SAGE
Dead.
Dead.
Finn, Mom is dead.
The doctor said he didn’t find anything wrong with my heart, and that I should go back to the west wing and finish my work. He was incorrect, obviously, since my heart was shattered into millions of pieces and floating somewhere outside my body.
I walked up the stairs toward Finn, incoherent.
Dead.
Finn, our mom is dead.
How would I tell him? How would I say those words out loud? Would he even understand me when I did? Somewhere, deep inside, could he still remember who he was? Did he remember our mom?
When I pushed through the door, I didn’t find Finn alone. Jack hung from one of the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room doing pull-ups. His shirt was off and sweat rolled down his torso to the waistband of his cut-off cargo pants. I wondered if perhaps he’d gone shirtless just to insult me.
The wrongness of seeing him here, shirtless and exercising, right after I’d discovered my mom had died—I couldn’t put my rage into words.
“Why did you lie to me?” My voice was cold, hard.
Jack increased his speed and didn’t look down. He towed himself up, one pull-up after another. My anger grew while he did twenty-nine more before dropping to the floor, landing entirely on his good right leg.
“Why?” I demanded.
Jack picked up his t-shirt off the floor and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “So what if I lied to you? What difference would it have made? Would you have trusted me sooner? Or maybe you wouldn’t have kissed me? Is that it?”
“How dare you.” The indignation surged through me, flowing through every muscle, every cell, every fiber of my being.
I was angry at Jack for not facing up to me. Angry at Beckett for lying. Angry at my mother for dying. Angry at Finn for changing. Angry at my father for starting this entire mess in the first place.
Without giving myself time to think, I dove into Jack. My fists started pummeling his chest. I felt fiercer than I had in my entire life. I had no semblance of skill—my movements were powered only by the fury built up inside of me. I wanted to inflict the pain that I felt inside, and I punched him over and over, without letting up.
Jack didn’t step back. I just kept punching, punching, punching … until a sob escaped my throat, and my fists slowed down. Jack placed his hands on my shoulders. After I delivered a few more half-hearted punches, his arms encircled me and pulled me to him. My forehead pressed against his chest, my tears flowing freely.
My mother was gone.
Jack said nothing. He held me there as my body wracked with sobs, his skin wet with my tears. The anger slowly ebbed, and only one thing remained. Raw pain.
We stayed that way a long time, Jack’s arms holding me, steadying me. And then the door at the top of the stairs pushed open, and Beckett stepped inside.