She nods and looks out the window. I drive until we reach my parent's beach house. She is fast asleep when we arrive.
I carry her inside and place her on the bed I used to sleep in when I came here. I brush her hair out of her face and she moans and whispers a name, "Sebastian."
I back away, feeling dirty, like I've committed a crime touching her. I can't feel sorry for myself, I made my bed. I sacrificed myself to save her.
I look up at the ceiling and smile. Em would have wanted it this way.
I sigh and sit on the couch to watch her sleep, in case the lonely comes. She's had such a hard day.
Richard's words ring in my head. He loves me too. He loves me and accepts me and wants me to be with her, to be part of them.
At some point I fall asleep.
When I wake it's light out and she is gone. It takes me a second to panic.
I leap up and run to the window. I don’t see her. My heart is racing as I run through the house, "Sarah! Sarah, where are you?"
I run out the front door and down the snowy path to the beach. I feel like a parent searching for a toddler. Her missing makes me panic in an unhealthy way.
I get down the path and stop when I see her. She is smiling, texting, and laughing. I don’t feel the snow hitting me or the icy wind coming off the ocean. I know my body is shaking from the cold and my tee shirt isn’t enough to make me warm, but I can't feel anything but the snapping feeling in my chest.
"You seeing him again today?" The words fall out of my mouth.
She spins and frowns, "You'll freeze. Where is your coat?"
I walk to her, "Don’t change the subject."
She nods, "I don't know."
"You plan on just seeing both of us? Use me when you need me and be with him the rest of the time?" I can't stop myself from saying it.
She looks shocked, "No."
I pull her into me, "You want me, Sarah."
She pushes me away, "I don’t want to."
"You have to know." I kiss her hand and just say it, "I love you. Not because you're my replacement for my sister."
She rejects me, "I never want to talk about this again."
I feel myself vibrating as the white noise takes over, "She is obsessed with me. I didn’t know." It's not entirely true. I just didn’t know how far Jane would take it, and it was worth sacrificing myself to save her.
She looks back at me, disgusted, "Did you sleep with her?"
When I don’t answer she spits her words at me "Gross. What is wrong with you? Why would you sleep with your therapist? Did you take her to that room? Is that how she knows you like to punish girls?"
I shake my head, "It happened once, two years ago. It was a mistake. I was drunk in the bar, after I found you. I was celebrating." I was cocky and wanting to convince her to help me with my quest. I can't say that I did it to win her over for Sarah. She will never understand that or the fucked-up mind of Jane.
She covers her ears, "WHAT THE FUCK? I DON’T WANT TO KNOW THIS SHIT! JESUS!"
She runs. I try to catch her but I can't. She is an elite runner. I am not. She gets farther and farther away from me. I drop to my knees and let the snow fall down on me. I wish it would cover me up and hide me but I have to find her. She can't run off alone in the snow.
I run back and get my keys and my coat. I drive around for a while but she isn’t there. She must have hitched a ride.
I drive faster than I should in the snow but I need to know she is safe. I get to the hotel and she isn’t there yet. Her family is waiting in the room I have arranged for breakfast. I don’t dare face them after what Richard said to me yesterday. I can't bare to have lost her. I pace and panic until I see the Tahoe pull up.
Stuart went and got her and never messaged me.
When they walk in, she doesn’t see me but he does. He looks like he might try to defend himself but I see the hold Michelle has on him.
He sees my look and nods.
"Can I help you?" A lady at the front desk asks them.
"She's with me." I mutter.
"Very good, Mr. Adams." the lady says.
I offer her my hand but she walks past me, "Not now." Stuart sees my face and drags Michelle down the hall. I am about to go off. I grab her arm and pull her to where I can talk to her. "You ever scare me like that again and I will make sure you don’t ever forget to let me know where you are. You don’t run off."
She looks up at me boldly, "You are not the boss of me."
I grab her hand and drag her to them so I can be done with it all. I am fucking done. She doesn’t see me or anything I have done for her. She doesn’t see me.
Her mother smiles when we get in the room, "Good morning, honey." She looks at me, "Morning Eli, honey." I lean in and kiss her cheek.
We sit and her dad smiles at her, "Did you sleep well?"She smiles and nods, "I did."
Of course she did. I watched over her most of the night and soothed her when she cried in her sleep. Even when she didn’t say my name.
