25
Dylan
T hen
The worst part about tragedy is that it blindsides you. There’s no warning, no slow buildup to let you know it’s coming. One second, you’ve got the world by the throat, drunk on the illusion you’re in control. The next, it’s torn from your grasp, ruined. You’re left gasping for air, but there’s nothing but the brutal freefall, and the taste of your own goddamn carnage.
I step out of the bathroom, still floating, tasting Brooks on my lips from the night before—and then I see him. He’s on the bed, gripping his phone like he’s seconds from putting it through the wall, face blank in that terrifying way that tells you everything is already over.
“Brooks?” His name tastes like blood in my mouth. He looks up, and I know. I fucking know. The way he looks at me—like I’m glass about to hit the floor. It’s a warning, a fucking eulogy.
“Dylan…” My name breaks in his throat, and his hands are fucking shaking when they reach for me, like he already knows he’s about to rip my entire world apart. But he’s not close enough to catch me before I fall.
He fights for air, his breath ragged, and then he fucking chokes on the word. “Beckett…”
“Beckett what ?” My throat’s on fire, and I’m screaming now, every inch of me shaking. “Tell me, what the hell is going on?”
“Beckett…died last night.”
Something cold and rotten knots itself in my chest. “No.” It’s not a word, it’s a plea, a denial, a scream I can’t quite get out. “No, that’s not—that’s not fucking true!”
Brooks closes his eyes, breathing out like it physically hurts him. “There was an accident last night.”
The sound I make is inhuman, ripped from some place inside me I didn’t know existed. It’s like being kicked in the ribs, the pain spreading before I even register what’s happening.
“No.” I backpedal, shaking my head so hard my vision swims, hitting my chest because I can’t breathe, I can’t fucking breathe, why can’t I breathe—
“NO.”
“NO!”
“FUCKING—NO!”
I spit it out like it’ll reverse time, like I can fucking undo it. “He was just here. He just—” I still can’t get enough air, can’t make sense of the words.
Beckett. Died.
It doesn’t fucking compute. A strangled sob rips free, but I swallow it back, turning it to rage. “Bullshit! You’re fucking lying to me.” My chest heaves, my whole body shaking. “Why? Why would you lie to me? Take it back! Please, take it back!”
His next words hit like a car crash.
Metal twisting. Glass snaping. Brakes screeching too late.
I hear Brooks say it again—Beckett died—but it gets lost in the roar in my head. Colt. Miles. Survived.
My throat makes some awful sound—choked, wet, broken. My knees give out. My hands slap the floor. I don’t even feel it. I don’t feel anything except this burning, this breaking, this goddamn undoing inside me.
“No.” I rasp. “That’s not—he wouldn’t—he always called shotgun. He never sat in the back. You’re WRONG, Brooks.”
He always—
He always called shotgun.
I whip toward Brooks, like a marionette with its strings cut, I go slack—then stiff—then fucking feral. “Why? WHY WAS HE IN THE BACK?”
My feet carry me to the bathroom, and I slam the door shut like I can trap this fucking agony inside with me. The lock clicks. I hit the floor hard, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing fucking matters.
Beckett should be here.
Beckett. My twin. My best friend. Gone.
I press my palms into my eyes, trying to squeeze the grief out of my fucking skull, but it just keeps growing. Spreading. Crushing.
My hands claw at my face, my ribs, my hair because it feels like something inside me is trying to get out, to escape this fucking nightmare.
But I can’t.
I can’t escape this.
Colt and Miles made it. They’re in the hospital, breathing. And all I can think is—
Why not him?
Why the fuck did Beckett get erased from the world while they get to wake up tomorrow?
He should have fucking lived. I hate myself for thinking it, but—I’d trade them both for him.
They’ll get better.
They’ll walk out of that hospital, go home, keep living.
But Beckett— Beckett won’t.
The rage is too big for my body. It burns under my skin, desperate to escape, desperate to break something.
So I let it.
A brush, a candle, my own fucking fists against the floor.
None of it helps.
The door rattles. A voice yelling my name.
Let them come in. Let them see what’s left of me.
I drop my forehead to my knees, and when the door finally breaks open, I don’t even have the strength to lift my head.
Brooks doesn’t kneel. He collapses, landing hard, hands clutching my face like I might disappear if he doesn’t hold on tight enough.
His whole face is a wreck—tear streaked, eyes swollen, mouth trembling like he too is seconds from imploding.
There’s blood smeared across his fingers, his wrists.
I don’t know if it’s his. If he had to break down the door. I don’t ask.
