CHAPTER 13
I can smell fuel and dirt and something pungently metallic. It fills my nostrils, seeping into my head before I feel the pain. In that quiet moment before my other senses are assaulted with the destruction around me, I feel at peace. I feel still and whole. For some reason my consciousness knows I’ll look back on this and wish I had this moment back. Wish I could remember what it was like before.
The pain comes first. Even before my head can clear the fog away enough so that I can open my eyes, the pain comes. There are no words to describe the agony of feeling like you have a million knives entering you and ripping you apart, just to withdraw and start all over again. And again. Endlessly.
In that second between unconscious and consciousness, I feel this jagged pain. My eyes fly open, frantic breaths gulp for air. Each breath hurting, burning, laboring. My eyes see the devastation around me, but my brain doesn’t register the shattered glass, smoking engine, and crushed metal. My mind doesn’t understand why my arm, bent at so many odd angles, won’t move to undo my seatbelt. Why it can’t release me.
I feel as if everything is in slow motion. I can see dust particles drift silently through the air. I can feel the trickle of blood run ever so slowly down my neck. I can feel the incremental inching of numbness taking over my legs. I can feel the hopelessness seep into my psyche, take hold of my soul, and dig its malicious fingers into my every fiber.
I can hear him. Can hear Max’s gurgled breathing, and even in my shock-induced haze I’m mad at myself for not looking for him more quickly. I turn my head to my left and there he sits. His beautiful wavy blonde hair is tinged red, the gaping gash in his head looks odd to me. I want to ask him what happened to him but my mouth isn’t working. It can’t form the words. Panic and fear fills his eyes, and pain creases his tanned, flawless face. A small trickle of blood is coming from his ear and I think this is a bad thing but I’m not sure why. He coughs. It sounds funny, and little specks of red appear on the shattered window in front of us. I see his hand travel across the car, fumbling over every item between him and me as if he needs touch to guide him. He fumbles aimlessly until he finds my hand. I can’t feel his fingers grip mine, but my eyes see the connection.
“Ry,” he gasps. “Ry, look at me.” I have to concentrate really hard to raise my head and eyes to meet Max’s. I feel the warmth of a tear fall on my cheek, the salt of it on my lips, but I don’t remember crying. “Ry, I’m not doing too good here.” I watch as he unsuccessfully attempts to take a deep breath but my attention is drawn elsewhere when I think I hear a baby crying. I swivel my head to look, but there is nothing but pine trees and the sudden movement makes me dizzy.
“Rylee! I need you to concentrate. To look at me,” he pants in short bursts of breaths. I swing my head back at him. It’s Colton. What’s he doing here? Why is he covered in blood? Why is he in Max’s seat? In Max’s clothes? In Max’s place?
“Rylee,” he begs, “Please help me. Please save me.” He sucks in a labored, ragged breath, his fingers relaxing in mine. His voice is barely a whisper. “Rylee, only you can save me. I’m dying. I need you to save me.” His head lolls to the side slowly, his mouth parting as the blood at the corner of it thickens, his beautiful emerald eyes expressionless.
I can hear the screaming. It is loud and piercing and heart wrenching. It continues over and over.
“Rylee! Rylee!” I fight off the hands grabbing me. Shaking me. Pulling me away from Colton when he needs me so desperately. “Damn it, Rylee, wake up!”
I hear Haddie’s voice. How did she get down this ravine? Has she come to save us?
“Rylee!” I’m jolted back and forth again violently. “Rylee, wake up!”
I bolt up in bed, Haddie’s arms wrapping around my shoulders. My throat is dry, pained from screaming, and my hair is plastered to my sweat drenched neck. I heave for breath, strangled gasps that mingle with Haddie’s quickened pants of exertion, the only sounds I hear. My hands are wrapped protectively around my torso, arms tired from straining so hard.
Haddie runs her hands down the sides of my cheeks, her face inches from mine. “You okay, Ry? Breathe deep, sweetie. Just breathe,” she soothes, her hands running continuously over me, reassuring me, letting me know I’m in the here and now.
I sigh shakily and put my head in my hands for a moment before scrubbing them over my face. Haddie sits down next to me and wraps her arm around me. “Was it the same one?” she asks, referring to my recurring nightmare that was a staple in my nightly slumber for well over a year after the accident.
“Yes and no,” I shake my head. She doesn’t ask, but rather gives me more time to shake the nightmare away. “It was all the same except for when I look back after I hear the baby crying, it’s Colton, not Max, who dies.”
She startles at my comment, her brow furrowing. “You haven’t had a nightmare in forever. Are you okay, Ry? You want to talk about it?” she says straining her neck to hear the muted music on the speakers I’d forgotten to turn off before falling asleep. Her eyes narrow as she recognizes the repeating song and it’s inference about my state of mind. “What did he do to you?” She demands, pulling back from me so that she can sit cross-legged in front of me. Anger burns in her eyes.
“I’m just a mess,” I confess, shaking my head. “It’s just that it’s been so long. I feel like I’ve forgotten what Max’s face looks like, and then I see him so clearly in my dream … and then the suffocating panic hits being trapped in the car. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by the emotion of everything.” I pick at my comforter, avoiding her questioning gaze. “Maybe it’s been so long since I have really felt anything that tonight just pushed me over the edge … just overwhelmed me with …”
“With what Rylee?” she prompts when I remain silent.
“Guilt.” I say the word quietly and let it hang between us. Haddie reaches out and grabs my hand, squeezing it softly to reassure me. “I feel so guilty and hurt and used and so everything,” I gush.
