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“Okay…” I had no idea where this was going.
“The one memory I haven’t been able to unlock is the accident itself.”
She was trying to remember the accident that almost ended her life? “Monica, that’s totally normal–”
She held up a hand to my objections. “I know it’s normal not to remember the time immediately before an accident. But in the car yesterday, I did.”
My mouth fell open. “You do?” I couldn’t believe it. No wonder she was acting strange. Reliving that memory was enough to shake anyone up. The probability of PTSD was high enough without the memory, but with it? “Oh, honey, that must be awful.”
“It was. Is,” she corrected. “I don’t remember the impact, but I remember what I was doing when I got hit.”
I reached across the table to touch her hand. She was clinging to her coffee cup as though it would keep her afloat, but when my fingers got close, she jerked her hands back toward her lap.
“What’s wrong, Monica? What aren’t you telling me?”
She looked up to meet my eyes. “The reason I got in the accident was because I was distracted by a text. From you.”
With her final words, I felt all the breath sucked from my lungs. The room faded into a dull gray as I fought against the pressure in my chest. “What? No. Monica. The other driver, they crossed the line. People saw it happen!”
I’d heard from multiple people about how the truck who hit her had crossed the yellow line, veering into her lane where she was waiting to turn into the QuikStop.
She shook her head. “Maybe so, but I also wasn’t paying attention. Just like I always do, I let myself get distracted!”
There were tears in her eyes and her voice was shaking. The tremor in it matched my trembling hands as I tried to understand.
“A text from me?” I pressed into the memory, trying to figure out what I had texted her.
“You told me that Krystal and Bryce were together and made a joke about racing them to the finish line.”
I groaned. Of course, I had. Monica had been so upset that she was going to miss the grand declaration of love. That meant…
“It’s my fault then.” I stared at the line where her coffee cup met the table in a gentle arc. “Your whole accident was because of me.”
“No!” Her adamant tone had my eyes jerking upward. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s me, Jake. I’m the one who screwed up. Like I always do. I let myself get distracted and people get hurt.”
“That’s not true,” I argued. She thought she was the one who always messed up? “You’re perfect. Successful. Responsible.”
She scoffed. “Except when I’m with you,” she muttered.
I reared back at the sting of the words, but I didn’t know how to respond. How did I argue with that? I’d always been the irresponsible one. The jokester. The one who couldn’t care less and didn’t think about the consequences.
And that had gotten Monica nearly killed. A text message. A joke.
Her voice was quiet, and cold steel when she spoke again. “I almost got fired last fall. Did I tell you that?”
It should have been impossible to surprise me even more than I already had been that morning, but that declaration did it. A confused “what?” was all I could manage as a response.
“The day before the auction, I was working. You brought me dinner and we… kissed,” she said simply, though the word was loaded with meaning. “In the supply room.”
I felt the heat crawl up my neck at the memory of the kisses that day. We were both geared up about letting everyone know the next day. It was our last secret rendezvous…
I remembered leaving and counting the minutes until my auction slot the next day.
“A man came in with chest pain and trouble breathing. But I wasn’t there. They couldn’t find me, and Jenna had to cover. She gave him the wrong dose of nitroglycerin, and I wasn’t there to double check her like I was supposed to.”
“Because of me,” I said blankly.
“Because of my inability to tell you no or focus when you’re around! Don’t you get it, Jake? I can’t be with you when I keep making bad decisions because of you.”
