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“I haven’t wanted to burden you with this,” I admit finally, the words heavy in my throat. “You have enough of your own to carry.”

Cora pushes herself up slightly, her hand pressed against my chest as she looks at me with those serious, devoted green eyes.

“You have spent weeks absorbing every frightened, painful, humiliating thing I’ve felt. Let me do that for you. Whatever it is, I want to carry it with you.”

I stare up at the ceiling for a long moment, taking a slow breath. Against all odds, I want to tell her.

“I had a brother,” I finally say. “Artem.”

The name feels strange out loud. I haven’t spoken it to anyone in years.

“He was six years older than me.”

Cora’s hand tightens against me, sensing the dark shadow of what’s coming next.

“He died.”

“I’m so sorry, Zevran.”

I turn my head and look into her eyes. I have to keep going or I’ll never be able to say it.

“Artem started using when I was nine, and it was like a stranger took over his body. My loving, funny brother slipped away, and he never came back. The overdoses were… My mother taught me CPR because she was terrified of being out of the house when it happened.”

The words come slowly, dragged up from a dark, buried vault inside me.

“I was twelve the first time I was alone with him. Artem was unconscious on his bedroom floor. The emergency operator was on speakerphone, and I was doing everything I could, but the ambulance was still so far away.”

Artem, wake up.

Thirty compressions. Two breaths. His chest moving uselessly under my hands. His slack, unresponsive face.

Please, Artem. Don’t leave me.

“I felt so fucking useless and so fucking scared. He lived, but I don’t know if it was anything I did. The emergency workers narcanned him, and he woke up.”

I sigh heavily.

“There were a few months of tension while nothing happened, and then it began again. Overdose, rehab, hope. Over and over. My father was stoic, my mother and my sisters were heartbroken, and I was just so angry.”

For six weeks after I saved him, I watched him try, but the shadow over our house never lifted. I watched Mom cry herself to sleep every night. I’m certain she was selling her jewelry to cover the debts Artem owed to street dealers. Every phone call made my stomach drop. Every door my father slammed. Every time my sisters came home in tears because sketchy men were frightening them. Artem wasn’t just killing himself. He was dragging my whole family down with him, bleeding us dry of every shred of peace and sanity we had left.

I look down at her hand against my chest. “When he died, he was living with other users who were too far gone to help him when he OD’d.”

How could they see my baby like that and just turn their backs?

My mother’s voice breaking. The suffocating scent of candle wax and white roses.

How could they?

I squeeze my eyes tight as the old grief and shame threaten to sink me.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save Emily,” I say, the admission torn from my throat.

That moment on the basement floor with Cora and the dead girl brought it all back. Every cruel second of it.

Cora shifts closer, her hand coming up to cup my jaw gently. I open my eyes and see hers are filled with profound, overwhelming love. The way she always looks at me, like she sees a man worthy of being loved.

“You tried to save her,” she tells me softly. “You tried so hard, Zevran.”