That One Moment

by C.S. Autumn

It's funny how fragile time is. How one choice, out of the thousands we make from the time we're born until the day we die, could have such catastrophic consequences. One choice. Not even a big one. The choice to stay or go. To do or not to do. It's funny, though, it's not really. Maybe funny in a tragic sort of way.

He looks at me with love in his eyes when he whispers that everything will be okay. I want to believe him, even if it's only my tired mind playing tricks on me, I want to believe him.

He’s all I can see, everyone else completely inconsequential in this moment as my heart whispers one word - soulmate. I am in so much fucking trouble.

They are a contradiction. One light, the other dark. Identical twins. Only not.

They’re here and I think I’m in love.

Jamie Durand is annoying as fuck. He’s too perfect and no one is that perfect, not without having some darkness hiding somewhere.

“But she has a son who is….” He’s what? Annoying? Charming? Stupidly attached to my twin? So intriguing and gorgeous, I want to hate him because that’s the safest reaction?

Where Caiden is cold and aloof, Cooper is touchy and affectionate and I lap up every ounce of his affection like a starved cub.

If his brother is the diamond, he is the rough.

Caiden’s laugh is loud and foreign to my ears and I realise it’s the first time since we met that I’ve seen him even remotely happy. He’d be just as beautiful as his brother, I think to myself, if he wasn’t so fucking angry all the time.

Cooper rubs the back of Caiden’s head as his twin cries harder into his neck. He looks so much younger than his nineteen years and beneath the cold veneer I can see the sad boy who just wants his mother to love him and keep him.

Next week won’t be my birthday. I stand abruptly from the table and throw down a few notes for a tip and the one drink I had, lay my coat over my arm and storm out of the restaurant. Despite the cold, I hastily undo the buttons of my shirt and shrug it off, feeling like I can breathe better without it.

People will only disappoint you, that’s what my mum told me time and time again, so I keep everyone except Cooper at arm’s length.

I’m in control. I’m in control. I’m in control.

“Please don't go, Mummy. I'll be so sad if you miss Peter Pan.” I try really hard to find the words to make her stay, but I’m only ten and the only big thing I can think of is Peter Pan and that’s not working. “Oh, Caidy, people are going to make you sad your whole life. Trust me. The only person you can depend on is you.”

I’m in control. I repeat to myself over and over again as blood starts to drip down my fingers. The warm liquid leaving my body is a physical manifestation of my pain. The tension in my chest eases and I choke on a breath as I do it one more time in another spot until my muscles stop clenching and I feel like I can breathe again.

“I never thought that by the time I turned twenty, I’d have found the love of my life, and I certainly never thought it would be with my stepbrother. But none of that matters. I’m going to love you forever.”

Is it possible to have the best and worst birthday of your life all in the space of a day? Because that’s what today has been.

Jamie, who I want to hate because Cooper loves him and he loves Cooper, and no one loves me.

“I didn’t want him to touch me,” I whisper, taking a deep breath and then repeating my words. Tears blur my vision and I blink rapidly to bat them away. “I just wanted Mum to have dinner with me.” More tears build up until the blinking does nothing but push them down my cheeks. “I wish I was more like Cooper.” More tears. “I wish someone loved me like Jamie loves Cooper.” I continue like this, naked truths and painful realities tumbling from my lips, until my eyes are stinging.

“I feel like I’m drowning, Cooper. All the time. Like there’s all this water and it’s pushing me down, holding me under, and there’s no one there to save me.” He takes my hands in his, squeezing them tightly. Blue eyes that mirror my own hold me in their grasp, keeping me grounded and connected. “I’ll be your lifejacket. I’ll always save you, Caiden. Always.”

“You’re my best friend, Coop,” I say, my voice muffled against the now damp fabric of his shirt. “And you’re mine. I’m so lucky I was born with my best friend,” he says, repeating those words from twelve years ago. He really is my other half.

Because I seem to have no control over my hands, I swipe it behind his ear. My hand lingering there for a second too long. He turns his face and presses his lips to my palm. It’s that movement - his lips on my skin - that has me shooting off my seat. This is all so wrong - the way he’s looking at me, the way my heart is racing - it’s all wrong.

And I do this all with the vow of being a better brother.

