“I didn’t know you have a brother.” Her tone is careful, even though we both know she’s smart enough, perceptive enough, to deduce the truth. She just doesn’t want to be the first to say it, perhaps because it’s too close to home—too close to what might lie in wait in her own future.
“Had.”
Blondie’s stride falters at my strangled exhale, and Xolo pauses when I stop walking as well, his large eyes fixed on us, tail wagging, completely oblivious to the tragedy encompassed in that single word. She remains stock-still, not meeting my gaze, and for a weighted beat, we just stand there in the middle ofthe corridor with Xolo wedged between our legs, unwilling—or maybe unable—to speak.
It’s not too late,a voice says in the back of my head.You could put an end to this conversation before it begins. You don’t need to say anything else.
But then my eyes drift to Blondie’s as if pulled there by gravity, and the devastated look on her face makes me realize I do. The wall we’ve both built up between us has never been thinner or more fragile than it is right now. One word—that’s all it would take. One more word and I could knock it down, leave all the lies and omissions in the past, and let her see the me I keep locked away from the world because that is the only way I feel safe.
It’s a leap I still don’t know if I’m ready to take, but I also know that if I don’t, if I yield to cowardice now, I might not get another chance to be real with her…or with myself. And if I back away? If I lie? I would be doing the exact thing Ronnie warned me against. Isn’t that what she said? That if I fuck this up, Blondie might not be able to put her faith in anyone ever again? Especially me.
Is that a risk I’m willing to take now that I know how I feel?
She hasn’t outright said it, but I can tell Blondie’s feelings toward me have changed—maybe not to the extent mine have (or in the same direction), but I’ve managed to come back from her hating me, which is something. Though it’s been brief, now that I’ve caught a glimpse of what she’s like behind that loathing, I realize her hatred was a wasteland. And I don’t ever want to go back to that dark place in my life that turned me into the kind of person who got me sentenced there.
No, it’s time to be honest. With Blondie…and with myself. About this one thing, at least.
“Jamie, he…” The lump in my throat seems determined to choke me into silence, but I push past the hurdle. “He died fouryears ago at the ripe old age of eight. He had glioblastoma. Brain cancer,” I clarify when her brow wrinkles in question. “It all happened really quickly.”
Her mouth opens, but she promptly shuts it again, searching my face, which slips beneath her perusal. “I…” Her voice is thick, and though she clears her throat, she only manages a timid, “That’s awful.”
“It’s the reason things are so strained with my parents,” I try to explain, that anger I’ve been holding onto so tightly for the last four years seeping into every sharp line and curve of the letters forming the words that escape me. “Everyone wants to move on, forget, but I just…can’t. And I can’t forgive him either.”
A flash of doubt passes over her face. “Your brother?”
I shake my head, my nails biting into the skin of my palms. “No, my dad.”
I turn and start walking then, needing the movement to calm me, as Blondie’s bewildered stare burns into my back like a cattle brand. A few seconds pass, then she falls into step beside me, her breaths uneven. I speak before she can, sensing her question, even though the words are like broken glass inside me, cutting me everywhere that matters.
“When Jamie was diagnosed, the prognosis was grim. Research into pediatric cancers is already severely underfunded, and glioblastoma is extremely aggressive; the doctors said his odds were terrible—that his only real chance was to try an experimental treatment, like stem cell or gene therapy.”
Blondie’s silence hits differently now, and in the brief pause I take to organize my thoughts, I wonder if she’s been told something similar about her mother. I hope for both their sakes she hasn’t.
I sense another question hanging in the narrow space between us, where our shoulders are almost brushing. It says,What does this have to do with your dad?
Everything,I answer.
“My dad refused.” At Blondie’s choked gasp, I clarify (not to defend him, never to defend him, but so she can get the complete picture of the situation at the time), “He had taken a very public anti-experimental stance in regard to the family business—not because of any personal beliefs, but because his shareholders had ‘ethical’ concerns.” I scoff. “Meaningthey were scared shitless about any legal liability that might fall back on them if Hallazgo were to manufacture those drugs and something were to ever go wrong. And what’s the one thing my dad cares about more than anything else in the world?”
Blondie looks over her shoulder as if she’ll find the answer in the empty space behind us, in the ghost of our footsteps. When she doesn’t, she turns her focus back to me, those big green eyes shining with the unmistakable sheen of tears.
“Ensuring he upholds his father’s legacy,” I say with a humorless laugh. “In his eyes, it wasn’t just a financial gamble but a risk to the company name. Thebrand,” I mock. “So, you can imagine which of the two was his priority: maintaining that stance or telling them all to go fuck themselves for the only chance he had to save his dying son’s life.”
The words have barely left my lips when I feel the hot touch of Blondie gripping my hand. Her fingers tremble against my skin.
“I’m so sorry, Damian.”
My heart rages—with sorrow, with anger and fury, but above all, with longing for this sometimes unpredictable and surprising butalwayssmart and beautiful girl, who is doing more for me by simply holding my hand than my parents have done—or even tried to do—in the four years Jamie has been dead.
I pull away before I do something stupid like lean down and kiss her.
“Needless to say, my high school years sucked,” I lament. A sentiment I know she would agree with considering her own final year before college. “First, my abuelo died just after I started tenth grade, after which my abuela moved away. Then Jamie…during my senior year.”
In my peripheral vision, I can just make out the way her face shifts against the dim light and shadows—the pursing of her lips, the creasing of her brow—and I wonder if she’s coming to the same realization I did when I learned of her past from Ronnie. How our individual experiences have been a strange mirror of each other’s, even down to the timeline.
“How come…” She trails off, and the burden of those unsaid words draws my gaze to her face. The hand I was holding before is now gripping the right arm of her glasses, and she shifts them a fraction of an inch, even though they were at no risk of slipping—one of her many little quirks I’ve come to notice that would endear her to me more if I didn’t know what they were masking.
Her cheeks turn ruddy under my lingering stare.
