DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 11, SECTION 13

In the dizzy minutes following Ian's revelation, I tried to understand what it meant that I'd lost so many members of my family so suddenly. I must have been in some kind of shock, because I still couldn't feel a thing. For a while I just stared at the swallow that still perched in the window, its pose a tiny feathered statue as it waited for the sun to warm its wings. As I numbly traced the contours of its gray shape with my eyes, I knew that the full magnitude of what had happened would hit me sooner or later.

After a moment, I tried to understand what Ian must have gone through. He'd lost everything in the space of one horrifying hour; and, even if he'd only been trying desperately to protect Haley, he'd killed his own daughter. He would have to live with that forever. I couldn't even begin to understand what something like that must have felt like.

Now, Ian did nothing but stare up at the stone ceiling.

I couldn't help it; I leaned forward and rested my head on his chest. He didn't move at all. Ian had changed so much; he'd lost so much weight, he'd become wizened around the eyes and knuckles, and I could feel his now-sinewy chest muscles under my cheek. But even after everything he'd just told me, I'd found the Ian I once knew. And somehow I'd never felt closer to him. But for the first time in a long time I didn't feel anything sexual at all. This kind of tragedy, I supposed, was what it took to mute my TGV symptoms for a little while. The only feeling that had started to seep into my consciousness was an overwhelming desire to comfort Ian, my oldest friend in the world. Even though I knew that comforting him would be impossible.

After a while, he spoke again.

"For a long time, Ash, I didn't know what to do with myself." He told me that for weeks he'd thought seriously about killing himself, like Danielle had done, but in the end he could only see that option, for himself, as a cowardly mistake. He buried his family on the ranch, he said, and for days he just sat beside their graves. He didn't eat or sleep at all. For a long time, months, he was in a haze of grief and shame. "I just started wandering, aimlessly," he said. "I didn't know what I was looking for. Until I stumbled on a Home Guard mass grave. I thought about all those poor souls under the ground, and their hopeless terror. And that's when, finally, something woke up in me a little. And I just started digging. Almost all of them had already expired. But I didn't know what else to do with myself. I just kept on digging. When there were no more graves left, I brought those four wasted souls here."

"How did you know where to come?" I asked. I'd made my dad promise not to tell anyone, including Ian, where Chris and I had gone.

"Took me a while," Ian said. "But before everything happened, I dragged it out of your Dad. He told me where you went."

"I can't believe he told you." I wasn't surprised, though, that if my dad had actually broken a promise to keep a secret, it would have been because Ian had asked him to.

"Yeah, well," Ian said. "I begged him."

"You begged him?" I'd thought after I'd last left the house, Ian didn't want anything to do with me or where I was. "Why did you beg him to tell you?"

"I was worried sick about you, Ash," Ian whispered, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "I needed to know that you were okay."

My head was still resting on Ian's chest. I put my hands around his arms and hugged him ever so slightly.

I'd almost forgotten what I'd came here to tell him.

For just a spare moment, I reconsidered my plan to take my life. Didn't Ian need someone to help him get through his grief? Shouldn't I refuse to abandon him? I already knew the answer to these questions, though. I knew that Ian was capable of taking care of himself, even under such dire circumstances. Wasn't he? And by expiring myself, I'd be helping countless others, many more than just Ian alone. Besides, even though I'd come to terms with the fact that I was in love with Ian—maybe even more in love with him now than before, as shameful as it was to acknowledge this now—he would always be my sister's husband, even if she was gone.

It was time for me to say goodbye. First to Ian, then my parents, and then I would make my way up to the top of the cliffs.

"Ian," I began. "There's something I have to do. There's something I have to tell you..."

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