“I’m here,” Brooks chokes, yanking me into him, and I submit. Like a fucking coward, because I’m not strong enough to hold my own grief.
I’m floating, or sinking, weightless in a way that makes no real sense. Brooks’ arms are a tight cage around my ribs. The steady rise and fall of his chest lulling me into a haze.
It smells like pine. Like snowmelt. Like every Colorado memory we have together, laughing too loud on the playground that made us feel invincible.
And then it hits. Beckett died.
“I can’t,” I whisper, my hands clenching Brooks’ shirt, knuckles going white. “I can’t do this—”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t tell me I can.
“I won’t survive this. I won’t survive without him.” The words come out so quietly I barely recognize them as my own.
He squeezes me so hard my ribs threaten to break, but I don’t care. I wish he’d crush me. I wish I could disappear.
“You’re not alone, Dylan. You hear me? On everything I have, everything I am—I promise I’m not leaving.”
But Beckett left. And if he could leave, what the fuck is stopping the rest of the world from falling apart too?
A week feels like a lifetime. My mind keeps circling the same thought…there has to be a way to undo this. To bring him back. But no, this is final. The casket sits in the distance, a dark, cruel thing that feels like it’s mocking me. It’s there, holding the person I loved most in the world. It shouldn’t be him.
It should be me.
The grass beneath my feet is perfectly trimmed, and the faint smell of wildflowers drifts through the air. It’s the kind of day Beckett would’ve loved—blue skies, just warm enough to be outside. But all of it feels wrong. Too pretty, too calm. Like the world has no idea what it’s done.
I look around, hoping to see a familiar face. Not for comfort, exactly, but just to feel a little less lost. Brooks isn’t here. I haven’t seen him once since that day, and the emptiness he leaves behind feels like one more thing I can’t put back together.
I’ve tried. I’ve called. I’ve texted. I’ve pleaded with the fucking universe for some kind of answer, for anything —just a fucking reason why. But I get nothing. Every time, I’m met with silence. Not a goddamn word. I don’t know if my mom has somehow kept him away, or if he’s just chosen this—chosen to abandon me. But it doesn’t matter. Today, nothing matters.
The pastor speaks about faith and glory and trusting God’s plan, but the words don’t register. My ears buzz with static. This isn’t how today was supposed to go. It’s our birthday. We were supposed to celebrate, to spend the day together laughing and planning our futures. Beckett would’ve made a joke about how we should get matching tattoos, and I would’ve pretended to hate the idea but secretly thought about saying yes. That’s how it should’ve been.
Instead, I’m standing here, alone, tethered to this desolate place because Beckett’s body is in that box, and I can’t leave him. Not today. Not ever.
My mom is next to me, gripping my arm so tight it almost hurts. Her face is unreadable, her lips pressed into a line like she’s trying to hold everything together through sheer willpower. I can feel her blame in the way she holds on to me. She doesn’t have to say it. I already know.
Greg stands rigid on her other side, like he’s bracing for the detonation. It hasn’t hit yet, but it will. I can feel the charge in the air, the warning buzz in my body. And when she finally looks at me, it’s sharper, like she’s already carved me out of her world. The worst part? I don’t fucking blame her.
I’ve heard the stories. I know how it happened. Beckett was pissed off, drowning in enough booze to make stupid choices feel like good ones. If I had been there, he wouldn’t have set foot in that fucking car. Wouldn’t have left to stay over at Colt’s house. We would have talked, probably fought, and then I would’ve dragged his ass home. That was my job. That was my fucking job. And I wasn’t there to do it.
No. I was with Brooks, letting myself sink into the easy way out. Avoiding. Now, Beckett’s gone, and the thought won’t leave me—the sick, gnawing certainty that it’s my fault. I let this happen. I should have gone to that bonfire. I should’ve done something, anything. But I didn’t. And now he’s dead.
As the pastor finishes and the crowd starts to thin, my mom lets go of my arm but I stay rooted to the ground. My body won’t move. Leaving means accepting this, and I can’t. I won’t . He’s here, six feet under, and I can’t abandon him again.
I glare at the casket in the ground, like I can change this fucked up reality just by refusing it. We were supposed to grow old, supposed to have years, decades. Now he’s nothing but a box in the ground, and I never fucking told him I loved him. He needs to know I loved him.
The wind kicks up, rattling the branches above, and for a second, I swear I hear his voice in the rustling leaves. But then it slips away, drawn into the rift between one reality and the next. My fingers curl into fists, nails biting into my palms. I hold my breath, until the sound of footsteps crunching against the gravel shatters what’s left of the moment.
