Chapter 69
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
KILLIAN
The dark clouds and lightning scattering across the sky feels like a warning. Carter and Knox are pulled away from her as the EMTs check her over.
“No pulse,” one of them says, and Carter lets out an anguished cry.
Knox follows suit, balling his hands into fists, clearly fighting the urge to touch Carter, to hold him. Neither of them can comfort the other, because they’re lost in such pain. Pain I have caused.
Another flash of lightning.
My eyes go from my brothers to the woman lying on the ground.
I watch the EMTs do chest compressions, followed by listening to her airway. They repeat it over and over, but I already know she’s gone.
Walking towards my brothers, they both yell for me to stop.
Carter stares at me with wild angry eyes.
“Fuck you! You’ve done enough. You’re a fucking thief.”
He moves away from Knox and puts his hands in his hair, pulling so aggressively I fear he may rip his hair out.
“And a murderer. You killed her, and now me! I told you I won’t live without her. I fucking told you.”
The panic travels from my stomach to my chest. When it makes it to my lungs, I nearly collapse.
“Carter I-”
I’m sorry. Two of the most useless fucking words in the English language. They mean nothing to either of them.
Another chest compression.
He grabs Knox’s face in both hands and kisses his cheek.
“Goodbye, brother.”
My heart shatters as Knox looks at me.
“Sometimes brothers do say goodbye. What you took from us can never be given back. We don’t forgive those who betray us.”
My own words thrown back at me cut like a knife. I’m physically nauseous as I remember Knox and I standing over Carter in the hospital as kids.
“Brothers don’t say goodbye.”
None of us will ever see her again.
Heather is put into the ambulance. Nobody says a word to me. What is there to say? Sorry for your loss?
My enemy that never really was.
This moment of clarity coming far too late—I never fucking hated her.
What have I done?
Carter bolts off towards the forest, and I know why. My brother is going to kill himself. Knox runs after him, a sob mixed with a scream erupting from his throat.
“Carter! No!”
My heart splits open, knowing I can’t help him. The echo of Knox’s cries will never leave me.
“Please, Carter! Don’t.”
Knox’s anguished cry cuts me to the core, and I know it’s too late. It’s done.
“Carter!”
I was their protector.
Was.
I couldn’t see clearly. She confused everything, and I did what I had to, in order to protect my brothers. In the end, I didn’t protect anyone, not even myself. I thought she would be the one who would cost us everything, but I was wrong. It was me.
Hindsight is a fucking bitch. Or maybe it’s karma.
A loss like this feels like an anvil as it crushes my chest, stealing the breath from my lungs.
I stare out at the empty field, a pool of Heather’s blood still visible through the mud and rain, and wish I could go back in time and change everything.
The lightning strikes, creating sharp, bold, angry lines in the sky. Thunder rumbles, shaking the very ground beneath me. It’s as if God himself is telling me what a fuck-up I am.
I fall to my knees as a sob erupts from my chest.
“Please help me!”
Aside from the storm, there’s nothing but silence all around me. Nobody is coming to save me from myself. There is no undoing what I have created.
Destruction.