“Used? What the hell happened, Rylee? Do I need to go kick the arrogant bastard’s ass right now?” she threatens, “because I’ll switch my tune. I mean, I was impressed when he called earlier to make sure that you’d gotten home all right and that—”
“He what?”
“He called at like 3:30 … somewhere around there. I answered the phone. Didn’t even know you were home. Anyway I came in here to check and told him you were home and asleep. He asked me to have you call him. That he needed to explain—that you took something the wrong way.”
“Hmmph,” is all I can say, mulling over her words. He actually called?
“What happened, Rylee?” she asks yet again, but this time I know she won’t be ignored easily.
I relay the entire evening to her from the point I left her until she woke me up screaming. I include my feelings about comparing “the after” to Max and how hurt and rejected I felt. “I guess I feel guilty because of the whole Max thing. I loved Max. I loved him with every fiber of my being. But sex with him—making love with him—came nowhere near what it felt like with Colton. I mean, I hardly even know Colton and he just turned on every switch and pushed every button from physical to emotional that …” I search for words, overwhelmed by everything. “I don’t know. I guess I feel like sex should have been like that with the guy I loved so much I was going to marry rather than someone that could care less about me.” I shrug, “Someone who just thinks of me as another notch on his bedpost.”
“Well, I can’t tell you that you’re wrong to feel, Rylee. If Colton made you feel alive after years of being dead, then I don’t see what’s wrong with it.” She squeezes my hand again, sincerity deepening the blue in her eyes. “Max is never coming back, Rylee. Do you think he’d want you be numb forever?”
“No.” I shake my head, wiping away a silent tear. “I know that. Really I do. But it doesn’t make the guilt go away that I’m here and he’s not.”
“I know, Ry. I know.” We sit in silence for a few moments, before she continues, “I know I wasn’t there, but maybe you misread Colton. I mean some of the things he said to you …”
“How is that possible, Had? He was swearing under his breath like he’d just made the biggest mistake. He was like a switch. One minute he was kissing me so tenderly and looking into my eyes and the next minute he was swearing and walking away from me.”
“Maybe he got scared.”
“What?” I look at her like she’s crazy. “Mr. I-Don’t-Do-Girlfriends gets scared of what? That he thinks I’ll become attached to him after one night of sex?”
“One night of mind-blowing sex!” Haddie corrects, making me giggle and blush at the memory. “Well, you do wear your emotions on your sleeve. It seems you don’t do casual sex well.”
“Oh, like it’s a class I can take over at the ‘Y’? I mean, I may be easy to read emotionally, but I’m not in love with him or anything,” I defend whole-heartedly despite knowing full well that what I felt between us tonight was more than just full-blown lust. Maybe I did scare him. That final moment between us in the bed, when he held me and stared into my eyes, really got to me. Made me see possibilities and hope. Maybe he saw that and had to squelch it before it went any further.
“Of course you’re not,” Haddie says with a knowing smile, “but that’s not what I was talking about. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. I-Don’t-Do-Girlfriends … maybe you got to him. Maybe he got scared of what he felt when he was with you?”
“Yeah, right! This isn’t a Hollywood romance movie, Haddie. The good girl doesn’t get the bad boy to change his ways and fall madly in love with her,” I say, sarcasm rich in my voice, as I fall back on my pillow sighing loudly. A small part of me relives Colton’s words from the night before. I am his. I could never be inconsequential. He can’t control himself around me. That small part knows that maybe Haddie is right. Maybe I scare him on some level. Maybe its because I am the marrying kind, as I’ve been told, and he’s just not looking for that.
“You’re right,” Haddie admits, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have one hell of a time losing yourself in hours of mindless sex with him.” She plops back on the pillow next to me, both of us laughing at the idea. “It could have its merits,” she continues, “there’s nothing like a good bad boy to make you let go. Remember Dylan?”
“How can I forget?” I reply, remembering the quick fling she had last summer with the gruff and gorgeous Dylan after ending her year-and-a-half-long relationship. “Yum.”
“Yum is right!” We both lapse in silence, recalling our own respective memories. “Maybe Colton is your Dylan. The one to get you over everything that happened with Max.”
“Maybe …” I think. “Oh God,” I groan, “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, seeing as it’s,” she lift her head to look at my clock, “Five in the morning, you should go back to sleep. Maybe give it a day, then call him back. See what he has to say and go from there. Remember our motto. Embrace your inner slut—be reckless with him and try not to think about tomorrow. Just think about the here and now with him. ”
“Yeah, maybe.” We sit in silence for a few moments. Am I just being an overdramatic female reading into things? Into his actions? I don’t think so, but deep down I try to justify his actions to myself. I know that I’ll do it again if given the chance and for my sanity, I need to rationalize everything to right the world back on its axis. The feelings and sensations he evoked in me were way too intense. Way too everything. Maybe it was just the fall from my alcohol buzz that made everything seem so off. Made him seem so detached. I scold myself. I know this isn’t the case, but I’m trying desperately to address my inner slut.
I’m way out of my league here. I just hope I can figure out how to play the game without getting burned in the end.
“Do you want me to stay in here tonight?” Haddie asks, breaking the silence. She used to sleep in my bed on the really rough nights to help me get through them nightmare-free.
“Nah. I think I’m okay. Thanks, though. For everything.”
She leans over and kisses the top of my head, “What are friends for?” she says as she heads for the door. “Good night, Ry.”
“’Night, Had.”
She closes the door and I sigh deeply, staring at the ceiling, thoughts running wild until sleep pulls me under.