Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“Which son?” Theo asked gently.
“Both, I guess,” I admitted. It didn’t surprise me in the least how observant Theo was. “After Rabbit said his goodbyes, I left the phone running. I guess maybe my heart knew what I was going to do before my brain did.”
“You were saying goodbye too.”
I hadn’t expected the words to hit me so hard. Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I managed a nod but nothing more. It took me a while to catch my breath enough to continue. “I knew how hard it would be for him to hear and see Rabbit say in his own words how ready he was to die… how he would see us all again in the next life. My father was so focused on trying to save his son that I think the message would have made him finally realize what he’d put Rabbit through. My father is a good man. Despite everything, I know he loved Rabbit with all his heart.”
“So you wanted to spare him the guilt. You gave him an alternate outlet for his grief,” Theo murmured, then pointed out, “But he would have seen the video if you hadn’t survived.”
“Pretty fucked-up thinking, huh?”
Theo shifted so he could stroke my cheek. He dropped his head to brush a soft kiss over my lips. “No, not fucked up. You thought you were going to die. You thought he’d see the whole message. You wanted his forgiveness. For Rabbit. For yourself. But you survived.”
I tore my eyes from Theo’s, but he forced me to look at him.
A move I’d done to him countless times.
“You survived. You couldn’t forgive yourself for that, so you needed your father’s anger. You still haven’t forgiven yourself, have you, my love?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and covered them with my hand so I could hide from the truth just a little while longer. Theo’s thumb had moved down to the pulse point in my neck, so I knew he could feel how hard my heart was beating.
“No timers, Lincoln. No compasses. No conditions,” Theo said gently.
He was giving me a pass by repeating my own words back to me. My secrets were my own until I was ready to confront them.
“Can’t,” I said brokenly. “Can’t forgive myself.” I shook my head hard. “Not yet.” I managed to pull my hand from my eyes. Theo’s mouth immediately closed over mine. The kiss was soft but demanding at the same time.
Theo broke the kiss. “I’m not going anywhere, Lincoln. A minute or a lifetime. I’ll be there when you’re ready.”
I managed a nod. Theo continued petting me in different spots all over my upper body as he rested his head on my chest.
“You asked what happened after I injected the rest of the morphine into myself,” I said. “I called 911 so our bodies would be found. I didn’t count on their response time or that the morphine might not be enough to end my life as quickly as Rabbit’s. I woke up in a hospital bed. I’d written the code for Rabbit’s phone on a piece of paper so the authorities would know what happened.”
“Were you arrested?” Theo asked. I could hear the fear in his voice as he connected the dots.
“I’m not on the run from the law, sweetheart,” I said with a smile.
“But if they saw the video…” he began.
“I got a visit from the district attorney and police chief the next morning while I was still in the hospital. I had every intention of confessing to everything I’d done. The right to die law didn’t apply because I’d broken every protocol that had been put in place to prevent the exact thing I’d done. Before I could even admit to anything, the DA handed me Rabbit’s phone and told me he wasn’t filing charges against me. He told me how sorry he was for my loss and said I was free to go, then he left the room.”
“What—”
I placed my finger over Theo’s lips when he lifted his head to ask the obvious question. “I wasn’t relieved. I was fucking pissed. I started railing at the chief of police that he had to arrest me. I’d murdered my brother. I fully expected him to cuff me to the bed at that point but instead, he sat down in the chair next to the bed and said he had a story to tell me,” I explained.
“He went on to tell me about a young lawyer whose wife had an inoperable tumor in her brain. The lawyer and his wife had the misfortune of living in a state where the choice to die with dignity wasn’t a choice at all. Unlike myself, the lawyer had followed the letter of the law when he’d moved his wife to Oregon a few months after the diagnosis. Unfortunately, his wife’s condition went downhill much faster than the doctors had predicted.