For Jace.

For Bianca.

But mostly…for him.

“Cole—”

“After they took his body away, I went back in the closet and found the Bible,” he utters, his voice barely above a whisper. “It was underneath his blanket. He must have been holding it when he…”

“Cole—”

“He didn’t leave a note…but he left that.”

“Only Liam knows why he circled that passage. It’s easy to see something as negative when the worst has already happened. Maybe Liam meant it as a reminder for people to love everyone because he was bullied—”

“You don’t know him,” Cole argues as he stands up. “You didn’t fucking know him.”

He looks up at the sky, his expression so dejected it rips out every one of my heartstrings.

“He’s dead because of me.”

“He’s dead because he killed himself,” I correct, getting up off the grass.

Not to place the blame on Liam, but to shift it off Cole.

No wonder he never lets anyone in. The real Colton is encased in a tomb of guilt.

As if he died that day too.

He shakes his head vigorously. “He tried to tell me something was wrong.”

It’s easy to see it that way after the fact.

Cole sent him away because Liam annoyed him, and he thought he was having another manic episode or looking for attention.

Not because he wanted him to die.

What Cole did was insensitive and ruthless…there’s no disputing that.

But he didn’t kill Liam.

I grab his face, forcing him to look at me. “In an ideal world, you would have stopped him, okay? But you had no idea what was going to happen. It’s not like Liam was wearing a flashing neon sign showcasing his intentions that night.”

You never truly know when someone’s on their last breath…even when it’s suicide.

“Yes, he was. And I fucking ignored it. Worse than ignored it…I made it worse.”

I don’t have the right answer for him. Not one he’s ready to hear.

But I have to try and get through to him.

“Because you were a kid!” I scream. “A kid who didn’t get along with his brother. A kid who didn’t know how to deal with his brother’s mental health issues because he was going through his own. Ignorance isn’t culpability. It’s like blaming someone for drowning when they never learned how to swim. You didn’t have the right tools or knowledge. You didn’t know—”

“He tried to tell me, and I turned him away.” Agony slashes his face. “Hell, I was probably the one who planted the goddamn idea inside his head in the first place.”

“You don’t know that. He needed help, Cole. Serious help. It sucks that he didn’t get it.”

He closes his eyes. “He didn’t get it because of me.”

“No, because everyone—namely your father who was the adult—was so scared of Liam’s disease, he brushed it under the rug.”

I don’t think Mr. Covington is a bad person. My heart goes out to him for everything he’s endured. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a wife and a son so close together.

However, his other children didn’t ask to be brought into the world, and they sure as hell aren’t dead.

They needed him to be a parent…and he failed them.

Frustration lines his expression. “You don’t understand, Sawyer.”

“Neither do you. The most devastating thing about suicide is that it leaves those behind with so many questions…and zero answers. But just because you don’t have those answers doesn’t mean it was your fault. There are so many tiny little things that shape our decisions—”

A strangled noise leaves him, and he drops to the ground again. “Stop. Stop making excuses…stop looking at me through your bullshit rose-colored glasses when I’m showing you the real me.”

He wants me to blame him and be done with him.

He thinks it’s what he deserves…but it’s not.

I kneel down beside him. “Stop looking at Liam’s suicide through one lens.”

He snorts. “Christ. Do you even hear yourself? I bullied him. I hurt him. Every single fucking day I hurt that kid. I never—” His voice cracks. “I never…”

He can’t say the words.

I wrap my arms around him. “You never forg—”

“I never loved him,” he tosses back before his voice drops to a broken whisper. “And now I’ll never have the chance.” He bunches my sweater in his hands, trembling against me. “He took it from me. That selfish, cowardly motherfucker.”

I hold him tighter. So tight I can feel the sorrow coursing through his body. “It sucks so fucking bad, Colton. So fucking bad. But it still wasn’t your fault.”

Cole will never move on if he can’t grasp that. I get why he wants to blame himself. I’m sure some people would even agree with him.

But it’s not black and white. Things like this never are.

“I never got a chance to fix it,” he muffles against my neck. “He never gave me a chance to fix it.”

And that right there is probably the saddest part of Liam’s death.

Liam and Cole might have mended their relationship…but no one will ever know.

His pain is so palpable it’s tangible. “I’m a horrible fucking person, Sawyer. A ho—”

“If you were a horrible person, you wouldn’t have helped Oliver out.”

His expression clouds over. “I—”

No. I won’t let him try to make excuses. I’ll keep pummeling him with my words over and over again until some of them start to stick.

“If you were a bad person, you wouldn’t have given Cortland your car.”

He growls in exasperation. “I never should have taken the b—”

“If you were a bad person, you wouldn’t have pulled the fire alarm that day at school.”

He freezes. “You knew about that?”

Of course, I did. I remember every single agonizing moment of that incident.

Everyone was standing in a circle mooing at me—the new fat girl at school—while I stood there in nothing but a towel.

Everyone but Cole, who was storming away from the pack like someone on a mission.

Shortly after that…the fire alarm went off.

Everyone started running toward the exits, but I ran back toward the locker room.

I didn’t care if the building was on fire and I’d be burned alive.

I wanted to die that day.

However, when I walked inside, I saw a blazer on the bench.

The initials CC were on the inside tag.

Right then and there, I knew exactly who pulled that fire alarm…the same person who gave me his blazer so I had something to help cover up until my mom arrived at the school with new clothes.

Edging back slightly, I look at him. “It was the worst day of my life, but you helped me. You didn’t have to. You could have joined in and made fun of me like everyone else did…but you didn’t.”

It’s how I knew he was special.

More than just a vapid black hole on the inside.

Colton Covington is a gorgeous man and a talented football player with one hell of a golden arm.