I sit and watch them and realize how pathetic and destroyed I have let myself get. I fixed them all and like Jane said it would, it consumed me. I am a shell of the man I might have been, had I just walked away from it all.
I try to talk to her but she rushes off with Stuart. He avoids my eye contact but texts me from the road as I follow them back to my apartment, 'I'll tell her I have to drop her off at your place. You can talk there.'
I see the message and frown. I planned to go and tell Emalyn that I had done what I had once promised I would. I follow Stuart’s SUV to the apartment but as he stops the truck, she leaps from it and runs to Sebastian's waiting car.
They drive off and I drive past, to the cemetery.
I park and crunch along the way to the monument I had made for her when I got to be a little older. I sit on the bench across from it and stare at the wording.
"I did everything I said I would. I saved her and found her family and cured her sadness."
I hear crunching from behind me, "You did a lot more than that, man."
I start to cry when I see him. I don’t want to talk about it. I bury my face in my hands and just sob at the finality of it all. A great weight should be lifted from my shoulders, but I have never felt more weighed down.
I finish crying and sit up again. I take a deep breath of the cold, snowy air. He sits next to me.
"That was a beautiful thing you did. I know she doesn’t see it, but it was."
I nod, "Doesn’t really matter unless she sees it."
He looks at me, "Why don’t you just tell her everything, how you feel and how it is, and everything you've given up? You gotta talk, bro."
I shake my head, "I don’t know how. I just keep thinking my grand gestures will do it for me and then I fuck them up by being me."
"I told Michelle everything."
I look at him, "Huh?"
He nods, "She knows you're my brother and that we have been homies since we were young and all the shit you've done for Sarah and Emalyn. I told her everything."
I scowl, "Why? I don’t even like her. You have to break up with her. She's evil."
He laughs, "Easy, dude. I love her. Ya know, I don’t get why the fuck you love Sarah either. We aren’t supposed to. If I saw the reason you liked her, I'd like her, and then we'd have a problem. ‘Cause you know, the ladies always pick me."
I want to argue that point but he's right, they do.
I stare at the monument and sigh, "I just don’t know how to say everything without making it like she was a burden. It never felt that way. I've carried her for so many years, she's just become part of the load that I call life. I love her and I don’t know how to fix this."
He nudges me, "You gotta talk. Use your words not your hands."
I laugh.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I look down at the phone and dial, praying she just answers this time. It's been a day of me phoning her nonstop.
"WHAT!" she answers.
I panic, not sure what to say. I've called hundreds of times but she hasn’t answered till now, "You have to see this isn’t about you. She wants you and I under her thumb. I haven’t had a session with her since it happened. She isn’t my therapist. It isn’t even a big deal. You slept with that Sebastian fellow on your birthday and I never brought it up. I haven’t been with anyone since I found you. I swear to God. I haven’t slept with anyone since I found you."
She doesn’t hear me, she just rages, "YOU LET ME GO THERE! YOU LET HER TREAT ME! YOU TWO FUCKING TORTURED ME IN A CELL! YOU FUCKED A WOMAN YOU LET TORTURE ME!"
I rage back, "SHE IS THE BEST, SARAH. FOR FUCK'S SAKE!"
She hangs up on me. She never denied sleeping with Sebastian.
I am determined this is going to end today. Stuart texts me, 'Gym.'
I drive there and wait in the rings, ready to box with her, or beg her to listen, or kidnap her and force her to.
Half an hour goes by and finally I text her, 'Where are you?'
She doesn’t answer. I wait longer. No one is there. Thank God. I walk to the hallway, about to leave, when she emerges from the change room, taping her hands.
She shakes her head at me, "Do you have a GPS tracker on me?" I ask.
I laugh, nervously, "I do."
"What? What do you want to say?"
I turn and climb into the ring. This way she is trapped a little and running is harder.
I bring her some gloves so she can hit me instead of running away. I speak softly as I put them on her, "She is the best. She was the only one who believed that you could be rescued and I needed you. I needed you."
I have to walk away to say the next part and do my own gloves, "No one believed me about you… that I didn’t invent you. No one saw me as a hero. No one but you, and for that belief in me that you had, I let you down. I left you sleeping in that barn, thinking it would be better if you didn’t have to see the police. I was protecting you, even then. You have never, nor will you ever, be my sister. I know I'm messed up and I am insane in so many different ways, but the fact you could believe me capable of such a horrific thing…"