Page 56 of What He Never Knew

“Because it’s my own damn fault. Maybe I’m meant to be alone, you know? I mean, I was afraid to even get adog, scared I might fuck up its life, too. And you know what?” He stopped, every part of him stilling, all laughter gone as he whispered his next words. “To this day, I still feel like it should have been me.”

He lifted his head, his eyes locked on mine. Then, he repeated the worst thing I’d ever heard him say.

“It should have been me, Sarah.”

I swallowed. “No, Reese.”

“Yes. Yes, it should have been. I wish it was. I wish it was me who was gone, and they were still here. I wish I didn’t have to know what it was like to live without them. I wish so many fucking things.”

And then, the man who seemed to carry all his pain on his shoulders broke under the weight.

His head fell into his hands, shoulders shaking as he sobbed. I crossed the kitchen in three steps, wrapping my arms around him like I could shield him, like he was crying from being struck by bullets that I could somehow stop with my own flesh. As soon as I touched him, he sobbed harder.

I couldn’t help but cry, too.

Maybe it was because of my own loss. Maybe it was because I understood everything he said, everything he felt about having to keep living now that his family was gone. Maybe it was seeing a full-grown man break like that, submitting to his emotions, letting me see him weak and vulnerable and not okay.

Maybe it was that my heart was tied to his, perhaps from the very start. And when he was in pain, so was I.

It was impossible to say how much time passed with my arms around him, his face in his hands, the soup growing cold on the stove. Eventually, he grew quiet, his snobs turning to sniffs before he shifted under my arms. I pulled away, letting him straighten, and my chest squeezed again at the sight of his red, puffy eyes.

“God, I’m sorry,” he said, reaching for one of the napkins in the holder on his counter. He blew his nose, wiping away the tears from his eyes with an embarrassed glance in my direction. “This might actually be the most mortifying thing I’ve ever done.”

I smiled, but it was weak, falling too soon as I took the seat next to him. “What, you’re embarrassed that you have feelings, that you’re hurting on the anniversary of your family’s death?” I shook my head. “If you didn’t feel like this, I’d be concerned you were a serial killer.”

He smirked, letting out a long, low breath. “Yeah, well, I should have had this breakdown alone. Not with my student.” He eyed me then, smirk climbing. “Not that I had a choice in the matter.”

“I brought yousoup,” I defended. “Excuse me for being a nice human being.”

He chuckled, silence falling over us as he wiped a hand over his now-dry face. Reese took a swig from his beer can as an uncomfortable wave rolled over me. I swallowed down the urge to vomit.

“My dad died, too.”

Reese snapped his attention to me so fast I thought he’d broken his neck. He opened his mouth, let it hang there, and then closed it again, waiting a long moment before he spoke. “I thought… you talked about your parents a couple times, I just always assumed…”

“I know,” I said on a sigh, folding my arms over my chest with my gaze on the floor. “I don’t really talk about it much. I don’t really talk aboutanything, mostly because I feel the same way you do.” I wrinkled my nose. “Well, notexactlythe same, but… I understand what you mean when you say that you feel alone. That maybe you’remeantto be that way.”

Reese grimaced. “You’re too young to feel that way.”

I laughed at that. “Yeah, well, I’m too young for a lot of the shit that’s happened in my life. But, that’s just how it is sometimes.”

He was quiet at that, and just as that silence fell over us, a loud rumble of thunder rolled through the house.

“My dad was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, kind of like your family,” I continued after a long pause. “He stopped at a convenience store when it was being robbed. The kid shot him without even a second thought.” I shook my head, remembering the security footage my mother and I had to watch at the trial — like any punishment was suitable for what he’d taken from us. “It was like a nightmare, seeing how fast his life was taken from him. Just a flick of a boy’s finger on a trigger — one not much older than I was at the time — and a bullet was sent straight through my father’s head. And then, he was just… gone.”

Reese’s shoulders fell, and I knew without him saying a word that he completely understood that feeling.

“My life seemed so perfect up until that point,” I whispered. “And I swear, ever since then, everything has gone downhill.”

Reese chuffed. “Isn’t that the wildest part? I felt the same way, like I lived in this bubble of oblivion where I felt invincible, like nothing could touch me or the people I loved. And then that bubble popped, and I woke up in an entirely new world.”

“And this new world is a cruel sonofabitch.”

He nodded, bringing his gaze to me, then. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

I glanced at him just in time to see him close his eyes, like how old I was when it happened wasn’t fair. I guess, in a way, it wasn’t. I was just so used to it, so used to the narrative of my life that I didn’t even know how to feel sad about it anymore.