“Are you okay?”
I shot a quick glance over at Maia. “Yeah. Fine. Thanks.”
“Do you think you should slow down a bit?”
“What?”
“You’re going way over the speed limit and it’s freaking me out.”
I glanced at the speedometer and eased my foot off the accelerator immediately. “Shit – sorry.”
“It’s okay, I can’t blame you. That was pretty intense.”
Intense. Understatement of the century.
“What would you have done, if he hadn’t left?”
Probably a lot more than I thought I was capable of. “I don’t know. Thrown him out, probably. Called the cops, maybe – anything to get him away from her.”
Maia didn’t reply, but the words came tumbling out of me anyway.
“It’s one thing shitting all over me, but what he did tonight crossed a line. All she’s ever done is try to help him, and that’s how he reacts? I don’t care if he meant to hurt her or not, he pushed her and she fell. Now she’s gonna have to go to work tomorrow looking like that. It’s just… wrong.”
“Yeah, it is,” she mumbled, reaching over to lay a hand on my thigh.
Her palm burnt through my jeans, searing my skin. That one simple gesture suddenly had me feeling like all the emotions I’d been locking up for the past five years were about to come ripping out of me in a frustrated roar.
I needed some air.
I glanced briefly in the rear-vision mirror to make sure the road was clear, and made the next turn, heading down to the bottom of the hill and pulling off the road. I parked on the grass verge, under one of the huge trees that lined the street, separating the harbour from the road. In the seconds before I turned off the headlights, columns of light bathed the trees and the water beyond.
Then everything went dark.
I ran a hand down my face, trying to clear my head. The voices in my head were screaming at me relentlessly and if I didn’t get a handle on it soon, I was going to throw up, I could feel it. I opened the truck door and tumbled out.
“Heath?”
“I just need a minute,” I snapped, more harshly than I meant to.
I bent over double, then stood up straight again, taking deep breaths, gulping in as much air as my lungs would allow. I felt like I was drowning. Em’s face flashed in front of my eyes.
When the hell was this going to end? This guilt, this torture, this constant managing and controlling and keeping everything down, shutting everything away – it was exhausting. It ripped and pulled at my insides, threatening to choke me.
Jesus.
Was this how it was going to be, always? Five years on, and no answers, no moving on, no going back? This constant limbo – purgatory of the mind, eating away at me like a disease, hollowing me out.
“Heath?”
Maia’s hand on my back, cutting right through the pain like a knife through butter. She was the only thing making sense right now, and even that was a joke. I didn’t even know her last name. I just knew that I needed her, right here, right now.
I turned to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and kissing her hard on the mouth. She would make everything alright again. She could help. She would save me.
Stop!
The voice screamed in my head, but for a moment I thought it was her.
Horrified, I released her and stumbled backwards. “Shit, Maia… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean… “
“It’s okay,” she breathed, her eyes wide in the moonlight.
What the hell was happening to me? I was as bad as Alex. Maybe we had more in common than I realised.
“It’s not okay! It’s fuckin’ not okay!”
Rage and remorse rushed out, drowning me in the process. I channelled my helplessness at the driver’s door, kicking it with all the strength I had left. The air was sucked out of my lungs until all I could hear was a loud hum, obliterating everything else.
Then I was on my hands and knees, fighting back tears, feeling more helpless and worthless than ever. He was right. Alex was right. He’d been right all along, and denying it now seemed pointless. It wasn’t going to bring her back.
“It’s my fault,” I choked. “It’s my fault she’s gone.”
Maia was kneeling beside me, her arms around my shoulders, pulling me towards her. I wanted to fight her, I wanted to warn her to stay away from me, that whatever we thought we had would be ruined soon enough, because of me. Because I didn’t deserve her.
“It’s okay,” she was saying, slicing through the noise in my head. “It’s okay. Come on, sit down properly, talk to me.”
I wanted to push her away, to get back in the truck and put as much distance between us as possible, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength to stand up, much less walk away. I fell sideways onto the ground, and I wanted to stay there, curled up in a ball on the damp grass in the moonlight, until all of the shit in my head disappeared. But she wouldn’t let me.
“Breathe,” she said gently. “Just breathe.”