“I’m going to marry you one day, Cooper Carrington. I’m going to put a ring on your finger, build you a house and then love you forever.”

“I'm going to make a difference in this life.” His voice is quiet but certain, in a way I have come to love about him. “Every little kid I teach, I'm going to let them know they're seen. My mother never saw me and I never want anyone to feel the way that made me feel.”

I’ve been jealous of Cooper and Jamie. Not because I was losing my twin and not because I so badly want someone to love me the way Jamie loves Cooper. No, I don't want just anyone to love me like that - I want it to be Jamie. Fuck. I am a horrible brother.

“I can see something's wrong - your eyes speak volumes. You're not the sum of your saddest moments, Caiden. You're so much more. So much stronger.” His words have no right to anchor me the way they do. To hold me fast against the tidewater that laps at my feet, dragging me to drown. “Please, for him, just try okay?”

Jamie Durand makes me feel a million different things and I both love it and fucking hate it.

And that’s all it takes. That one moment.

“Caiden,” his name on my lips is a plea. The words delivered on a rasp that hurts my heart more than it does anywhere else. “Look for me in the stars.” His face crumples, devastation written in every line and dip and he cries, his sorrow reaching high into the night sky.

I hope he can forgive me for leaving him. I’d have stayed by his side and grown old with him if that had been in the cards for us.

He sucks in a breath and I want to tell him he’s going to survive this, but my words are done. There are no more left. I think I’m smiling.

I think I’m smiling and I’m okay, because even though it’s dark and I never got to do all the things I wanted to, I can see Caiden and Jamie in a sea of light and they’re all I ever needed. And I’ll find them in the stars one day.

I’m so tired of crying. I’m so tired of existing in a space devoid of the love of my life.

A week ago my world stopped turning.

I don’t go to his burial. I don’t go to the meal my mum insisted we have after. I go to the jewelry store and I collect the ring. Then, I go home, hold it in my hand and cry for the man I loved with all my heart. The man I lost. The man who left me here with only the memory of him.

Three years ago today I was at a party not dissimilar to this one. Only then, I wasn’t alone. Cooper’s smiling face as we danced that night haunts me every single year. He’d been so happy. So alive and so goddamn happy. Three years.

Grief is a monster that hangs on your shoulders until you’re too weak to fight it. Until exhaustion settles in and the monster whispers in your ear to just give up. I think if you’re strong enough, you can fight it off. I think you can win and grief can become a part of you but not enough to control you. But my monster has won because I am not strong. I never have been.

My vision whites out at the edges and my head swirls like I’m underwater. What if I die and I don’t find him in whatever place lies beyond this? What if there is no place among the stars where I get to be with him again?

I don’t want to die. Dying without the certainty that I’ll see him again is scarier than living without him.

Empty. Broken. Full of regret. Confused. Relieved. Those would all have been better answers but no one wants to hear that.

For three years, I worked really hard to deserve the life I got to keep when I walked away from that crash.

“There was always a chance this is where I would end up,” I start, wringing my hands together on my lap. “And I needed them to call someone who wouldn’t care if I lived or died.”

won’t try to pretend I know what brought you to that place, nor will I say that now everything will be okay. There isn’t some magical cure to make things better as soon as you walk out these doors. But I will say that by speaking to someone, and with the right medication, there is a chance that things will feel brighter eventually.”

I watch his movements as he slowly runs his finger along the bracelet there. I was hoping he hadn’t seen it. I don’t need him to know that I never take it off - that some days, I cling to it like a lifeline. The reminder that once upon a time there was a chance, someone maybe cared enough to choose it for me.

Cooper died, but living is my punishment for everything I did wrong to him and everyone around me.

I need him to not care, because deep down there are some very complicated feelings towards Jamie that I hid a long time ago, and I have no desire to ever investigate. The fact that I cannot take off this fucking bracelet without the hole in my heart growing bigger is bad enough.

Three years of processing my loss. Three years of pretending Caiden’s exile from our lives didn’t add pain to my already smarting heart. Three fucking years.

In the three years since his death, I have become a master at wearing disguises. It’s exhausting, and as much as Caiden frustrates me, today is the first time in months that I’ve dropped the mask. He makes me want to stop pretending.