Savior Complex: A Small Town Love Triangle Romance

“Tell me about your childhood,” she says, twirling her wine in her glass while I work on dinner.

“That’s random,” I laugh. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she says. “I want to know who you were and what you did and all the things that made you who you are today.”

I mull it over as I roll the potato dough into a long snake under my hands. “There’s not much to tell,” I finally say. “I rode horses, helped my dad on the ranch, and took care of my sisters so that my mom could catch a break.”

“Sisters,” she repeats, then shoots me a sympathetic smile. “Can you tell me about her?”

I pause, unsure of what to say because I’ve spent ten years actively not talking about her. But where has that gotten me? The hurt is such a chasm in my heart, I’m unsure how I’ll ever fill it again.

“Her name was Amber,” I say. “She was the funniest, sweetest little girl I’ve ever known. A lot like Hazel, but even more strong willed. You could not tell that girl no, and lord knows my mom tried.”

There’s a lump in my throat, but I push through it as I tell Nina about the time Amber snuck a kitten into the house, hiding it in her closet for a whole week before my mom caught on. “She’d been sneaking tuna into the room for the cat, and my mom kept mentioning how awful the twins’ room smelled.”

Nina’s covers her mouth, her shoulders shaking as I describe the moment my mom broke into the room while the girls were in school, ready to clean it top to bottom. “My dad told us later how livid she’d been beforehand, ready to take the cat to the pound. But you know my mom. The woman has a heart full of love for every living creature, including tiny orange kittens. When my sisters came home, my mom had the cat on the kitchen counter, rubbing its belly full of real cat food.”

“So Amber learned a real lesson in how to get what she wants,” Nina says, laughing.

“Yup. Act first, apologize later. That was pretty much her motto.”

“What happened to her?”

Nina’s voice is soft, and she rests her hand on mine. When I look into her eyes, I want to tell her everything.

So I do.

I tell her about the day I wanted to go to the beach with my friends, but my mom wanted me to watch the twins so she and dad could get some time together. I took the girls with me, even though the last thing I wanted was to have them tag along. I had planned to ask this girl out that day, and the twins were the perfect cock block. So I told them to get lost once we got there so I could hang out with Shayna and they wouldn’t mess everything up. But then Amber ran to me screaming that Hazel had been swept away.

There was no lifeguard on duty, and everyone on that goddamn beach was just watching the water instead of doing something. I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life, crashing into the waves even though I had no idea where she was. Somehow I found her body as it was churned helplessly in the waves, and I managed to drag her back to the beach. She looked so blue as I pumped at her chest, and the water poured out of her once she stated coughing.

But I was so consumed with saving Hazel, I never noticed Amber was missing.

“She’d followed me into the water,” I say now, my vision blurry from the tears I can’t stop. She reaches forward and brushes them away, the same way I’ve done for her. “My parents came to the beach, the police were there, dozens of volunteers, and a diving team. We stayed all night, watching the spotlights as they searched the water. But they didn’t find her body until a week later when it washed ashore a few miles down the road.”

I don’t tell Nina about the condition of her body. How there was so little left of her, they had to use Hazel’s DNA to prove this unidentifiable mass was her sister.

“It was my fault,” I whisper. Nina shakes her head, but I stop her before she can speak. “I never should have brought them there. They were only seven, not old enough to watch themselves.”

“You were a kid yourself,” Nina says.

“I was old enough to know better,” I insist.

She continues stroking my hand. Behind her, the sky outside is darkening with the setting sun. The gnocchi lie in perfect mounds in front of me, ready for water. But I’m stuck in the past, remembering how Hazel became a shell of human and I couldn’t look at her for close to a year.

“You have to forgive yourself,” Nina whispers. I look away, but she lights a soft hand on my cheek and coaxes me back to looking at her. “It all makes so much sense now,” she says.

“What does?”

“You,” she says. “You’re going around saving everyone in this world, trying in your own way to bring back your sister. Meanwhile, you’re drowning with her. When are you going to come up for air? When are you going to let your sister go so that you can finally live?”

If anyone else suggested something like this to me, I’d punch them. Let her go? I haven’t stopped thinking of Amber since the day she died. I don’t speak of her, but she haunts me.

But dammit, she’s right. From my father, to Jordy, to every way I’ve lived my life, it’s been to save others while my needs are forgotten. I’ve done it so long, I don’t know how to stop it.

“When will you take care of your needs, Bray?” Nina asks.

“Isn’t that what this weekend is about?” I ask, offering a light chuckle even as I feel dark inside. “I sure know how to ruin the mood, don’t I?”