“Pain. Like the kind of pain that eats away at you. Where I can’t look at old photos or see someone who looks like her. Or think about hiking.” The memories flipped through his mind. Every mental weapon he used in the past to block them failed. He could see her and that smile . . . and that cliff. Why did he visit where she died? He could never unsee it. It haunted him every damn day. “Is that what you want me to talk about?”

She slowly stood up but didn’t come closer. That was a good choice because his body felt like it was on fire from the inside out. Pain poured through him. Crashed, wave after wave. A thumping hollowness echoed in every muscle and every cell.

He wanted to stop the words, cut them off along with the feelings, and storm out. Not see her or see the welcoming in her eyes. She should shut him out and turn him away and he didn’t know how to make her see that, so he kept unloading. Piled on more.

“Maybe you want to know about the guilt.” The ache moved all through him now. “I couldn’t look my own mother in the eye for a year. A fucking year.”

His voice rose but she didn’t back down. She was in front of him again. Running her palms over his chest, trying to soothe him.

“Why?” Such an innocent question.

It had an equally simple answer.

“Because I lost her baby.” He choked on the words.

Maddie shook her head and tears formed in her eyes. “You didn’t do it. You weren’t there.”

“Exactly!” He let the rage explode. All that anger and heat he’d been pressing down for so long rose to the surface and spilled over. “I messed up.”

“You didn’t.”

“I wasn’t there for my sister and she needed me.” The words felt as if they were yanked out of him. Each one hurt as it scratched against his throat.

Her hands smoothed over his face and into his hair. “Babysitting her wasn’t your job.”

“I am her brother.” Not was, because that part didn’t end. She would also be a part of him. There, ready to give him hell.

“Right.” She held his face in both of her hands now. “You’re her brother. Not her guardian.”

That did it. That chunk of pain that he pretended didn’t exist inside him broke lose. He felt the sob inch up the back of his throat and he tried to shove it back down. “I just want her back.”

“I know, baby.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held on. Buried his face in her neck and let the despair wash over him. His body shook and his head pounded. It was as if his brain fought the pain until it crashed through the barriers and flooded everything.