“Are you done making this all about you?”
I turn, my pulse spiking. My mom stands there, arms cinched across her chest, knuckles white, like she’s one breath away from breaking.
“What?”
“Are you done?” she snaps, her voice cracking like a whip, louder this time. “We just buried your brother, my son , and you’re standing here like the goddamn center of the universe, like your grief is the only thing that fucking matters.” She shakes her head, eyes wild, wet, furious. “You don’t get to play the fucking victim today, Dylan. Not here .”
I’m too numb to feel the sting of her words. The guilt is already eating me alive, tearing chunks out of me since the second I found out. She doesn’t need to say it—I already fucking know.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You don’t get to be sorry. You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself, and now Beckett’s dead because of it.” Her voice chokes on his name, but her gaze remains unwavering. She just glares at me like I’m something vile, something she wouldn’t scrape off her shoe.
I don’t fight back. I just stand there. There’s no point in arguing. She’s not wrong.
Fingers clamp down on my shoulder with enough pressure to cut through the numbness. When I turn, Emily Holland is there. She doesn’t look at me, just past me, locking eyes with my mom like she’s about to drive a stake straight through her heart.
“That’s enough, Denise,” she interrupts, her voice calm but carrying the weight of a sledgehammer.
My mom’s face hardens immediately. “Enough?” she spits. “You don’t know what I’m feeling. You have no fucking idea what it’s like to bury your own child.”
Emily doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t so much as blink. But I swear, the air between them could ignite. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t understand. And don’t you dare use your grief like a weapon to rip Dylan apart. You want to scream, break shit, burn the whole world down? Fine. But not here. Not like this. As a mother, you should know better.”
I swear my mother is about to detonate—veins tight, chest heaving like she’s barely keeping the rage from splitting her in half. Her jaw locks, teeth grinding so hard I swear I hear it. Then, without another word, she spins on her heel and stalks off.
Emily’s breath quivers as she lets it out, her chin tilting up as if she’s searching for the right thing to say. But it doesn’t matter. I know that look—the one that says, you fragile, broken thing. It causes every nerve in my body to flare.
Her arms spread wide, like she already knows I won’t resist. “Come here, sweetheart.” I try—to resist, to stand on my own. But it’s useless. The second I step into her embrace, I realize how desperately I needed someone to hold me.
“Your mom is lashing out because she’s grieving,” she explains gently. “But that doesn’t mean she’s right.You didn’t cause this.”
She’s wrong.
I did.
Not with my hands, but with my absence. With my choices. Beckett died because I wasn’t there.
The days after the funeral blur together, one long, suffocating stretch of nothing. I don’t feel like myself, don’t feel much of anything, really. Everything about life feels wrong now, like there’s a piece missing, and no matter how much I replay it in my head, I can’t fix it.
Brooks hasn’t returned my calls, my texts, nothing. Emily’s kindness feels like a thin veil over the questions she won’t answer. Ruby tries to distract me with extra shifts or small talk about customers, but I see the way she watches me, when she thinks I’m not paying attention. Worry is etched all over her face, but I can’t bring myself to reassure her. It takes too much energy just to exist right now. Breathing is the hardest thing I do these days.
Greg has been hauling out of town every day since the funeral, which is probably his way of avoiding my mom. I can’t say I blame him. Her silence isn’t just a lack of sound; it’s a noose, tightening every time we’re in the same room. We haven’t spoken since the funeral, and I know we never will. She doesn’t need words. Her stare is enough. It says everything— nothing .
I want out. Out of this house, out of Rockport, out of the misery that’s settled in my bones. But I have no plan, nowhere to go, no one waiting on the other side. And even if I did, there’s still that stupid, desperate part of me clinging to the idea that Brooks will come back. That he’ll pick up the phone, swear I’m not as alone as I feel, and say my name like it still means something.
Because without him? I have no one.
I didn’t plan on coming back to school after losing Beckett, but I figured I should at least try to think about the future. I’m not even sure if part of me came back hoping to see Brooks here, but of course, he’s gone. I’ve stopped by his house a couple of times, but it’s always empty. No sign of his parents in weeks, no sign of him. The windows are dark, and I just…I don’t know where he went.
Miles has stuck around, finding ways to keep me occupied at school, like he thinks if I stay busy enough, I won’t notice the gaping wound inside me. I do. And I know he means well, but it doesn’t change anything. I see the way he stiffens at passing cars, how the accident rewired something in him. We’re both just ghosts of who we used to be, circling each other, pretending it helps.
