Karla & Ash (Chances #3)

Prologue

Ash

Sixteen Years Old

There was a closed wooden door in my home I refused to open.

That wasn’t always the case, but over the past few months, I’d been unable to set foot near the room.

My family had lived in a two-story, three-bedroom home my whole life.

My bedroom was on the second floor, just down the hall from my younger brother’s room, while my parents’ bedroom was on the first floor.

Their room was directly below mine and, sometimes, I could hear them giggling with each other throughout the night.

Used to. I used to hear them giggling.

I didn’t know a world outside of the house that raised me.

Dad had Mom’s dream home built for her when they first fell in love in their early thirties.

It had everything Mom loved, and I saw pieces of her in every corner: A beautiful sage-green fence outlined her backyard, where she grew her garden with all her favorite vegetables and herbs.

A library with more romance novels than a person could’ve ever dreamed of, along with a ladder that she could glide across like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. A kitchen with an extrawide island countertop and a hidden pantry, because Maa loved to cook. A living room and a family room.

Mom always said it was important to have both, because the living room was for formal exchanges between us and visitors.

It was for entertaining and hosting. The family room was different.

That was where the whole family gathered for movie nights, game nights, and takeout food nights.

Out of all the things Dad added to the house for Mom, the family room was her favorite.

Mom said the family room was where my brother, my parents, and I grew the most as a unit.

It was where we made our house a home. Mom loved to water her garden, but she adored watering her family connection, too.

“Gardens blossom when nourished and cared for. Same with humans,” she always said.

It’d been a while since ours had been watered.

I didn’t blame Mom for the lack of family-room sessions, because she was a nurse and she’d been picking up extra shifts at the hospital.

I didn’t blame Dad, because he’d been hyperfocused on working on the additional guest room in the basement on top of his extra EMT shifts.

He’d recently finished the room, and he must’ve loved it a lot, because now he slept down there each night.

I didn’t blame myself, because if there was a family night, I’d be the first one in the room.

So that left only one person to blame: my little brother, Rian.

Rian was two years younger than me, and he was my best friend.

We were the same in a lot of ways, but different in others.

He was more sensitive than me, but I didn’t think that was a bad thing.

I figured he got it from Mom. Sometimes I wished I could feel as deeply as Rian.

I got my emotions from Dad. Our emotions were there, but they were just a bit quieter.

Rian cried at the drop of a hat and felt so much empathy for, well .

. . the world. He cried happy tears and sad.

Tears of laughter. Angry tears. All the tears for everyone.

I cared about people, but not in the way that my little brother did.

Sometimes I worried that it meant I was a bad person.

I thought Rian’s caring was a gift. He thought it was his curse.

I wondered if the things I hated about myself were things that other people loved.

I hated my messy black hair that never behaved on my head.

Rian always said he liked it. He once tried to style his hair like mine, but his was more coiled like Dad’s. My hair was finer like Mom’s.

My hair was the only feature of mine that mirrored Mom.

Rian looked like both of our parents, but he looked like Mom the most. She was a beautiful mixed woman, Indian and Black, and looked like a supermodel.

Rian looked like a model, too. From their doe eyes to their high cheekbones, they were beautiful.

I looked like Dad, a strong Black man. I swore when I looked into my eyes, I saw my father. Our faces were sculpted the same, with sharp jawlines. We each had a dimple on our cheeks. His was on the left, mine on the right.

I wondered if he missed the family room, too.

I blamed Rian for us no longer using the space. I wanted to yell at him for being a selfish kid, but it was hard to yell at your dead little brother without feeling a little guilty.

Fifteen steps.

That’s how many steps there were between our rooms.

I only knew because I walked those steps every day from my room to his. I always stood in front of his door. Sometimes, I grabbed the doorknob, but I never turned it. I couldn’t.

A part of me figured if I walked into Rian’s bedroom, I’d be reminded of how many days it had been since he set foot inside of it.

I’d be flooded with the realization that he was really gone.

I’d see him in every corner of the room—on his bookshelves, around his Hot Wheels cars, in his video games, in his photography collection.

I didn’t want to see that. It pissed me off that in that room he still existed. The memories of him, at least.

Maybe that was why I didn’t enter the room.

I wasn’t ready for him to become just a memory, even after months had passed by.

Without me going into the room, I could pretend he was on the other side of the door.

I could fantasize that he was playing his favorite video games.

I could pretend he was just caught up in his toy cars.

Still, I tried every day to turn that doorknob, to step into the space that had belonged to my brother so I could feel his presence. But with every passing day, it felt like Rian was fading from our home. Each day, the walls felt colder.

I should’ve hugged him more.

Lately, there were so many things I hated in life.

I hated how my family never talked about my brother anymore.

I hated that I no longer heard Mom and Dad laughing together.

I hated that Dad barely spoke now. I hated that Mom never stopped crying.

I hated Rian for leaving me. I hated myself for not saving his life.

Now the place I grew up in was just a house.

A house that held three broken people and the ghost of our favorite.

The warmth that once lived in the walls was replaced by a frozen grief.

Echoes of Rian’s memory sliced through every room and every door.

I hated each room, because it was absent of him.

I hated the family room the most.

It was steeped in loneliness.