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“I know, but”—I’m struggling to find the words; this is all so much harder than I expected, and I expected it to be excruciating—“but do you really have jump off that rock?”
His eyes crease with confusion.
“Have to?” he says. “I—well, I want to. Landon and I were going to do it together. On his birthday. We made plans. And I—”
He stops and stares at the wall, struggling as much as I was moments ago. When he looks back at me, there’s even more pain in his eyes. More guilt. More heartbreak. More of everything that makes me want to take back everything I’ve said.
And I feel every ounce of it, burning me from the inside out.
“I was supposed to jump with him in China,” he says, angry with himself, and although he’s said these things aloud to me before, I feel like this time he’s repeating them only to himself, condemning himself with the memory, over and over again. “I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to check his pack like I had always done. I was supposed to be there.” Tears fall from his eyes and it’s breaking my heart—and taking everything in me not to reach out and comfort him. But I can’t. I can’t keep being his crutch. “But I didn’t go. After all that planning we did, all of the excitement, I was too busy with work to keep my promise, to stay true to my brother. Too busy with my bullshit life”—he slashes his hand in front of him—“to go with him and make sure he was going to be OK.”
He looks beyond me, his jaw hardening, his eyes focused and wet around the edges. His hands clench into fists at his sides.
“He’s dead because I was supposed to be there!”
The sharpness of his voice quietly stuns me. But I’m not afraid of him—the anger he’s projecting is only at himself.
But I know finally, looking back on my two weeks with him, hearing his friends tell me how much me being here has changed him, witnessing his anger seconds ago, the turmoil inside … I know now that I’m not what he needs right now, that this isn’t something anyone else can help him with.
“I feel better when you’re here with me,” he says, but he can’t look at me. “I haven’t felt at peace with anything since he died. Nothing. My life just stopped. I might as well be dead, too. But here I am. And he’s gone. And it should’ve been me because Landon was good.” He swallows. A tear rolls down his face. He wipes it away angrily with the back of his hand. “I was the older brother, but I was the one learning from him. He was the one helping me overcome my shit. He had his head on straight. He knew what was important in life, what really mattered. But me, I lost my way and forgot everything that mattered, and I didn’t listen to him when he tried to make me see it.”
He pauses and looks back over at me. “Sienna, you’re the first thing that has made me smile since Landon’s death.”
I choke back the tears.
“But, Luke,” I say softly, compassionately, “I can’t replace him.” Silence.
“I … I want to help you,” I say, stepping up to him, his eyes red-rimmed and glistening with moisture. “But I think you’re so scarred by the guilt that you have to make this kind of peace on your own. Covering up the pain with me won’t heal it. I … can’t replace Landon.”
Luke sits back down on the edge of the bed, defeated, his legs apart, his hands dangling between them.
“This isn’t just about my brother, is it?”
“No,” I say softly and sit down next to him. “I know that this jump is important to you. I understand why, and as much as I want you to change your mind about it, I can’t ask or expect you to change who you are. I know that BASE jumping is part of your life … but the thought of being in love with you and losing you the way you lost your brother … I, well, I just can’t put myself through that. Not now. Not ever.”
He looks down at his interlocked hands, and I can’t escape the feeling that, judging by the wounded look on his face, he expected this, he knew it would end like this even though he tried so hard to have hope. And it just makes me feel that much worse.
After a moment I add, “But, Luke, I think more than anything, bigger than me, bigger than us, you need to find yourself again, find your way again and your peace with Landon’s death, before anything else.”
He glances over but doesn’t meet my gaze. He knows that I’m right.
“Y’know,” he says, “I would say that I shouldn’t have let it go this far, this thing between us, but I don’t regret a moment of it. Maybe I’m being selfish again, but even though I knew the day I met you that it probably wouldn’t work out, I don’t regret taking it as far as we did.”
I smile softly. “Neither do I.” I reach over and take his hand. “You did something for me that no one has ever come close to doing—my fear of heights, of course, but you did more than just try to help me overcome it. You helped me see everything else with a whole new perspective: my career; my family and financial priorities; my future.” I pause and look off at the wall. His fingers slip between mine, over the top of my hand.
“Landon may have been good, like you said,” I say, meeting his eyes, “but something tells me he learned it from you. Little brothers always look up to their big brothers.”
I stand up and step in between his legs. He gazes up at me and takes both of my hands into his.
“I want you to promise me something,” I say.
A brief moment of quiet passes between us.
“Anything,” he says, tugging on my fingers.
“When you go to Norway, before your feet leave that rock, promise me, Luke, that it’ll be for the right reasons.”
“The right reasons?” he asks, confused.
