Page 79 of The Accident

“From what I heard, my stepsister fell apart. Dropped out of school, moved home, and then our parents divorced. I lost all contact with her after that. But randomly, I heard a couple years later that she killed herself. Locked herself in her car with the engine running and a pipe going straight from the exhaust into the front window. Nobody ever talks about it. Especially not my dad.”

I turn around. Kayleigh is standing by the table, eyes red but dry.

I say, “I went through hell and back when I heard. The guilt was killing me, and the way that it ended. I wish I could re-do our last conversation.”

“But you were just a teenager.”

I nod, heart heavy.

“I know. And I also know that it wasn’t just me that did it. Aleatha was sick for a long time in a way that we, as mentally healthy people, can’t imagine. But still, I never tell anyone, and neither does Henry. Because we know how it sounds.”

Kayleigh walks to me, slow, and puts her hands on my chest. Her fingers are cold, but her palms are steady.

“Trevor, you were a kid. You made a mistake. It’s not your fault.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. Because now I can’t stop thinking about what I’m doing to you. How easy it is to hurt you without even trying. How much you trust me, and how quickly I could destroy that. I don’t want to fuck this up, Kayleigh, because you mean too much to me. And you’re so young too, and so kind and sweet. You don’t deserve the kind of pain that Aleatha experienced.”

She lifts her chin, blue eyes glassy and bright.

“But I’m not her. I’m not broken, and I’m stronger than I look. I want this. I want you.”

I pull her in, hands sliding up her back, cradling the soft point of her neck. I kiss her hair, her forehead, then her mouth—slow and unhurried, the world telescoping down to nothing but the taste of her skin.

“I love you,” I say, voice wrecked and hoarse. “I don’t expect you to feel the same for me, and especially because you’re right. I haven’t honored you the way a girlfriend should be honored. I’ve kept you locked up, like I’m ashamed, even though I’m not. I’m just afraid of hurting you, Kayleigh, seeing what I’ve done in the past.”

She smiles, the tiniest flicker, and says, “Then let’s stop hiding.”

I nod. The broken glass is still on the floor, the wine stain creeping up the white wall. But we stand in the center of it, the city outside, her body pressed to mine, and it feels like the first true thing in years.

“We’ll figure it out,” she says, and I believe her.

“I love you,” I repeat hoarsely in her ear. “And it’s the truest thing I’ve said in years. I adore you, Kayleigh, and I never want you to feel bad because of me. I’ll change. I’ll help you find a job, find new hobbies⁠—”

She cuts me off, blue eyes soft as she strokes the hard planes of my face.

“I love you too, Trevor, and I don’t need a job. Taking care of you is the only job I’ve ever wanted, and I realize you’re torn. Haunted, even, by what happened to your former stepsister. But I’m not her, and she’s not me. I’m okay. I’m here, alive, and I want to be with you, no matter what. We’ll go slow, okay? We’ll see what happens because I adore you, Trevor Cahill, and I always have.”

With those words, I begin to cry. I don’t even realize what’s happening at first, until I taste the moisture on my lips. But Kayleigh sees it and kisses me softly, pulling out all the discomfort from my heart and banishing it with her gentle ways and feminine demeanor. Because it’s not just that Kayleigh feels safe with me. I feel safe with this woman, too, and that’s the way it should be.

EPILOGUE: A LONG-AWAITED REDEMPTION

Trevor

The cemetery is all slope and shadow, a ragged grid of stones gnawed down by time. At the edge of the city, the graves are packed tight, names fighting for territory in the brittle grass. Half the markers lean in toward each other, gossiping in the hush. The air is cold enough to frost a lung. My hands are empty except for the flower and the key fob in my pocket, which I click obsessively as we walk, some idiot’s talisman to keep the ghosts at bay.

Aleatha Romero is easy to find. Her grave is low and flat, the stone worn blank where the elements got to it first, the name and years eroding back toward dust. There’s no ornament—just the little oval set in the granite, a grainy photograph of a girl with straight black hair and a smile so tentative it looks like an apology. The ground around her is pocked and uneven, the grass never quite growing over the wound. There’s a beer bottle at the base, empty and half-sunk. Kayleigh nudges it away with her sandal and says nothing.

I stand there with the flower, watching the picture, trying not to let the old itch crawl up my neck. I used to dream about Aleatha’s funeral. I didn’t even go because I didn’t know she’d passed at the time, so my dreams are of an imagined funeral that never actually happened. But I can see it in my mind’s eye—the color of the sky, the faces in the crowd, the feeling that everyone was just waiting for me to confess. They all knew. Every single person knew that I was the reason she was in the ground, and that made it worse than any sentence.

But I know better now. Aleatha was very sick, and the guilt I felt was the reeling of a young man who didn’t know better. Meanwhile, Kayleigh doesn’t say a word. She waits, her body close but not touching mine. She’s in a sundress, grey with white dots, the kind of thing a vintage shop would price at $8 but I’d pay a grand for just to see her in it again. Her hair is loose. There’s a blue-green streak on one arm where she leaned against a fresh-cut juniper at the park. She looks gorgeous, as always.

I kneel, slow, my knee joint clicking loud enough for her to hear. I set the white flower on the grave, right next to the photo, and brush the dirt from my palm. The stone is cold, but the light is warm—amber and low, just bleeding through the trees like the last exhalation of the day.

I think about the last time I saw Aleatha alive. It’s always the driveway that gets me—the way her arms wrapped around her elbows, the way she stared at the sky like she was waiting for an answer that would never come. She knew I was going to break up with her. She knew it before I did. The only thing I ever gave her was a confession, and by then it was way too late.

Kayleigh puts a hand on my shoulder. Not a squeeze, just a presence. I let her rest it there for a minute before I stand and dust the dirt off my knees. The grass stains my jeans a little, and for some reason that’s the thing that makes me want to laugh and punch something at the same time.

We stand there. The silence is so deep it echoes in my teeth.