The kiss broke and we looked into each other’s eyes. But before things got awkward, we started splashing each other relentlessly.

I screamed at the top of my lungs as Elias swam around and jumped on my back, pressing both hands on the top of my head and trying to dunk me. I went under twice and swallowed more pond water before I could get away.

“You jerk!” I shrieked.

His dark hair bobbed in the water as he began to swim back toward the dock.

“You still suck, Elias Kline!” I called out to him, my voice carrying across the water. “And that’s why you won’t admit to kissing Mitchell’s sister! Because you sucked at it and don’t want anybody to know!”

With his back to me, his arms came up and he fixed his hands against the edge of the dock. His body shot up out of the water and he sat down against the wooden planks.

“You’re wrong, Bray!” he shouted back.

“Is that so?” I sneered.

“Yeah,” he said. “I never French-kissed her because you were my first.”

I shook the memory out of my head and screamed at the top of my lungs, pounding my fists against the bloody arms of the chair. Tears shot from my eyes.

I looked over at the razor blade on the side table, forcing the memory of Elias out of my mind entirely. I struggled to lift my head, but it felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

The room began to spin. Long, flowing curtains blended with the beige paint on the walls. The sounds from the house were now more audible than ever before. The ticking of two clocks sounded more like six. The shuffling of Lissa’s feet stilled right outside the room. The clock ticking on the wall in the hallway clacked so loudly in my ears I wanted to press my hands over them to stifle the sound, but my arms were too heavy and limp to lift.

My mind was receding fast into blackness. I had always thought this was a slow way to die and that maybe the mind goes before the body.

But I never got the chance to find out.

Lissa burst into the room, saw me in the chair, my wrists covered in blood, and she started screaming.

“Brant! Brant!” I felt her hands cover my wrists. “Call nine-one-one! Brant! Fucking call nine-one-one!” I thought her voice should be unbearably loud in my ears like everything else had been just seconds ago, but this time all the sound around me had become dampened by death slowly stripping away my conscious mind.

Chapter Sixteen

Elias

“Brayelle?” I spoke up when I could no longer stand the silence.

I didn’t expect her to answer and was prepared to leave her alone on the beach if that was really what she wanted, but she surprised me when she said, “I did it wrong.” She kept her gaze on the dark ocean out ahead of us.

“You… you did what wrong?”

“The way I slit my wrists.”

A knot formed in my throat. Hearing those words come from her lips did something to me, something really f**ked up. It hurt. It hurt like hell hearing her admit it, even more so than seeing her scars.

I couldn’t speak. And I couldn’t look at her. Pain and even resentment for what she had done assailed me.

She sniffled and said, “Lissa found me. I did everything wrong. The way I cut them, the house I chose to do it in. The hour. I—”

“Why did you do it, Bray? Why?” I looked right at her. “I want you to tell me the truth. If I had anything to do with why you did it, I want to know.”

I didn’t want to know. I needed to.

I swallowed hard and stared at her from the side, my forearms perched on the tops of my bent knees.

She still wouldn’t look at me and as the silence grew between us, I knew without her having to admit it that I was part of the reason, after all. I just hoped like hell I wasn’t the reason.

“Elias… I lied to you when I said I was afraid of having more with you than we already had because things would change and we’d grow apart. That was all just an excuse. A watered-down version of the truth.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Instantly, my mind began scrambling to find what could be the truth before she told me, but I came up short.

She steadied her breath. I sat quiet and motionless and confused.

“I’ve been pretty messed up all my life,” she said. “You’ve known that. Better than anyone.”

No. I haven’t.

“Crazy, f**ked-up mood swings. Highs and lows that gave me whiplash. That gave everyone around me whiplash. I clung to you from the day I met you. I couldn’t have known that there was something wrong with me when I was a little girl. I was just me. I didn’t know I was any different from anybody else. Who knows stuff like that when they’re kids?” She shook her head shamefully, as if she had been trying to convince herself of this for years, that it wasn’t her fault.

“But I clung to you because you were the only person who wanted to be around me, who went out of his way to be around me.” She laughed lightly and it caught me off guard. “Did you know that Lissa was scared of me?” She glanced over at me briefly, but looked back out at the ocean. “I had no idea. Not until I turned fifteen. I got that ceramic music box from my grandma for my birthday, the one with my name engraved on the side. Lissa dropped and broke it right in front of me. It was an accident, but I’ll never forget the look on her face. She thought I was going to beat the shit out of her.” She laughed lightly again. “That was crazy, of course, but she told me that day that she had always been afraid of me. The other girls at school when we were growing up, they all thought I was a nutcase.”

Then the soft look of nostalgia darkened on her face.

“No one really wanted to be around me,” she said, and I could hear the pain in her voice. “I never knew it. No one ever told me. Not until Lissa told me that day.” She sighed and shut her eyes softly and repeated, “No one ever told me, they just all talked shit about me behind my back. Lissa admitted to it, but she was the only person who remained my friend. But she never really wanted any part of my problems. And who could blame her?”

I scooted over closer to her, touching my shoulder to hers. But that was all I did. I didn’t want to interrupt. It felt like the things she was saying to me were things she had wanted to say to me, to anyone, for so long.

“My mom caught me curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor clawing at my wrists with my fingernails. I was sixteen. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I didn’t even draw blood. I… well, it’s so hard to explain.” She clenched her right hand into a fist and gritted her teeth. “I just had so much anger inside of me. Chaos. It’s the only way I can describe it. I had to get it out. I felt like I was going to explode and I just needed a release. It was itching on the inside. I had to get it out. I can’t explain it.”