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A heavy silence fills the room, and he finally shakes his head. “No, I can’t live without her. No, I can’t live without her,” he murmurs as he turns the gun on himself, placing it against his temple.
“No!” I shout, leaping towards him.
“Dan!” exclaims Iris behind my back.
But it’s too late. Dan pulls the trigger.
He collapses to the floor, dead, with a bullet—HIS bullet—in his head. Drops of blood splatter me, and I fall on the old floor, my knees hitting the ground.
I stare at his body, silent. I feel an immense cold, but I can’t move. I hear Iris crying. She falls in front of me and clings to my shoulders. She sobs while clinging to my T-shirt, and I press her face against my chest. I let her little body collapse into mine. She warms me up and tries to snap me out of my lethargy.
But she doesn’t succeed.
Sanchez still hasn’t moved, yet I know it’s only a matter of time before he wakes up. But I still can’t do anything but hold Iris. I bury my head in her hair so I can’t see Dan’s body and sniff her scent like a drug addict in need of a fix. It’s the only thing that helps me escape from this reality.
“I thought I was losing you.”
These are the only words I can say, so I repeat them a few times, and Iris runs her hands through my hair, pressing herself against me a little more. She consoling me gently, as she would with a child, as she would with her little sister. In fact, she calms us both.
“I can’t lose you,” I whisper again.
She stares at me as she slowly pulls away, sniffing a few times. I run my thumb under her eyes to wipe away her tears and brush her mouth gently.
“I love you,” I finally say. “I fucking love you.”
I managed to say it, to finally put words to what I was feeling. She doesn’t answer me at all, but I don’t need an answer, I just need to feel her against me, to let her heart cradle mine.
Just for a moment.
***
Iris
I finish packing my bags in the trunk of my old Chevrolet. It’s full to the brim with everything I’ve accumulated over the past few months in my little student apartment.
It’s been a rough few days, and I’m still not fully healed. My lip is bruised and I still have bruises all over my body, but I’ve escaped the worst. Tucker didn’t let go of me. He was by my side while the doctors examined me, and at night he held me close. But even though we were physically there, we were mentally elsewhere.
He was seeing his best friend blow his brains out. I was seeing my parents dead on our living room floor.
At first I thought about staying in this town, but I couldn’t. Not after this. Even though Sanchez is now behind bars and I’m safe.
So I’ve decided to leave.
I need to see my sister. To go back to Portland, at least for a while. Away from all this. Tucker has to stay here and look after his mother. We need to rebuild each other.
We were two parts of a whole, and I know we’ll probably get back together as one again someday.
But not now. Not after everything that’s happened, what I’ve been through. I’m not ready, and neither is he.
I hear footsteps at my back, and I know it’s him joining me. I close my trunk, ready to write a new page of my story, far from all these nightmares, all these horrors. I need to get better.
Thanks to Tucker, I have learned to love again and to live. A unique love. The one you can never forget.
I turn around and find him standing there with his hands in his pockets. I didn’t have the strength or courage to say goodbye to the others—TJ and Yeleen—but I’m really going to miss them. When I came here, I didn’t think I would make any friends. And yet, they have managed to create a place for themselves in my troubled existence.
“Hi, Redhead,” Tucker begins with a small smile.
Hearing him call me that, the first nickname he ever gave me, takes me back weeks and plunges me into my memories.