The final bell rings, and I walk out of my last class. The hushed conversations have thinned, but their eyes still find me, still settle like an unwanted touch. Their pity is poison, seeping into the cracks I’m desperately trying to hold together. I don’t want their careful words. I don’t want their practiced grief. They don’t know what it’s like to carry this, and I wish they’d stop acting like they do.
The cold rain nips at my skin as I step outside, but it does little to douse the fire still burning inside me. My steps are quick, each one meant to outrun the thoughts eating me alive.
Then I see them—white Nikes. I follow the line of them upward, and suddenly, I’m looking at him.
Brooks.
Rain lashes against my face, soaking through my clothes, but I barely acknowledge it. My grip tightens around my textbooks, the edges stabbing into my palms. “Brooks!” I call, the sound of my voice cutting through the storm.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even flinch. Just keeps moving, like I don’t exist.
“B, wait!” Desperation pitches my voice higher.
His back stiffens, muscles coiled tight between his damp hoodie. I know he hears me— I know —but he keeps walking, as if I’m not even worth a second of his time.
A vicious panic surges up my spin. My chest constricts as I lunge forward.
I don’t think. I run.
The pavement is slick, my shoes skidding through puddles as I chase him down. The wind steals my voice, but I don’t stop. He’s right there— right there —but I might as well be a thousand miles away. When he finally turns, it’s not with the fire I expect. It’s exhaustion, grief carved into his face. “Dylan,” he murmurs, as if my name tastes like regret.
“Say something,” I demand, stepping closer. “Where the hell have you been? You disappeared after Beckett died, and now you’re…what? Avoiding me?”
His shoulders go rigid. “I can’t,” he whispers. “I can’t keep doing this, Rivers.”
“Doing what?”
“Us.”
My vision tunnels. “No. That’s not—you don’t mean that.”
But he won’t look at me, won’t fight, won’t even defend himself. He just stares at the ground, like he’s already let me go.
“What changed?” The question is a wound splitting open, bleeding out between us. “What changed between when you held me on your bathroom floor and swore you wouldn’t leave…to now?”
His eyes flick up, just for a second. A flash of something—guilt? But then his demeanor changes, and when he finally speaks, it’s worse than anything I could’ve imagined.
“We just shouldn’t be together. I’m sorry.”
Everything inside me collapses at once. My ribs cave. My lungs forget how to work. How in my eighteen years of life have I lost every single thing important to me? I step closer, reaching for him like a drowning person clawing for a raft, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t meet my eyes, doesn’t save me .
“You don’t get to do this,” I choke out. “You don’t get to walk away, not after everything. Not after—” My voice breaks. “You promised.”
His throat works like he’s swallowing glass, voice barely holding. “It’s not fair to you. I can’t do it.”
“What’s not fair? That you just decided this for the both of us? Tell me! Where is this coming from?”
But he doesn’t. I can feel his pain, see the war waging behind his eyes, but he won’t let me in. He’s shutting me out, brick by brick, and I can’t break through.
“Dylan,” he repeats my name, and this time it feels like a death sentence. “We were fooling ourselves.”
My blood runs hot, frustration building with every passing second. “You’re lying. Something happened. What happened?”
“Nothing. We should’ve ended things sooner. I just didn’t know how. I thought I could make it work. But I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I’m shaking now, not sure if it’s from the rain or the way the rest of my world is dissolving in front of me. “You’re not making sense, B. I need you to explain!”
“There’s nothing more to say. I’m ending things.”
I blink, but the world doesn’t right itself. He wasn’t supposed to leave me.
A brutal weight slams into my chest, an avalanche of something dark. My pulse is a thunderstorm, and I try to fight against it, against him, against what he’s doing.
“So that’s it? You’re just done? Just like that?”
His eyes meet mine, and it’s already over. I see it. I feel it. He’s not fighting for this. For me. I lost.
And it sets something violent and hopeless ablaze inside me.
“Fuck you, Brooks.” It spills from my lips, something venomous like love turned to ruin.
His face slackens, like I’ve done what he was too much of a coward to do—destroyed us completely.
“I guess Chloe was right after all.” My voice is detached now, broken without redemption. “I was wasting my time.”
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even have the fucking decency to look ashamed. Just stands there like this was the plan, and I was always meant to be left picking up the pieces alone.
My legs carry me forward, like I can slip out of my own skin.
Tears burn hot down my face, but I don’t wipe them away. I let them sear this moment into me so I never forget what it feels like to be this fucking stupid.
To trust. To want.
To believe, even for a second, that I was worth fighting for.