Page 98 of Living with Fire
They both left once she got out of surgery, and only after I insisted they go home and get changed. They both had her blood all over their clothes. I still do.
“Stopped by your place,” he says, reading my mind. He holds up a bag. “Brought you this. Figured you weren’t leaving anytime soon.”
My chin juts out, jaw set. “I’m not.”
“You get a hold of her dad?” Brody asks, taking a seat opposite me on the other side of her bed.
Leaning back in my chair again, I clasp my hands together and rest them on my stomach, letting my eyes settle back on Savanna where they’ve been for the majority of the time I’ve been sitting here. She’s breathing on her own, so she doesn’t have a bunch of tubes and wires coming out of her face, but I feel like they’re all over the rest of her.
I hate that her dad and brothers are going to have to see her like this. Sighing, I nod. “Yeah. Her family is flying in first thing tomorrow.”
For a while we sit in silence, listening to the machines monitoring Savanna.
It guts me to look at her, to see all the bruising and swelling on her face, the cuts and scrapes. It’s partially why I keep staring at her. I need to punish myself for everything that’s happened, for everything I couldn’t stop, and this is the best way.
I should have done a better job protecting her. I should have kept my promise of protecting her. I don’t know what more I could have done, short of handcuffing her to me, but Jesus, there must have been something.
“Stop it,” Brody says.
I look up at him in surprise. “Stop what?”
His lips pinch together, exasperated. “I can hear you from here. You’re beating yourself up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” I scoff, shifting guiltily.
Keen brown eyes watch me over Savanna’s bed. “You didn’t need to.”
Breathing out a sigh, I scrub my hands over my face. Sometimes it’s easier when it’s Liam instead of Brody. Sure, Liam picks up on things, but he doesn’t call me out in the same manner Brody does. Brody has this quiet way of throwing things at you that make you stop and think, and I really don’t have the capacity to do that right now.
“I should have done more,” I tell him, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees, looking down at the floor. “I should have been there for her.”
Closing my eyes, I take a shaky breath, hating myself for the thoughts running through my head, but I need to tell someone, and it might as well be Brody.
“I love Liam, and I’m grateful as fuck he was there for her, but it should have been me,” I choke out, pushing a finger and thumb into the corners of my eyes. “I wish it had been me talking to her, holding her hand, telling her it was going to be okay. She must have been so scared, and I couldn’t even comfort her.”
Brody scratches at his chin for a moment, letting the silence weigh down on us, digesting what I’ve said before responding. Finally, he says, “When Heather died, I wished the same thing. I felt guilty I wasn’t there to hold her hand. I wasn’t there in her last moments.”
When I look at him, his eyes are planted on Savanna, and I wonder if he sees her, or if he’s seeing Heather. “I didn’t think I would survive the guilt of it. I let it consume me, and fuck man,” he pauses, grimacing. “I wanted it to consume me. I didn’t think I deserved anything more.”
My heart goes out to him. Brody never really talked about what he went through after Heather died, choosing to freeze us all out as he worked through it himself. And he did, to a point, though he’s never been the same.
“Feels like if you’d just been able to protect her, keep her safe, everything would be okay,” I say quietly, running a hand through my hair. “That’s how I feel. If I’d been better, she’d be okay. She wouldn’t be stuck in a hospital bed. I just keep coming back to the same damn thing, man. This is all my fault.”
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Brody says sternly. His eyes are trained on me, hard and unwavering. “There is only one person to blame for all of this, and that son of a bitch is dead. This wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t Savanna’s. This is all on him.”
I breathe out a sigh. “I wish believing that was as easy as saying it.”
“You can’t let the guilt destroy you. You’ve just got to be happy she’s still alive.”
I look at him, contemplating what he’s said, what he shared about Heather, and how he felt afterwards. “How did you get over the guilt?”
Brody laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Who said I did?”
“Heather dying wasn’t your fault,” I say, frowning. “You weren’t driving the car.”
He gives me a pained smile, and I can see then that he still lives with guilt every day of his life. It’s not something I normally see in him, but maybe that’s because he hides it so well none of us see it.
“But I should have been.” He rubs his hands together for a moment then leans forward, elbows on his knees, his fingers tented in front of his lips. “Do you think she’d want you to be sitting here beating yourself up for what happened?”