11. Knox
Knox
My father shuts the door the second her wheelchair crosses the threshold. It feels like there’s an entire country between us now.
I keep staring at the wall. It’s a sickly yellow shade of paint, not bright or sunny, but jaundice-like, with peeling bits hidden by metal supply racks.
I’d rather stare at that than anything else.
If I look at my parents, I’ll see my mother’s tear-streaked face and my father’s rage, and I’ll have to feel something about it all.
About Owen. About the fact that we made it off that ride and he didn’t.
And if I look at where Sawyer just was, I’ll see the ghost of her face—that devastated, desperate expression—and I’ll want to chase after her. I’ll fall to my knees and tell her I didn’t mean it…tell her everything I said was a fucking lie.
But my parents are standing a few feet away.
And Owen is gone. And whatever I might have said to her at the top of that ride died with him, because you don’t get to want your dead brother’s girlfriend.
You don’t get to be the thing she reaches for when she’s bleeding out with grief.
She deserves someone who isn’t the reason everything went wrong.
So I stare at the wall and count the imperfections, the scratches and dents. Thirty-seven of them. I counted them twice while she was here. It was the only thing I could do to keep from letting her see behind the mask.
“That girl has some nerve.” My father’s voice cuts through the silence. He’s pacing again, three steps to the window, three steps back. He’s been doing it since they wheeled me into this room hours ago. Or maybe it’s been days. Time doesn’t feel the same as it used to.
My mother sobs and says something unintelligible. Agreeing with what he said, maybe. Or just more grief over this whole fucked situation. Who knows anymore?
“Coming in here like that,” he continues. “Acting like she has any right. After everything her father did to this family.”
“Richard—”
“Her father is sitting in a prison cell because of choices he made. Choices that cost us everything. And she walks in here like she belongs?” He stops pacing long enough to look at me. “She doesn’t belong here, Knox. She never did. I tolerated her for your brother but I’m done.”
I shake my head, wincing.
“And what the hell is going on between you two?” he continues. “Don’t you fucking forget your responsibility to this family. Moretti sees everything.”
“Richard, please. I can’t. Not right now.”
My father scoffs, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Did you take your Valium, Vic? I can’t take the goddamn waterworks another second.”
“Dad.” I finally work up the balls to say something. He can hang the Moretti shit over my head all he wants, but he doesn’t get to speak to my mother that way, or Sawyer for that matter. “That was harsh.”
He hangs his head and mutters something under his breath.
I start examining the striped pattern of the scratchy hospital blanket now, but I hear him move toward her—how his dress shoes shuffle on the linoleum.
Fabric rustles and he’s probably taking her into his arms again.
I don’t want to watch. Lord only knows why she wants to be anywhere near him.
If I were her, I wouldn’t. Not with what I know.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Vicki. I can’t stop picturing his face. How scared he must have been…”
“I know.” Mom’s crying again. Actually, I don’t think she’s stopped yet. “Our boy. Our sweet boy.”
Our sweet boy.
Owen.
His name sits on my chest, making my already aching ribs crack in two.
Every breath is agony, but it’s not worse than picturing him moments before he sat down on that ride.
The way his face went slack when Sawyer ignored him, how he clocked my hand on Sawyer’s low back and hung his head.
He was confused, shocked, devastated. And fuck, I was happy about it.
And Sawyer—I forced her onto that ride, like the relentless prick I am.
The thought loops through my head on repeat.
It has been since I woke up in this bed with a concussion and a half dozen fractured ribs and the knowledge that my brother is truly dead.
I forced Sawyer onto that coaster. I saw the opening—Ella complaining about feeling sick or whatever she was doing, Owen being his usual accommodating self—and I took it.
Maneuvered. Manipulated. Put my hand on Sawyer’s lower back like I had every right to touch her and guided her toward the line.
Two years of watching her with him. Two years of showing up at family dinners and birthday parties and holidays, acting like I didn’t care. Like it didn’t kill me every time he touched her. Every time she smiled at him the way she used to smile at me before everything went to shit.
Two years of punishment I deserved, and even when I hated her, I still couldn’t stay away.
I kept tabs on her. I knew her schedule, her favorite coffee shop, the route she took home from her shitty hotel front desk job.
