Chapter 45
Lily
Kyle: I want you to know that I think you're one of the best people I've ever met, and no matter what happens today, I'll always be here for you, supporting you.
Kyle: Even if I didn't the first time.
Lily: I really wish I were the person you see.
I woke up that Saturday feeling like my heart might literally burst from my chest at any moment. Despite all my desperate attempts to make things right, here I was again, trapped in the same nightmare that had tormented me for a decade.
Everything felt surreal, as if I were watching my life unfold from outside my own body. Even though I'd made peace with this bizarre situation and had begun to adapt to being back in the past, none of it truly made sense. And now, on this day of all days, reality was crashing down on me.
The world outside my window kept going on, unaware, and that made the cruelty of it worse. How could life be so ordinary when my whole world was about to fracture again?
I had spent nearly two months trying to create a normal life and prevent the catastrophe that would destroy everything I loved. But even with the advantage of having lived through this once before, with all my adult knowledge and hindsight, I'd failed completely.
I felt utterly useless. Ridiculous. Powerless in the most fundamental, soul-crushing way. How could I have possibly thought I could change anything when I was the very person responsible for everything going wrong in the first place?
I thought that if I could prevent Oliver from having something against my brother, maybe that would eliminate my motive for going to his house tonight. No motive meant no murder. No murder meant Leo would never go to prison.
But Oliver was a bad person. He'd been cruel and manipulative ten years ago, and he was exactly the same now, even viewed through my adult perspective. Some people are just broken in ways that can't be fixed, and Oliver was one of them.
For six weeks, I'd been trying to convince myself that murder wasn't the answer. That single, impulsive decision had completely destroyed my life. Nothing good could come from going to Oliver's house tonight.
But would there be real justice if I allowed him to continue destroying innocent people?
Do it for Leo, my mind began repeating over and over again.
Do it for Leo.
Do it for Leo.
Do it for Leo.
Leo deserved a chance to be free. He deserved happiness. He deserved to actually live instead of merely surviving. He deserved a world where predators like Oliver couldn't hurt him anymore.
I knew I had to let Oliver win this round and save my brother in the process. I knew I shouldn't be the person who destroys multiple lives for revenge that won't feel worth it once it's over.
But the more I tried to convince myself to stay locked in my room all day, the more I realized that leaving Oliver to do whatever he wants would cause more harm than good.
He would continue his pattern of abuse and manipulation.
There would be other victims, other families torn apart by his cruelty.
I stumbled to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face as the internal war raged in my mind.
One thing had become clear during our time in the past: I couldn't control other people's actions. No matter what I did to try to prevent others from behaving destructively, they ended up doing exactly what they'd done before. The only variables that changed were the timing and location of events.
But not everything had been negative.
There had been things that were different this time around. The actions I was able to take were different, even though everyone else followed the same patterns.
This time, I'd been able to save more patients at the hospital by applying knowledge I hadn't possessed as a teenager. I'd made peace with Kyle and rebuilt our relationship. I'd been a better daughter, a more supportive sister.
Maybe I couldn't prevent other people's choices, but through my own actions, I could change how scenes played out and influence their ultimate outcomes.
The question was: what kind of influence did I want to have?
Just as it had happened ten years ago, my brother didn't leave his room all day. He was trapped in his own spiral of despair, and nothing I said through his door could reach him.
I tried. God, I tried everything I could think of. I knocked on his door every hour, offering food, offering to watch movies, offering to sit in silence if that's what he needed. But he wouldn't answer, wouldn't engage, wouldn't give me any opening to reach him.
By seven o'clock, my parents were getting ready for their dinner plans with friends. Their companions would be picking them up, which meant the car would be available all night, just as it had been in the original timeline.
I sat in the living room pretending to watch television, but my attention was entirely focused on listening for Leo's movements upstairs. My hands were sweating so profusely that I had to keep wiping them on my jeans. The wait was torture. Each minute stretched into an eternity.
My parents left, and my anxiety grew more and more.
