---- Chapter 16 Inside the box, a familiar blue crystal pendant lay quietly. And with it, memories I thought long buried were suddenly set alight. After the accident, I had wandered to the rooftop of a tall building just off the street. Not because I had any particular thought in mind, only because I wanted a place with a view, somewhere silent, somewhere to be alone for a while. "You were the guy on the rooftop that day?" It hit me all at once. I stared at Tyler, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. But he looked nothing like the boy I remembered. Back then, he was all angles and shadows- gaunt, hollow-eyed, worn out in a way that made him ---- seem already halfway gone. Lifeless, almost. Tyler smiled softly and gave a small nod. "Yeah, that was me." "That year I was applying to college," he said." My parents pushed me into business. I didn't want it. I never wanted it. My life felt like a marionette's -someone else always pulling the strings. I couldn't sleep for months. My mind started slipping in ways I couldn't explain." He paused, his gaze not quite meeting mine. "Before I saw you, I was seriously thinking of jumping." Then he looked at the pendant in the box. "But you showed up. You gave me this. Told me not to think I had it worst. That there were people in this world suffering far more than I could imagine. I felt ashamed, Mindy. I saw the crash. I knew those were your parents. And you were so ---- calm. So strong. Compared to you, I was nothing." Tyler stayed in France. He never said he loved me. Not once. He knew that somewhere in my heart, the boy from that summer had taken root. That boy- forever young, forever vivid-still lived inside me. But he stayed by my side anyway. Always close enough to see when I turned my head. So I never had a reason to ask him to leave. Ayear later, I got a call from Charles. "Mindy, I remember everything now. The truth is, I always knew. It was my mother who orchestrated everything that happened back then. "When she had me, she was already considered a high-risk mother. But my brother had already been brought back into the family by then. They told the world we were both hers. In order to make us more like real brothers, she even had him