“You remind me of the worst day of my life. So I don’t see how contact between us could be for my benefit.”

Ben’s mouth formed a grim line. “You saved us the day of the earthquake. I’ve never been able to do anything for you in return, but I’ve always wanted to. I still want to.”

They’d been kids when the walls of that basement had begun to shake. Luke had been first in line. He’d simply pulled Ben forward, then Natasha, then Sebastian, then Genevieve. He’d turned to race back into the pitch-dark hallway for Ethan when Sebastian had stopped his progress a split-second before concrete crashed down. Luke hadn’t been fast enough.

“I didn’t save you.” It was a joke to think that anybody could have left that pile of rubble feeling gratitude toward him, the boy who’d killed his brother. “You’d all have made it to safety without me.”

“No, we wouldn’t have.”

“Of course you would have.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“You don’t owe me,” Luke stated. He hated the patient way Ben was trying to reason with him. People had handled him the very same way after Ethan’s death.

He wondered sometimes if that’s partly what had spurred his rebellious teenage years—the driving need to take the pitying look out of everyone’s eyes. If he was a drinker, a partier, and a drug user who drove too fast and slept around, they couldn’t keep looking at him with all that sympathy.

His strategy had failed. They’d still looked at him with sympathy. The day he’d turned eighteen, he’d left town with the urgency of a drowning swimmer fighting for air.

The strangers he’d met in Atlanta hadn’t treated him like the brother of a dead kid.

“Even if I don’t owe you,” Ben said, “I do care. I really liked Ethan. I still think about him often. I’m sorry about what happened to him and sorry about what happened to you and your family because of it.”

Based on what Luke’s mom had told him, Ben kept in close contact with her and his dad. Ben was perfect in every way.

It was annoying.

“I’m just hoping,” Ben went on, “that you might get to a place where spending time with us doesn’t only remind you of the worst day of your life. It would be great if we could also remind you of the good, at least some of the time.”

“What good?”

“The fact that we lived.”

“Here’s where you and I view things differently.”

“How so?”

“For years, I didn’t see the fact that I lived as good.”

Ben nodded once, solemn. “And now?”

“I’m still undecided.”

Luke could see that Ben wanted to say more.

“What?” Luke asked.

“You remember my mom?”