Hopelessly Falling [book 2]

Chapter Fifty-Four

LIV
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Crystal's POV ***

[three months later]

"Your conversation will be monitored, there's a time limit of-" the guard enumerated all the rules and regulations as he walked me to where I would be talking with my brother.

And I didn't hear a goddamn word he was saying.

All I could hear were my breaths, my heartbeat, and the sound of my footsteps echoing up from the hard flooring. I was gripping the cloud charm around my neck harder than I ever had, concentrating solely on my breathing, and nothing else.

Before I knew it, I was sitting on a shitty stool in front of a glass window, waiting for them to bring in John. For weeks and weeks my therapist and I had been essentially training for this, and I kept going over all the techniques in my head instead of thinking about anything else.

My eyes snapped up when I heard them unlocking the door on the other side, two guards stepping in first with a prisoner behind them. And then...

My heart came to a complete stop as his eyes met my matching ones for the first time in 4 years.

I could no longer feel my breaths, or feel anything actually, as he sat numbly down in front of me. The guards uncuffed him as he continued staring at me in utter disbelief. I focused everything on keeping my face completely straight, the tightness in my features inevitable as my eyes burned.

He looked like himself, just older. That was the only thing I could notice about his appearance, just the fact that he was visibly older. It was an obvious fact, but for some reason it made something sink deep within my heart, knowing that he had already partially aged in here and was going to spend the rest of his life doing so.

The guards were saying something to him, but I could tell he wasn't listening as we kept unwavering eye contact. Judging by the look on his face, they hadn't told him who they were bringing him to. He looked as if he was seeing a ghost. I swallowed and attempted to somehow retract the tears building in my eyes as I reached for the phone.

A tear fell from one of his eyes as he did the same. I heard his breath through the phone, and held back the instant sob that flooded throughout my entire body. I could tell he was utterly speechless, his jaw was slightly dropped while mine was clamped shut.

Be in control of the very current moment, I reminded myself. That was something my therapist and I talked a lot about.

"Mom couldn't bring herself to come," I finally spoke, and one of his tears finally fell when he heard my voice.

"Crystal," his voice was a broken whisper, but I could still hear that it was deeper than it had been- a bit rougher, too.

"I'm not here to ask you why," my voice shook, despite all my energy centering on keeping myself together as much as humanly possible. "And I'm not here to forgive everything you've done." Another tear of his fell.

"You shouldn't, I don't deserve it regardless of my soul-crushingly regret," he spoke again, and I could tell he meant it with his whole self and more. But it didn't make a difference.

"I'm not here to forgive what you've done," I tried to continue on, my voice shaking a little more. "But I am here to forgive you. I wish there was a way for me to help you. To go back and fix you. Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about my big brother. But he's been gone for a long time, and he's not coming back ever in my life. I know that," I continued on, a tear of my own finally falling. "I'm here to say a final goodbye, Johnny," my voice finally cracked, and another tear fell from his eyes.