For a second, I didn't understand what he meant.
My mind was still stuck on the words brake line cut.
It felt impossible. Like someone had taken the day we had just lived and twisted it into something else entirely.
Lucian was watching me carefully.
Too carefully.
"You think I did it?" I asked.
The question came out quieter than I expected.
Lucian didn't answer immediately.
That hurt more than if he had just said yes.
"I didn't say that," he replied after a moment.
"But you're thinking it."
His eyes shifted away from mine.
Down the road.
Back toward the dark hill where the crash had happened.
"They asked me what I touched," he said. "And then they asked about you."
My chest tightened.
"What about me?"
Lucian shrugged slightly, but the motion felt forced.
"Just… questions."
"What kind of questions?"
His silence stretched just long enough to make the answer obvious.
The same kind they asked him.
Suspicion.
Doubt.
Pieces of a story being assembled by strangers who didn't know us.
Didn't understand us.
Didn't know that Lucian would never hurt our parents.
That I would never let him.
"That doesn't mean anything," I said quickly. "They're just trying to figure out what happened."
Lucian looked back at me again.
And for the first time in my life, I saw distance there.
A thin line forming between us.
"I saw something under the car," he said suddenly.
I blinked.
"What?"
"When I went back down there." His voice dropped slightly. "After the crash."
My mind flashed back to the moment he had crouched beneath the wreck.
"You never said anything."
"I wasn't sure."
"What did you see?"
Lucian hesitated.
Like he was replaying the memory.
"Something wrong with the brake line," he said. "It looked… cut."
The word again.
Cut.
"But that doesn't make sense," I said. "Why would someone—"
I stopped.
Because suddenly the question didn't feel impossible anymore.
Lucian's expression darkened slightly.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
A cold feeling crept into my chest.
"Lucian…"
He studied my face.
Then asked the question he had been holding back.
"You didn't see anyone near the car earlier, right?"
"No."
"Not before Mom and Dad left?"
"No," I said again, more firmly this time.
Lucian nodded slowly.
But something in his posture remained tense.
Like his mind was still running through possibilities.
"Why are you asking me like that?" I said.
Lucian exhaled through his nose.
"I'm not accusing you."
"But you're not ruling it out either."
That landed harder than I expected.
His gaze flickered briefly — guilt, maybe — but it vanished almost instantly.
"We were both there," he said. "And now they're saying the brakes were cut."
The words echoed between us.
And I realized something terrible.
The same thought that had started forming in his mind… had now started forming in mine too.
Not about him.
But about the situation.
About how strange everything was.
The cat.
The timing.
The crash.
Someone could have done this.
Someone could have planned it.
But we were kids.
And kids don't know how to fight shadows.
So instead, we look at what's closest.
Lucian took a step back.
"Whatever happened," he said quietly, "the police are going to decide what they think happened."
"That doesn't mean they'll be right."
"No," he agreed.
Then he looked at me again.
And this time, there was sadness there.
Real sadness.
The kind that comes from realizing something is already changing and you don't know how to stop it.
"They already think it was me."
My chest tightened.
"They don't know you."
Lucian's voice softened.
"Neither do they."
The words lingered between us longer than either of us wanted.
And in that moment, standing under flashing emergency lights with the night swallowing everything around us…
The bond we had always taken for granted began to fracture.
Not completely.
But enough that we both felt it.
And neither of us knew how to fix it.