I gave my head a little shake, blinking rapidly. As if that might clear it all away. Erase a past that I’d never been able to understand fully. “Sorry. I…” There was no way to finish that sentence, to explain what was going on in my mind.

Brody ushered me towards the couch. Deep and wide and the most comfortable piece of furniture I’d ever sunk into. But even that wasn’t a comfort, didn’t penetrate beyond a fleeting thought. He gripped my legs, his hands pinning them right above my knees as if he could secure me to this place. “Talk to me.”

That familiar burn crept up the back of my throat and into my eyes. “I don’t know how.”

“Tell me one thing. You always start with one true thing.”

I stared at the man in front of me. His eyes were so full of understanding and free of judgment. Begging for me to let him in. My hands fisted the sides of the couch cushion as I searched for the truest thing I could give him. “I love my brother.”

Brody’s hands flexed around my legs. “I’m going to be honest. I looked you up. I know the broad strokes of what happened. But those articles rarely give the full picture.”

“I know it seems insane. To love the person who murdered your parents. Who tried to kill you. And don’t get me wrong, I hate him, too. But it’s impossible to forget that he was my brother for eleven years before that happened. And I was his big sister. I was supposed to look out for him. I can’t erase that urge. Just like I can’t erase all of the good we had as a family.”

Brody traced absentminded circles on the inside of my thigh with his thumb. “But you ran from him.”

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “I know that if given a chance, he’d kill me, too. And it’s not even his fault.”

Brody’s eyes flared. “It’s not his fault?”

“It’s not Michael’s choice. His brain betrayed him from the moment of his birth. I did a lot of reading, talked to a bunch of experts after he was arrested. Just trying to wrap my head around what happened. When Michael’s traits appear in someone so young, it means it’s hereditary. We had the same parents, Brody. The exact same upbringing. Yet his brain had these invisible mines that would go off at the slightest provocation. How is that fair?”

One tear and then another escaped my eyes, sliding down my cheeks. “My brain is perfectly fine. I don’t get joy from hurting people. I have empathy. But he just doesn’t. Can’t.”

“Maybe too much empathy,” Brody muttered.