I told myself I was just making sure she was safe, that someone needed to watch out for her since oblivious Owen sure as hell wasn’t going to do it. But that was bullshit and I knew it.
I watched her because I was obsessed. Because she was mine first and Owen stole her and I hated them both for it. And her fucking family ruined mine. She ruined me.
And now Owen’s dead and I’m alive and the last thing I said to him was that that me being with Sawyer wasn’t a big fucking deal when it was everything to me. When I knew I was hurting him and liked it.
The machines beside my bed beep steadily. My heartbeat. Proof I’m still here when Owen isn’t. When multiple strangers aren’t. When Sawyer almost wasn’t. My heart doesn’t deserve to keep beating.
“We should let you rest.” Mom’s beside my bed now. I didn’t even hear her move. She touches my cheek with trembling fingers. “Oh, Knox. My boy. My baby.” Her words slur. Meds must be kicking in. That in itself triggers me more than this whole fucking situation.
I need her to go before I vomit or punch something or scream.
I’m not her baby. Owen was her baby. He was the perfect one.
The one who made them proud no matter what he did.
Even when I dropped everything and left school to keep the company afloat while Dad lost his fucking mind after the Thorne scandal.
It was me, not him.
But I can’t think about that. Not now. I can’t think about the things I know that Owen never knew and never will now.
The things Dad did. How Mom locked herself in the bathroom for three days after it all came out.
The pills I flushed down the toilet at two in the morning while she was passed out fully clothed.
The screaming matches I heard through walls that Owen slept right through at his dorm, hours away, blissfully unaware.
The affair that almost destroyed what little was left of our family.
“Knox?” Mom’s still touching my face with clammy fingers. “Honey, did you hear me?”
I blink and force myself to focus on her. Her eyes are so swollen and her makeup is smeared down her cheeks in black streaks. She looks like she’s aged ten years since yesterday morning. Understandable.
“Yeah…I heard you.”
She reaches for the remote with the call button, pressing it into my palm.
“Your father and I are going to get some coffee. The cafeteria closes soon and we need to…” She trembles and holds her hand over her mouth to suppress a sob.
“We need to start making calls. The funeral home. Owen’s friends from college.
His professors. His coworkers. Everyone who loved him. ”
So an endless list, because everyone loved Owen.
“Okay,” I say.
She leans down and kisses my forehead, and I feel her tears on my skin, hot and wet. “I love you so much. You know that, right? You’re all we have left now. You’re all…”
She can’t finish. She just sobs against my hair while I bring my hand to her back, holding her as much as I can stomach.
And Dad’s standing there with his hands in his pockets, staring at the floor like he’s searching for an exit that doesn’t exist. Like all of this is more than uncomfortable to him.
I nod against her, not trusting my voice. I can’t let the words out because if I do I’m afraid I’ll crack open my chest and release everything I’ve held on to for too long. And they’ll see who I really am. They’ll see how I’m really grieving. What I really want.
Finally, she pulls back and I let my hand fall onto my chest. Dad moves to the foot of my bed, and for a second, our eyes meet. I see it there…the festering guilt. That maybe he deserves this for what he’s done.
His face mirrors my own. Maybe I deserve this too.
Owen died and I lived. The good son and the bad son, and fate picked wrong.
Or maybe it picked exactly right. Maybe living with the guilt is what we both deserve—him for what he did to Mom, me for what I did to Owen.
“Get some rest, son. We’ll be back in an hour.”
They leave together, and I pull in a painful breath. Watching her hang all over him, makes me sick. How could she, knowing what he’s done. But then again, maybe grief erases all sins, maybe tragedy makes you forget the unforgivable things…even if only temporarily.
I’m alone for no more than a minute before the door opens again.
Ella slips inside, quiet enough that if I wasn’t looking, I wouldn’t know she’s there.
She’s still wearing the same clothes from yesterday—that white sundress that I internally sneered at the second I saw her come out of the bedroom wearing it.
Now it’s rumpled and there’s a brown stain on the chest. Her face is blotchy, but it looks like she’s washed it recently from the lack of makeup.
“Hey,” she says quieter than usual. She’s hovering near the door like she’s not sure she’s allowed to be here. “I saw your parents leave. I thought...I wanted to check on you. Make sure you’re okay.”
I look at her and feel absolutely nothing.