Chapter 22 Mackenzie #2
“We didn’t want you to be sorry, we needed you.
We needed you.” I slip out of his grasp, crawling from in between them to sit against a wall, knees curled to my chest. “I’m not saying these things to make you feel bad, I just want you to know what we were going through.
” My heart aches where worry lines bloom across Cadence’s face, and in the defeated sag in RJ shoulders as if he failed as a man.
“And I know it isn’t fair, but I’m angry. I’m so angry that I can’t breathe sometimes.” I wipe at my face, feeling the rawness around my eyes. “I wanted to scream at her for trying to leave, but I also understood why. That’s the worst part. I get it.”
The fluorescent lights buzz above us, casting harsh shadows across our faces. A nurse walks by, her shoes squeaking against the tile, and for a moment she looks like she might stop and ask if we're okay. But she doesn’t. No one ever does.
“I’ve been carrying this…this weight,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Some nights I’d sit with Mami and watch her slip away a little more each day.
I didn’t know she felt the way I did, but I should have.
” So many thoughts flood in all at once, all of them coming out in a rush—a need for my siblings to understand or at least have…
closure. “And then everything with the shooting….” I trail off, dissociating for a moment before one of my siblings squeezes my hand.
I blink, wiping the residue of tears from my cheeks and coming back to the moment.
“We’re still here, Mack. We’re still listening.” My brother’s voice brings me back.
“It made me feel like maybe…I should stay…maybe it was a sign from God that I should stick around.” I sigh. “I–I don’t know…”
Cadence slides down next to me, her shoulder pressing against me. “Do you still feel like this now?”
I stare at the scuffed linoleum floor, tracing the patterns with my eyes. The hospital buzzes around us, life continuing while ours feels frozen in this moment.
“Yes,” I lie. “I’m just really sad.”
“Okay,” she says, letting her arm slip around me. “Okay, we can work with sadness. We can find someone for you to see on a weekly basis. And we aren’t going anywhere.” She nods at RJ, who nods back.
“I don’t know if I can believe that,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I can trust anything right now.”
RJ sits on my other side, our shoulders touching. For a moment, we’re kids again, huddled together during thunderstorms when the power would go out and Mami would light candles around the house, and cover the mirrors with sheets.
“When did you start to feel this way?” he asks softly, his voice careful, like he’s walking on glass.
I shrug. “After Dad’s birthday. The one nobody remembered except me and Mami.
” I pick at a loose thread on my jeans. “I thought about using pills after the first anniversary of Dad’s death, but I didn’t get them until three months ago.
I’ve been…collecting them. Little by little, so no one would notice. ”
“Jesus, Mack.” RJ runs a hand through his hair, the same nervous gesture Dad used to make.
“I need you to give them to me,” Cadence says, her voice steady but her eyes pleading. “When we leave here, I need you to show me where they are.”
I nod, though the thought of surrendering my escape plan sends a wave of panic through me. It’s been my only comfort on the worst nights—knowing I had a way out if things got unbearable.
“Okay,” I huff.
“Let’s go back,” RJ says, but his voice sounds underwater to me now. “Tía will be worried.”
We walk the sterile corridor in silence, our footsteps echoing. A doctor passes us, clipboard in hand, eyes averted. They must see this every day—families shattered by the choices of someone they loved. I wonder if they can tell which of us might be next.
“I need to use the bathroom, I just need five minutes,” I promise, not meeting their eyes. “Just five minutes to gather myself.”
Cadence exchanges a look with RJ that I pretend not to notice. A silent conversation passing between them—should we let her go? Is she going to do something stupid?—hangs in the air like smoke.
“Okay,” RJ finally says, releasing me. “Five minutes. Right? We’ll be in the waiting room.”
I nod, more to reassure them than because I mean it. The bathroom is just down the hall, its blue sign like a beacon. Inside, I grip the edge of the sink, staring at my reflection. I barely recognize myself—eyes swollen, face blotchy, hair a mess. I look like Mami does on her worst days.
I splash water on my face, the cold shock momentarily grounding me. Five minutes. I promised them five minutes.
Part of me wants to slide down against the wall and just stay here forever. Another part—the part that’s been thinking about leaving—whispers “it’s now or never.”
Slipping my head out into the hall, I see my sibling. Both a bit distracted by what a doctor is saying, from the looks of it, maybe something about my mother that makes Cadence smile and RJ sag in relief. I’m glad.
I’m glad Mami is fine and I’m glad they will have each other, but I can’t stay here any longer.
I find the nearest exit and tumble out into the cool morning air.
I don’t even know where I’m going, but I get into my car, going seventy in forty, until I find myself back on campus.
It’s early morning now, just before dawn. I park my Bronco just off the quad, shutting the engine off.
Looking up at the clock tower, covered in ivy, I face my fate.
Life is too much to continue living this way. So many questions, not enough answers—It’s time I chose my own destiny. My own answer.
When they bury me, I hope they remember to tell the truth. Not some bullshit like I had a smile that lit up every room—I didn’t. My lips were always cracked and downturned, my eyes hollow as abandoned wells.
The truth is, I wore a perpetual scowl, and my clothes were three sizes too big because they were my battle armor.
Black hoodies with fraying cuffs, jeans that pooled around my ankles like denim puddles.
The more I drowned myself in cotton and polyester, the safer I felt beneath their scratchy embrace.
I used to write until the pain would flood out of me, crimson thoughts bleeding onto pristine pages, but somehow, I lost the will to press the pen to paper too.
I feel it, the quickening of my heartbeat, thundering against my ribcage like a rabid animal. The summoning of my own undoing crawls up my spine vertebra by vertebra. If you had told me three days ago I’d be ready to die, I’d say maybe, but fear kept me rooted here.
And now, fear of the unknown is not what eats away at me.
It’s not knowing what would happen if I did choose him fully—in turn choosing myself for once in this Godforsaken life—and step into what I know was always meant to be my fate, glittering and dark as a midnight ocean.
Thane once said death is only the start of new life.
But he left because he didn’t want to take me from this one—I understand now that he never wanted to be a villain in my story.
So, I’ll decide. I’ll be the one that chooses for the both of us. I'm leaving because I’m choosing something other than this misery that I call my life…
I’ll be the villain that chooses our life.
Our demise.
Our highs.
Our lows.
And come what may, I would choose it again in every lifetime, through centuries of stars burning out and being reborn.
I feel it in my marrow.
I know it in my soul.
Because this has always been my destiny.
I step onto the ledge of the tower overlooking the campus.
A dazzling view of the glittering scene below.
I open my arms like wings, fingers splayed against the twilight sky, as if I will fly gently, safely into my love’s arms. And just before my body hits the cold, wet concrete below… he catches me.
Just like I knew he would.
Death.
His embrace, warm as mulled wine, his skin like velvet starlight.
“I guess we are inevitable, ma belle ame. Forever and always then?” he whispers, the words my death toll, his French curling around each syllable like smoke.
“Forever and always,” I whisper back.
And as any love story should begin…we fall, two intertwined shadows against the bleeding sunrise.