then she felt like the only one I never hurt. She was the only one I ever loved without harming.” I laugh harshly to myself. “I don’t even know if that’s fucking true, but in my head…it’s all that I understood.”

Charlie shifts his weight, leaning on the hiking pole. “She’s not here though.” He swings his left pole toward the thicket of trees. “She’s not there. She’s definitely not in the ugliest cabin you could’ve purchased.”

I almost laugh. “Yeah, sorry I didn’t hire an interior decorator.”

“I meant the outside, but I’m sure the inside is just as heinous.”