Page 133 of Reckless Hearts

When my hand finally brushed against her arm, the relief lasted only a heartbeat before the horror set in—she wasn’t moving, wasn’t fighting against my grip as I pulled her to the surface.

“And when I got her to shore, she was gone.”

I feel detached as I say the words.

As detached as I felt when I pulled Emmy’s body from the water, when I watched the paramedics try to revive her, when I heard my mother’s anguished screams, when I saw my father collapse to his knees beside her lifeless form.

Like some fundamental part of me had broken off, leaving a vast, echoing emptiness. Everything became muffled, like I was watching from a distance, and I noticed absurd details. Her charm bracelet, which she’d been so proud of, flashed in the sun as the paramedics worked on her. Mum’s sun hat rolled away in the wind, no one moving to catch it. Someone wrapped a towel over her shoulders—her favorite one with the unicorns she’d begged Mum to pack.

“Oh, Marcus,” Seb says.

But my story hasn’t finished. What happened to Emmy isn’t my only sin.

“I didn’t tell my parents the truth, that I pushed her. I let them believe it was an accident, that she slipped.”

I run a shaky hand through my hair, unable to meet Seb’s gaze. “My mum… She’d always had some mental health problems. But after Emmy died, she sank into this deep depression. When I was fifteen, she was in a psychiatric institution for over a year, getting help. But then she seemed to get better. She came home, and she was more like her old self.

“I wasn’t doing so well though… The secret I was carrying, it felt like it was a cancer, eating me alive from the inside out.”

I sit rigidly, my entire body vibrating with tension. My fists clench at my sides, nails digging into my palms. But I force myself to continue.

“And I thought… I thought if I told her what really happened, it would help. I guess I was looking for absolution, you know? I wanted her to tell me she still loved me despite what I’d done. So I told her.”

“What happened?” Seb asks the question like he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“She went silent initially. Then she laughed, this horrible, broken laugh, and said, ‘I know you’re lying. You have to be lying.’”

I remember her hands shaking so violently she dropped her coffee mug. It shattered on the kitchen floor, dark liquid spreading like a stain across the tiles. She didn’t even seem to notice, her eyes fixed on some point beyond me, beyond everything.

“She overdosed two days later. I found her when I came home from school. She didn’t leave a note, so they don’t know if it was deliberate or accidental.”

“Oh my god, Marcus,” Seb says.

“My father hates me as a result. Like, absolutely loathes me. My mother obviously told him I pushed Emmy, and after Mum overdosed, he could barely look at me. That’s why he shipped me off to boarding school. He didn’t even care when I changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name… I thought if I could become a big Hollywood star, do something with my life, prove I was worth something, it might change things. But he doesn’t even respond to my messages anymore.”

I press my palms flat against my thighs, trying to stop the trembling that seems to start in my bones and ripple outward through my skin.

“Marcus, you need therapy. You need to talk to someone about this…” Seb says, but I cut him off by shaking my head.

“No. I can’t… I can’t talk about it with a stranger. I don’t want to relive it. I’m only telling you because…because I want you to know who I am deep down. And why, no matter how I feel about you, I can’t ever be what you need.

“I can give you sex, and I can exchange messages with you, but I can’t give you a happy ever after, Seb. I’m not capable of it.”

Seb just stares at me, his eyes wide.

“It’s like I’ve got this hole inside me that nothing can fill. No matter how happy you make me, how many good reviews I get, or how much money I make, it doesn’t make a difference… You said you love me, and I didn’t say it back because I don’t think I’m capable of love anymore…” I take a shuddering breath. “But I do know that whatever withered remains of my heart are left belong to you.”

30

Seb

Oh my fucking god.

I’d known Marcus was haunted. I just had no idea the true extent of his ghosts.

The enormity of what Marcus has just shared crashes over me like a wave. A nine-year-old boy carrying the weight of his sister’s death. A teenager desperate for absolution, only to feel that his confession triggered his mother’s overdose. The pieces of Marcus that never made sense before—his self-destructive tendencies, his resistance to our relationship, his need to be anyone but himself, his drive to prove himself—suddenly click into devastating focus.

How is it possible that this man has functioned for so many years with all the grief and guilt inside him?