Chapter Twenty-Five #2
My chest tightens because I know where this is going before she says it.
“With Wolfe…” She shakes her head. “There was none of that.”
Her eyes fill again.
“One minute he was there. He was smiling and talking shit and being Wolfe, and then he just wasn’t.
” Her voice cracks slightly. “I didn’t get time to understand I was about to lose him.
I didn’t get to prepare for the idea of a world without him.
There was no warning that the last conversation was the last one. ”
She wipes beneath one eye with the heel of her hand.
“That’s the part I can’t fucking get my head around. With Mom, I knew the ending was coming even if I hated it. With Wolfe, somebody just ripped the page out.”
Fuck.
I look toward his jacket hanging near the kitchen before bringing my attention back to her.
“I know what I lost. He was my brother. One of my best friends, and that shit fucking wrecked me.”
Echo reaches for my hand again.
I let her take it.
“But I also know what you and Thorne lost was different.”
Her brow pulls together immediately.
“Dray—”
I shake my head before she can turn this into me trying to make her grief bigger than mine.
“I know. I’m not comparing it.” I look down at our hands and her fingers tighten around mine.
“He mattered to you in a way that changes the shape of everything after.” I glance toward the guitar. “That kind of connection doesn’t just disappear because he did.”
Echo goes quiet, and I let the silence sit instead of filling it with more shit she already knows.
After a while, her head drops against my shoulder.
“You’re always trying to take care of us.”
“Someone has to keep you disasters alive.”
There’s no real humor behind it, but the corner of her mouth moves anyway.
Then she looks up at me. “You know you’re allowed to be fucked up too, right?”
I look up, letting my eyes hold hers, because she’s right and I hate that she’s right.
I’ve been so busy checking on Thorne, making sure Echo answers her phone, keeping an eye on everyone else that I’ve barely given myself room to admit how much I miss him.
“You know, I opened our messages two days ago,” I say finally.
Echo’s expression changes.
“My mom had made too much japchae. Wolfe used to steal half of mine every time I brought it in, and my first thought was to text him and tell him there was extra.”
My throat tightens.
“I had the picture ready before I remembered there was no fucking point sending it.”
“Draygon…”
“It’s okay,”
She moves before I do, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me in, and I let her.
That’s the difference.
For once, I don’t make myself the one doing all the holding.
I just sit there with her arms around me and admit the obvious.
“I miss him too.”
“I know.”
“And your right, he is supposed to be here.”
“I know.”
We stay like that until neither of us is quite as wrecked.
Then Echo reaches for the notebook.
“I’m finishing it.”
I look at her.
“Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
There’s something different in her face now.
Still hurting, but decided. She picks up the guitar again and starts from the beginning. Her voice is quiet at first, but steadier than before.
I grew up thinking two was all there’d ever be,
Just me and Mom against whatever came for me.
Never knew there were names I should’ve known by heart,
Brothers and a father living whole lives worlds apart.
She kept that door closed till there wasn’t time,
Waited till the end to tell me what was mine.
Then the only home I’d ever known was gone,
And she left me with directions to a family moving on.
Leave a light on if I’m late coming home,
I spent my whole life thinking I was on my own.
Turns out home was waiting somewhere I couldn’t see,
Full of people I belonged to who didn’t know about me.
She keeps singing, and I just listen.
I stop trying to follow every line after a while and let her voice fill the cabin instead, soft and a little unsteady in places, but stronger than it was when she started.
By the time the last chord fades, there are tears on her cheeks again, and for once she doesn’t reach for the pen or try to fix anything.
I take the guitar gently from her hands and set it aside, then pull her into me.
She comes without hesitation.
My hand slides to the back of her neck as I kiss her, slow and soft, nothing rushed about it. Just her mouth against mine, her fingers curling into my shirt, and both of us sitting there with Wolfe still threaded through everything around us.
When I pull back, I keep my forehead against hers.
“He would’ve fucking loved it.”
Her eyes close, and the smallest smile touches her mouth.
I hold her there for a while.
We’re still grieving. Thorne is too. All of us are, in different ways, and I don’t think that shit is going anywhere anytime soon.
But maybe getting through it was never supposed to mean getting over him.
Maybe it’s this.
Echo finishing the song.
Thorne learning how to not be afraid or ashamed of how he feels..
Me finally admitting I can’t hold everybody together by myself.
All of us slowly figuring out how to keep living around the space Wolfe left behind without pretending it isn’t there.
It still fucking hurts.
It probably will for a long time, but we’ve got each other.
And I think, eventually, we’re going to be okay.