How will I walk away knowing how much I’m hurting her? I can’t.
The file spilled open on the way back to Atterton, the papers out of order and spread all over the car from hitting the brakes too hard. The fucking squirrel was saved.
I can’t say the same for Story’s and my relationship.
Four hours on the road gave me time to think, to figure a way out of this mess and make sure we stay together. In the end, there is none. There’s no saving us from the inevitable. She’ll shoot the messenger if I tell her, or I’ll lose her if I don’t.
I’m fucked either way.
My family royally screwed me. And they knew it. They’re probably celebrating.
Accountability . . . That fucking word creeps back into my psyche. It’s another thing that she believes in. I’ve caused her more pain than anyone should ever experience. So calling myself just a messenger in this mess is downplaying the role I played. I’m the instigator that led to her mother’s death. Now, Karma has come to collect her dues, and I’ll pay the price, even years later, for the recklessness of my youth.
I watch Story, wishing I could be the one to comfort her, but that job will go to someone else, a candidate more qualified to be in her life. More deserving. And I’ll need to learn to live with it.
The sound of rain wakes me up.
But it doesn’t make sense. It’s loud, causing me to jerk open my eyes just as pain shoots across my back from being twisted in the back seat of the Bentley. “Fuck,” I grumble.
“I could say the same.” Grief is heard in her somber tone.
I sit up too quickly, my head aching from drinking too much. The car is shrouded in rain, but sitting in the driver’s seat, Story stares out the windshield, refusing to look at me. Red blotches cover her cheek and what’s exposed of her neck. Strands have escaped the tornado twisted on top of her head, and her face is tear-streaked. It doesn’t look like she’s fared much better than me since the party, and she still manages to be beautiful.
Looking down at her lap, she says, “You should lock your doors in this neighborhood. It’s not the kind you’re used to.”
“Story—”
“I know, Cooper.” Her voice has lost its vibrance and is almost unrecognizable. She turns back, giving me the gift of her eyes, that gaze that I fell so hard in love with. “I’m not sure an explanation is going to get us to the other side of this.”
Putting pressure on the side of my head to stop it from aching, I ask, “Of what?”
When she holds up a piece of paper, my eyes scan the headline “Murder Suicide in Atterton,” and my stomach drops. I rush to open the door to hang my head out just in time to throw up. She knows . . .
She knows my actions led to her mom’s death. And I need to face her, to face the victim of my poor decision that night. My hair and the collar of my shirt get soaked, but I don’t care. The cool rain revives me enough to sit back up. “Story—”
The front door slams shut, so I open mine again to get out, not caring if I get wet. “Story?” I run to catch her on the sidewalk, cutting off her path. I grab her arms and plant myself in front of her. “I need you to listen. I was young and—”
“Rich and bored and didn’t give a fuck about anyone else. I know, Cooper. I read the police report and how you sideswiped his truck. I read how you were so high and drunk that you didn’t realize you were alive until you sobered in a jail cell. I read Hank’s account of the accident and how you came out of nowhere and hit him on Taylor Drive. And then I read your account. You didn’t even bother to lie.” She tries to step forward, but I hold her there.
“I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“But you did,” she screams, but the rain dampens the sound. “You hurt me, Cooper!” She looks away, denying me the window to her soul that gave me life. As long as I had that, I still believed we could find our way back.
That hope is gone when she says, “The crime wasn’t you denting Hank’s truck. The crime is that you set him on a mission to take his anger out on me. I told you that he had an ax to grind that night all because a ‘rich kid’ fucked up his truck. And since the police were already there, they gave him a ticket for out-of-date registration.” She takes a breath and hits me with a glare. “Your parents’ insurance would have covered the truck, so that means my mom died because of a hundred-dollar ticket. His mood and that money are why he broke me and killed her.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” The heat in my eyes isn’t from the rain that remains cool on my skin. It’s the tears that I’ve never cried and the reality of losing her.
“I was fucking stupid.”
“You forgot high. Was it weed . . . or ecstasy? What were you on that made you feel invincible?”
“Everything,” I reply too hurriedly, convicting myself before I even have my trial.
Last night, I was hell-bent on causing her to break up with me to keep the truth of my role in her mom’s death a secret. If I went away, so would the truth. Living the lies would be better than torturing her a second time in life.
I would leave. I’d do that for her. I would make her hate me, so she’d have a chance to find someone new. Now, I would do anything to keep her for just one more day, even if it means she knows that truth. I’ll confess every sin I ever committed if I just get to stand here with her. “Anything I could get my hands on.”
Her arms are lifeless in my hands but never once has she pulled away. “To numb your pain?” she asks.
“To numb my life away.”
“And instead, you destroyed mine.” Wrangling free, she dips the umbrella, exposing her to the pouring rain. As her hair begins to drown and the pajamas she’s wearing are drenched, she stares at me like she doesn’t know me. She stares at me as if it’s the last time she’ll get the chance. Then walks around me.
I jog next to her, trying to stop to talk to her again because if she gets to her apartment, I may never get my second chance. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know,” she repeats. “You didn’t, but you also didn’t care. When you were speeding down a busy road, you didn’t care that you might hit somebody. You didn’t care that you were so high that you lost control of your car that Mommy and Daddy gave you. You didn’t care, Cooper, that you could have killed an innocent victim. So yes, you didn’t know, but you also didn’t care.”
“I was arrested and thought that was the end.”
She holds up the drenched paper. “Because it was the end for you. Your daddy would come bail you out like he’d done before for your reckless behavior.” Her tears fall with the rain, and I’m not sure what’s louder, the sound or my blood rushing in my ears. “But the end of your story was only the beginning of my nightmare.”
Although she had told me about that night and what happened, I didn’t put the pieces together until I read the file. How could I have known that my actions that night would have a domino effect?
My friends and I were in town partying for the weekend. We’d gotten high and started some fights. My parents threatened to send me to a military boarding school. If I thought my life was bad then, it was about to get worse. I don’t know what I took because it didn’t matter anymore.
The umbrella falls to the ground as if she has no will to hold it with everything else weighing her down. “If I could take away your pain, I would. Let me try.” I step closer in the pause between us. She stays, so I say, “I’m sorry.”