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Was I like that with Sid? I glanced at him to find his eyes were now on Grace.

The look on his face told me everything I needed to know.

Their relationship might’ve been new—only a handful of months old or so—but that guy was going to be in love with my sister for the rest of his life.

I just knew it. And, yeah, it bothered me.

Maybe not to the same degree as it bothered me with Ricky.

Sid had asked for my blessing, he’d given me a heads-up before taking the leap, but …

no, fuck, his relationship with Grace bothered me a lot .

But why ?

***

I asked myself that question for another year as I drank myself through the days until Ricky and Lucy’s wedding.

I coaxed my way down the aisle with Grace—Lucy’s maid of honor—on my arm.

Then I stood beside Ricky as the rest of the bridesmaids and groomsmen walked down the aisle, paving the way for my asshole of a father to escort the beautiful bride to her jovial groom.

I hadn’t seen my father since coming home.

He hadn’t shown up for the rehearsal dinner, claimed he didn’t need to rehearse something that people had been doing for years, and now my stomach was in knots at the thought of seeing him again after all this time.

What would he think of me? Would he say anything about the hearing aids that were just visible enough to notice if you knew to look for them?

Maybe he’ll feel sorry for me.

Jesus, was that what I wanted? For my father to take pity on me? I would’ve preferred respect, but I guessed pity would be better than him despising me.

I clenched my jaw and balled my hands into fists as the song changed from Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” to Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” A memory of a woman with reddish-blonde hair came to mind.

Melanie .

Her soft lips. Kissable . Her kind, sparkling blue eyes.

Her melodic voice and sweet, sweet laugh.

I had wanted to dance with her to this song, playing over the jukebox.

I had wanted … fuck, I had wanted so much from that night, and years later, I still couldn’t shake the unanswerable question of, What if things had been different?

What if she hadn’t had a boyfriend? What if I hadn’t been just passing through?

I didn’t know why I still remembered that one inconsequential night so vividly or why I felt such a prominent ache deep in the pit of my chest at the thought of her, but I did, even if for only a moment.

I lingered in it, drowned in it, wishing I had danced with her anyway.

Kissed her anyway. Told her how I felt anyway because maybe she felt the same.

Maybe she would’ve called her boyfriend, told him it was over, told him she’d fallen madly in love with a sergeant from Massachusetts, and everything—every little fucking thing—could’ve been different …

I lifted my head from the memory of the heartbreaking longing in those blue eyes.

I saw her vividly now, in my mind’s eye, as if I’d just seen her yesterday.

I wanted to go back there. I yearned for her.

I stared at her memory, wishing I could wish her into reality, until I blinked again, and then …

All I could see was him .

Dad .

His fifties had barely touched him, it seemed, with only his temples showcasing a little more white than before.

He kept his eyes forward, unseeing, and his mouth was in a straight, terse line.

He wasn’t happy. No, he wasn’t happy about this at all—but, dammit, he had come .

Oh my God, he had shown up for my sister on her wedding day, but when I had needed a ride from the airport, the sorry bastard had hung up the fucking phone, and, oh my fucking God , he was here !

A terrible rage and sorrow pressed aggressively to my chest, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from charging at him with fists swinging. I wanted to break him. I wanted to swing blow after blow against his ears until he couldn’t hear anymore either.

But then there was Ricky, laying a hand over my shoulder, his touch somehow grounding me. I turned to him, and in his eyes, I saw my old best friend. One of the few people who had known what an awful, cruel, unforgiving man my father was.

“You good?” he asked quietly.

I just knew if I said no, he would do something extreme. Something that would maybe ruin this day for him and my sister.

I tamped down my anger with a swallow. “Yeah. I’m good.”

He narrowed his eyes with a doubtful, knowing look. “You sure?”

I flicked my gaze in the direction of my father and saw him looking right back at me. I resisted the urge to flinch under his scrutiny and looked back at Ricky.

“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

“I think I speak for all of us when I say, I’m starting to think you’re lying every single time you say that. ”

I talked my lips into smiling as I turned away with a roll of my eyes toward the sky overhead. “Shut up and get married.”

A smattering of fluffy white clouds hung above us, encircling the sun.

Bob Ross would’ve called them happy little clouds, and they were.

