Hold My Breath(54)

My back aches from this position I’ve been sitting in for the last hour, so I kick off my shoes and walk to the water’s edge, searching for stones. When I gather a few, I throw them as hard as I can, counting the times they skip along the surface. I was the one who taught Maddy how to skip stones. Not Evan.

I pick up another handful, but I pause, closing my eyes, my breath rushing out all at once until I feel it boil to the top, and I let out a growl of a roar, cocking my arm back and thrusting the rocks into the middle of the lake, the stones pelting the ripples left by the breeze.

“I hate you!” I yell.

I yell it out here, where there is no witness but me. I yell at my brother, for leaving me with this. For making this mess to begin with, and for leaving me!

My hands find my face, and I rub my palms along my eyes, my energy to do anything waning. I have no idea how I’m going to get on a plane in four days, let alone drag myself through three days of practice. I might not have to if Curtis decides I’m too big of a risk to take…or if Maddy tells her dad what degenerates the Hollister brothers really were.

My feet start to kick at the water’s currents, and I lose myself in the swirls I leave along the shore, my feet creating chaos in something otherwise calm and perfect. That’s what I am—I’m chaos.

A rock skips by, tumbling along a few of the jagged boulders that stick up through the shallow water, and I jerk my head fast, turning to see Maddy in the clearing of the woods. She pulls another stone from her left palm and thrusts it across the water with her right. It bounces three times, and my lip ticks up on one side with pride.

“You’re getting better,” I say over my shoulder, not able to look at her fully.

“You’re getting worse,” she says.

My shoulders shake with my short laugh.

Oh, Maddy, you have no idea how much worse I am.

“How long have you been here?” I ask.

I know.

“Long enough to hear you hate someone,” she says. I close my eyes and let my chin fall into my chest while I push my hands into my pockets at my sides. I regret yelling that, because as much as I hate what he did, I don’t hate Evan. I f*cking miss him.

“I hate someone, too,” she says.

My lips shudder at her words.

“I don’t want you to hate anyone, Maddy,” I say.

It’s quiet for several seconds, but I hear the sound of her feet slipping into the water, her steps coming closer, until I can feel her next to me. She’s too far to touch, yet all I want to do is hold her.

“Then I need to know it all,” she says. “From the beginning.”

My eyes open on the water, and I turn just enough to see the place where her legs disappear under the blue. Her skin is pebbled from the chill, and her hands cling to the bottoms of her shorts. I would give anything to pull those hands in mine and kiss them, as if they were mine and only mine—only ever mine. But they weren’t.

“Her name is Tanya Foster. She lived in my dorm,” I say, stopping to let the wave of nausea pass. That’s one of the things I still haven’t been able to come to terms with in all of this—my role in introducing Tanya and my brother. Tanya was always beautiful—a walking blonde, blue-eyed temptation. I think maybe I’d hoped he’d fall for her. I didn’t want him to hurt Maddy, but I think deep down, I wanted him to mess up…to leave her.

“Was she someone you were dating?” she asks.

I shake my head before speaking.

“No, we were friends. We had a few classes together, and I knew her from school. We’d gone to a few parties together, but that was all,” I say.

“How did she meet Evan?” she asks.

My chest rises with the slow draw of air, and I look up at the lake, filling my mind with a mix of memories—Maddy here, Tanya…there.

“About a year before the accident, Evan came to visit me. He stayed for the weekend,” I say, the memory so vivid it almost forces me to sit down in the water from the weight of it.

“I remember that weekend. Evan and I…we’d had a fight,” she says, and something about the way her voice wavers draws my eyes to look at her. She’s staring out along the lake, but her eyes are misted. I hate seeing how much this hurts. I hate that I’m the one hurting her.

I swallow hard before I continue.

“Evan went to a party with us, and they got along. I didn’t notice anything more, though. It all seemed friendly, and Evan was with me practically the whole time,” I say.

Maddy breathes out a laugh, but I correct her. It wasn’t then that he cheated. I’m sure of it. I’ve heard the entire story of how they got together from Tanya.

“He came to visit a few more times, and whenever I had practice, or had studies or a class, he’d hang out with her. They had become friends, but I didn’t start to suspect something until…” I stop, my mind frozen on the night I left Evan with her at a party, when he came into my room hours later, his mouth shut on the subject of her. He wouldn’t even tolerate my teasing. I wouldn’t know why until weeks later.

“Maddy, I don’t want to put these details in your head. It’s not fair to you; Evan’s not here to answer to them, and the pictures you’ll conjure…” I stop at her interruption.

“You have no idea what’s already in my head, Will. I need these details,” she says, her voice a harsh and violent whisper. I turn to meet her gaze, her steely eyes intent on the truth. “I need them to be able to sleep at night. I cannot make up my own questions and answers—it’s torture.”