His car was twisted around the trunk of the tree like the black exoskeleton of an insect, his blood trickling down the front seat. He’d found his mom the night before. That year she’d spent every day closed off in an upstairs guestroom, darkness gripping her from the inside, dragging her under, until she drowned in it and Roman came home late one night and found her in the bathtub.
I couldn’t remember how I got Roman back to the farmhouse. He was shaking, sick, and scared. I was scared too. So I held onto him and he held onto me and eventually the trees tore away and we were climbing up the front porch, sinking down onto the living room floor, the two of us curling into each other.
I watched the window as it started to snow and then I stripped the beds, dragging the blankets into the living room. We huddled there, our noses touching beneath my grandmother’s quilt as I tried not to cry.
I gripped the blankets where he couldn’t see. I held my breath. I tried to concentrate on his blurry silhouette and not his closeness. I tried not to feel him. Because I hadn’t told him what I’d found. Not yet.
“Is this what it feels like?” he said.
“What?”
“Waking up.”
I swallowed, tears burning my throat. I thought about all of the times I’d woken up and things had changed without me. My dad had been there, trying to make amends, and during an episode he’d disappeared again. The grief always felt brand new because it was. But when I woke up, no matter how much I hated him, at least I knew that he still existed somewhere in the world. That string hadn’t been cut completely.
But Roman’s mom. She’d severed that string with one of his dad’s razors. She’d abandoned him for good and it made me wonder if those strings aren’t meant to connect us to other people but to hold us together, and when one of them gets clipped, it’s not just the relationship that unravels but us.
I was lying there watching Roman unravel and it was all I could do. I couldn’t speak or think. I couldn’t change any of it. All I could do was watch him wake up. The worst kind of waking up. Because I could see it in the red sting of his eyes that he was more lost now than when he’d washed up on shore.
“Stop,” Roman mumbled into my neck.
“What?”
He blinked. “Stop looking for me.”
“Roman.”
“Bryn. Stop.”
“I won’t.”
He gripped my wrists. “You have to. You don’t…” His voice caught. “You don’t want me like that.”
He knew and I knew but I didn’t care.
“I want you,” I said.
“Am I still in the hospital? Am I some fucking vegetable?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck. I mean I must be. That’s why I’m here isn’t it? I’m in a fucking coma or something.” He tried to catch his breath. “What if I don’t wake up?” He sat up, shaking. “Bryn.”
I gripped his shoulders, tried to fold him in close.
“Bryn, what if I don’t wake up? What if I don’t wake up?”
Maybe because I didn’t have an answer or maybe because I did, I didn’t say a word. I didn’t speak or breathe. I kissed him. I pressed into him, every inch of me pouring into that kiss until he was still. Until we both were.
“I love you,” I said. “You will wake up. Because I love you. You have to. You will.”
“But—”
“You will.”
He folded into my lap again, shuddering. I held onto him, arms curled over his back, letting him feel the weight of me until it felt permanent, until he knew it was. Because I didn’t care if he was broken. He hadn’t cared that we were different, that I was sick, and I didn’t care either.
I watched the storm surge outside, snow whipping past the windows. The last time it snowed here was after my grandfather’s funeral. I was trapped in his home with his things for two weeks, though when I finally woke up all I remembered was curling up on the floor of my bedroom in his work shirt.
From where Roman and I lay I couldn’t even see the trees anymore, or the sand, or the sunflowers—everything was covered in snow, the white erasing everything in a false renewal. Because what if the truth was that nothing could ever be erased?
Roman looked up at me. “I’m scared.”
I reached for his face, holding him steady. “You’re going to wake up.”
“How?”
I heard Roman’s words in my memory, swelling there next to my lungs. I kissed him, resting there until he kissed me back. Until he sunk into it and I could feel every inch of him relent, trust, believe.
Then I looked right at him and said, “Because this is not a coincidence.”
Chapter 33
Bryn
The Girl In Between (The Girl In Between Series Book 1) Page 45