“I was never any good. That was Mack.” Maizie tossed the ball back and forth between her hands. She thought of how many times she had done the same thing for Mack. Rebounding every ball for him until one of them was too exhausted to play anymore. The memory didn’t hurt as bad as she thought it would have.
“I should have come back here sooner,” she said.
“Why didn’t you?” Christian’s eyes held genuine concern for her.
“Because every time I used to walk through that door, it was the same image. Mack, shooting shot after shot. I didn’t want to step through the door and not see him here.” Maizie’s voice became sticky with emotion, but she swallowed and lined up her shot. She missed again, and Christian retrieved the ball for her this time.
“Did your dad like basketball?” The words slipped from her lips before she knew what she was saying.
Christian stared at the ground and nodded. “He worked a lot, but he never missed a game. That game when he wasn’t there. . .” His voice broke, and Maizie ached to comfort him. “That was the worst game I’ve ever played. I’d known something was wrong from the beginning because my dad was always there.”
Christian passed her the ball.
“I’m sorry.” What more could she say? She hated when people tried to fix her, to tell her everything was okay. Her brother was dead. Christian’s dad was dead. Nothing was okay about that.
“I get it. It’s hard to experience life without the people you used to experience it with.” Christian gave her a sad smile, and Maizie’s heart broke into a million pieces. It was true. It had been hard to do things alone that she used to do with Mack. No wonder it had taken almost three years to come back here.
“Mack always came to watch me dance. Even when he said he was too cool for my girly stuff,” Maizie said with a sad smile.
“What happened?” Christian’s voice drew closer to her.
“You don’t know?” She looked at him through her ever-brimming eyes. She assumed Jayce would have told him everything.
He shook his head.
Maizie took a deep breath. “He was in an accident. Here. On the farm.” She paused briefly when the look on his face mirrored her own emotions. “He was driving the four-wheeler out to change the sprinklers when he had a seizure.” She gulped. This part of the story still hurt. If only she would have known, could have somehow sensed what would happen that day. “He’d never had one before. But that morning, it just . . . happened.” Tears continued to fall, and they wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon. “It’s a different life on the farm. People from the city thought it was their job to berate my family because a fifteen-year-old shouldn’t have been driving a four-wheeler in the first place. We were falling apart, and people just kept throwing daggers at our hearts.” She drew in a ragged breath. “My family went to hell and back that year. I went through hell and back.” Sometimes she still felt like she was there. Every time she saw something that reminded her of Mack, or when she woke up from the nightmares.
She didn’t remember being pulled into Christian’s arms, but now that she was here, she didn’t want to leave. She rested her cheek against his warm chest, letting his embrace soothe away the edges of her pain. “The worst part is that he could have been saved had we found him sooner. But by the time our neighbor found him, the bleeding in his brain had become too significant.” She sobbed into Christian’s shirt, clutching the thin material like it was the only thing keeping her steady. “If I had gone with him, I could have saved him. I could have called an ambulance, and he wouldn’t be gone.” Her legs gave out, and she slumped in his arms. He lowered them both to the floor while cradling her close to his chest, and she fought the never-ending war inside her. If only she had woken up earlier to help him or gone looking for him when he didn’t come back at the time he should have. She still hated herself for the mistakes she didn’t realize she’d made at the time.
“Maybe,” Christian said.
Her heart froze, then pounded out an unnatural beat. That was not what she’d been wanting to be confirmed. “And maybe I could have saved my dad if I had gone with him to the game instead of insisting I drive myself.” His voice was sad. He had his own what if’s too. “But I don’t have all the answers. Only the problems. And I can’t fix a single one.” His voice cracked, and she looked up at his face in time to see a single tear slip down his cheek.
Her fingers found the tear of their own accord, and she brushed it away. “Why not?”
His blue eyes were even more intense with tears in them. She raised her head, to be level with him. His eyes flicked to her lips, then he swallowed and looked back up. “They just can’t.”
He was shutting down, and there was nothing she could do but let him retreat.
“Mack used to dance with me sometimes,” Maizie said, attempting to lighten the mood.
“Really? I thought he loved basketball.”
“Yeah, he did, but he loved me more. I would find all these cool lifts and tricks online and would make him try them with me. We almost always failed.” She laughed, remembering the day she thought Mack could hold her high above his head when they were fourteen. That had ended with a broken arm and an extremely stubbed toe.
There was a spark of something in Christian’s eye. “I would have loved to see that.”
“Yeah, we never made the best dance partners.” Maizie shook her head.
“Who’s your partner now?”
“Huh?” Maizie pulled out of his arms.
“You know, who do you dance with?”
“Oh, I don’t really do that kind of dancing. When Mack and I danced it was just for fun.” Maizie fiddled with her bracelet, running her thumb over her brother's name again and again.
“All right, all right, no need to beg, I guess I’ll be your partner.” Christian’s eyes twinkled.
