“When Colt decided something was off, he tried to take Chase home, but Chase was trashed and still upset.” I blow out a breath, my heart cracking all over, fracturing down the same line as then. “We have a thing with roofs. Since we were teens, we find one to sit on and vent about shit. He said he was going on one that night, so he could call me again. We’d snuck onto the one of a little café a year earlier, and they were near it. It had a ladder on the side of the building. Colt tried to stop him, but Chase climbed it anyway. Halfway up, he yelled at Colt to follow him while trying to get his phone out.”

“Oh my God,” she breathes.

The sound of Colton’s wrecked voice hammers through my mind. How alone he must have felt, watching him fall. Alone because of me. Then come the memories of the hospital, walking in for the first time, Chase’s body fighting while he was in a medically induced coma. Not knowing with each surgery if he would make it out. The pain in his eyes when he found out he wouldn’t regain full use of his legs.

I sniff back the assault and admit the harshest truth I’ve ever had to live with out loud. “If I would have answered or been there, it wouldn’t have happened. Chase wouldn’t have climbed up there, feeling like I hated him and like he needed to fix it. But I was chasing you. Chase was broken and bleeding on a gurney—Colton was destroyed in ways I can’t even understand, blaming himself. And I was at a fucking lake.”

Her lashes flutter over building tears. “And you thought I was there because I abandoned you and wanted someone else.”

“It crushed me. Even if it wasn’t real, I’d lost you, then I almost lost him. I was hurt and angry, and I stupidly blamed you for all of it.”

Tears roll down her cheeks, and I swipe them away with my thumbs, cupping her face. As hard as it is to tell her, the worst part is recognizing all the damage I caused. To her. To him. To Colt. Myself.

“You did hate me,” she rasps, voice weak.

“No. I couldn’t deal with reality, so I put it on you because it was easier. But even then, Remi, I loved you. I’d never fucking met you, but I knew I loved you. And realizing how much of your life you lost on top of everything else because I threw your phone…”

She takes a shuddering inhale, shaking her head against my palms. “You’ve spent this entire time blaming me for Chase while I’ve been blaming myself for Roman.”

“Both were wrong,” I tell her. “None of this is on you.”