Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“I used the money to hire a team of the best lawyers I could find and I sued my parents for custody of Rabbit. I expected it to be a long, drawn-out battle but my father and stepmother must have thought I was bluffing when they were served with the papers because they didn’t even bother coming home for the court hearing. I was automatically granted temporary custody which meant I could take my brother anywhere, I could make medical decisions for him, that kind of thing. My parents had ninety days to appeal the decision. I didn’t wait even a day after the ruling before getting him out of there. I hired a private plane to fly us to Oregon. A friend of mine who’d died in combat had told me about his cabin, so I knew there was no way my father and stepmother would be able to find us.
“No one knew where we were. I got Rabbit as comfortable as I could. It was a beautiful place with big windows so he could see the lake and even some of the wildlife that would walk past the windows. We were there for a couple weeks… long enough for Rabbit to turn eighteen.”
I laughed an ugly laugh. “Two weeks to get to know my brother all over again just to have to let him go.”
Theo lifted one of my hands and pressed a kiss to the back of it. He flattened my hand over his heart. Even through the thin material of his T-shirt, I could feel his heart beating a million miles a minute. It was comforting because it meant he got it. He wasn’t just listening to me. He was hearing me. He was feeling the things I was feeling. He was hurting for me. If I’d been a stronger man, I wouldn’t have put such a burden on him—especially since he was already going through so much of his own shit—but it was like I’d told him. I didn’t need just anyone in this moment.
I needed him.
“On his eighteenth birthday, he made a video. He spoke about what he was planning and why and he said goodbye to our parents. He also said that he was alone and that no one was assisting him. I had already called my father and stepmother to tell them what was happening because despite everything, he wanted them there. The plan was to tell them where we were once they’d agreed to come alone, but all my father did was rant and rave about having me arrested. Rabbit tried to say his goodbyes over the phone but instead of really listening to him while he tried to explain what the previous years had been like for him, my father demanded he tell him where we were, and his mother just cried and begged him to come home.”
I fell silent for a moment as the first wave of shame went through me. “Part of me wanted him to accept,” I admitted to Theo.
“Of course you did. You were suffering, Lincoln, and you needed your family with you just like Rabbit did.” Theo shifted forward and put his arms around me. I was glad for their strength because I felt like those claws of guilt were shredding me to pieces.
“I followed his wishes to the letter. He didn’t want me to remove the feeding tube or IV until that day because he didn’t want to waste away like that. He just wanted to go to sleep with his big brother holding his hand. There’d been a lot of different kinds of pain medications locked in a cabinet in the room he’d been living in at the house in the Hamptons, so I took them all when we left. He wanted me to draw enough of one of the drugs into a syringe so that he’d just go to sleep. He didn’t want me to be the one to push the drugs into him through his IV port. He wanted to videotape the whole thing on his phone so there was no way I could be held accountable and then have me turn the recording off when it got to the point where I held his hand.
“Oregon has right to die laws, but specific procedures need to be followed and you need to have lived there for at least a year before you would even be eligible.”
“But you didn’t tell him that,” Theo offered. His lips grazing over the spot where my neck met my collarbone was comforting.
“None of it was about me, and at that point I honestly didn’t give a shit about what would happen to me,” I murmured. My eyes hurt from the tears I’d already shed but I didn’t bother trying to hold them back as they began to slip down my cheeks.