Ruthless Amnesia
"You could have found some way, some message, anything, to let me know I didn't have to—"
"You never had to do this," my brother said, and the words landed like a physical blow, gentle and devastating all at once. "I would have told you that, if you'd let me. If Dave had ever let me."
I stood there, frozen, the entire chamber watching, Rhys rigid and silent beside me, my brother's face swimming in front of me through eyes suddenly blurred with tears I hadn't given myself permission to shed.
Two years of resentment, of quiet selfish hunger, of telling myself I'd sacrificed something noble while some ugly, hidden part of me had actually wanted this, all of it collapsing now under the simple, u