When I finally heard the bathroom door open and close, I knew it was time. I quietly made my way upstairs and positioned myself outside the door.
I knew what was happening in that bathroom. I'd lived this scene before, had found him too late the first time, had spent ten years wondering if those extra five minutes would have made a difference.
This time, I wouldn't wonder.
After fifteen minutes of silence, I began knocking softly. "Leo, let me in."
Nothing.
"Leo, please. Let's talk."
I heard the unmistakable sound of quiet sobbing from inside, the kind of cry that came from the deepest place in a person’s chest, where words can’t exist anymore. My throat closed. But I didn’t stop trying.
I knocked again.
"Leo?"
The door opened slowly. He was holding an empty pill bottle in his trembling hand. His eyes were red and swollen and distant, like he wasn't really seeing me, like I was a ghost standing in front of him, as he'd already left this world even though his body was still here.
I could see more empty containers scattered across the bathroom floor, just as there had been before. And for a moment, I was eighteen again, standing in that exact doorway, almost too late.
The memory and the present moment overlapped until I couldn't tell which was which.
But this time was different. This time, I'd been prepared. This time, the bottles weren't empty because he drank them all. They were empty because I threw all the pills away this morning.
"How did you know?" he asked with a broken voice.
"How did I know?" I almost laughed, and it came out like a sob.
"Because you've been struggling for days, and even though you keep telling me you're fine, I know you.
I know this isn't really you. And I knew that even though right now you feel like this was your only option, you were going to regret it and ask for help. "
That morning, I'd gone through every medicine cabinet in the house and flushed all the pills down various toilets. I couldn't control my brother's desperation to feel relief, but I could control what tools were available to him in his darkest moment.
My actions were the only thing I had power over.
He blinked hard, and a tear ran down his cheek.
Then another. Then he broke. He collapsed to the floor, his body wracked with uncontrollable sobs.
The sound that came out of his mouth shattered me.
It was raw, desperate, ugly, the crying of someone who didn’t want to die, just couldn’t stand existing.
"I can't take it anymore, Lily. I just can't."
I immediately dropped down beside him and pulled him into my arms. I wanted to hold every broken piece and stitch it back together, but this was something a bandage would not patch.
"That's not true, Leo. You don't want to end everything; you want the pain to stop.
And that's completely different. You just want peace. "
He shook his head against my shoulder. "Will it ever stop?"
"Of course it will. I promise you that. And I'm here to do everything in my power to make it happen. Everything is temporary, even the suffering. There are pains we've experienced in our lives that we don't even remember now. And I assure you, at some point, this will be one of them."
"But I can't live in a world where people like Oliver exist."
My breath caught. They were exactly the same words he'd spoken ten years ago. The words that had lit the fuse of my rage and sent me walking to Oliver's house later.
This time, though, hearing them didn't ignite the same fury. Instead, they filled me with a bone-deep dread, because I knew exactly what they meant for him, and for me.
"You don't mean that," I said, stroking his hair to try to comfort him.
"Of course I do. More than you could possibly understand."
He didn’t know that I understood it better than anyone. Better than he would ever know.
"What do you expect me to do about it, Leo?" I asked carefully, even though I knew I shouldn't. I knew this was the question that had made him feel responsible for my actions when everything fell apart.
But I couldn't help myself. I needed to hear him repeat it. I needed that final push toward what I already knew was inevitable. Needed the permission that would make this feel less like murder and more like justice.
"I know you can't do anything to change him," he said, his voice small and defeated. "People like Oliver don't change. They just find new victims."
"But if there was a way?"
"I want you to make sure he can never hurt anyone ever again."
There it was. The permission I'd been waiting for. The justification I'd been seeking.
In that moment, I realized the truth I'd been running from all along: I wasn't here to prevent Oliver's death. I was here to do it right this time.
"I love you, Leo," I whispered into his hair. "And I'm going to fix this. I promise."
I didn't tell him that fixing it would cost me everything. That I would become a monster to kill the biggest monster. That he would have to live with the knowledge that I'd done this for him, even if he never knew the full truth.