A picturesque sky, making a beautiful backdrop for the wedding photos that would undoubtedly make their way to walls and albums to be looked at over and over again.

It was a blessing, when the night before had been filled with thunderstorms. I was certain they’d carry into today to ruin the outdoor ceremony.

But they didn’t, and I’d taken it as a good omen.

But now, with my father steadily approaching, I realized I didn’t need black clouds in the sky to tarnish the day.

I just needed that man to look in my direction, and even when I was thirty fucking years old, my thundering heart couldn’t find a steady rhythm.

“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” the officiant asked.

My father was slow to answer, and when I dared to glance at him, I saw the look of smug satisfaction. Any bit of control, any way he could find to bring the attention back to him, he was going to hold on to it for as long as he could. Even on a day that wasn’t at all about him.

“I do,” he finally replied.

The officiant said something, and then Ricky reached out to take Lucy’s hand. She laid her palm over his and took a step, but my father had yet to release the hold he had on her arm. She turned to look at him, and with a smirk on his lizard-like lips, he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek .

“I love you, Daddy,” I heard Lucy whisper.

Acid rose up my throat at the proclamation. But what was worse came after.

“I love you too,” he replied just as quietly, but, oh, I heard, despite my diagnosis, and my lungs tripped through a torturous series of breaths as Lucy came to stand beside her groom and my father went to take a seat beside my mother.

My mother . The woman who couldn’t be bothered to say goodbye to me before heading off to war. The woman who hadn’t seen me in years. She was here now though, all dolled up and looking every bit as beautiful as the day she herself had gotten married.

I didn’t know this woman.

This woman was a fictitious character, only living in faded photographs as far as I was concerned.

But there she was in the front row. Beaming at her younger daughter, if only by a few minutes, never once looking at me, her only son. The one who had somehow lived , even though he shouldn’t have.

Fuck.

Nobody wants me alive.

Not even me.

My palms grew clammy at the thought. My ears—as useless as they were—began to ring. The sound of phantom gunshots and the blasting of bombs in the distance corroded the walls of my skull as every breath grew more and more shallow.

Keep it together.

I swallowed, sniffled, and looked at the sky.

Happy little clouds .

Fluffy. White.

My memory plucked out a moment of my bullet piercing the space between a pair of dark, unblinking eyes. The woman who had killed Lizzie. Had she been a mother? Had she cared that Lizzie was a mother too?

Lizzie .

No, no, no. Stop it. Look at the clouds. Breathe in the air. Inhale, exhale.

“… the rings?”

Inhale, exhale. Come on, asshole. You can do this.

Something nudged my wrist. I startled with a gasp, pulling my arm away. I took a step backward, bumped into someone behind me, and gasped again. A hand landed on my shoulder, a voice muttered something I didn’t understand, but that hand … I glanced at it.

Sid .

Sid’s here .

I caught my breath. My eyes looked ahead, struggling to focus on who had touched my wrist, and then I saw him. Ricky . My friend. His smile disguised the look of concern he held deep within his eyes.

“S-sorry.” I rubbed the spot he’d touched with my other hand, Sid’s hand still on my shoulder. “Sorry.”

Ricky nodded. “It’s okay, man. You’re okay.”

Sid leaned in and whispered into my ear, “The rings, Max. He was asking about the rings.”

Ricky chuckled awkwardly, and the crowd before us laughed. “We kinda need them now.”

I struggled to pull in a breath as I swept my eyes out to all fifty of those faces, all laughing or annoyed or bored. I turned to look at Lucy, leaning over to stare at me, her face blanketed with nothing but concern and worry.

It was me. I had done that.

I’m ruining everything.

My gaze passed over my parents, both looking horribly displeased and angry. Impatient. Like I was nothing more than a misbehaving little boy, goofing off at his sister’s wedding.

I thought about Smoky, our dog. The first life I had destroyed— taken— by being stupid and irresponsible.

“O-oh, right.”

I dug a shaking hand into my breast pocket and fumbled, pulling them out.

My fingers felt so big, those bands of gold felt so small, and they almost slipped from my grasp.

Ricky grabbed them quickly before they could fall, then patted a hand against my shoulder in a gesture I was sure he thought was reassuring before turning back to Lucy so they could finish exchanging their vows.