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I start to count the seconds, then minutes, and finally hours until I hear the sound of someone stopped in the distance. Through a haze, I hear them calling out.
“Is anyone there?”
“It looks like someone crashed their car.”
“We have to help.”
Their words fade away, and terror I’ve never known before fills my veins. Blood still trickles slowly out of the wound on my face. I don’t have any way to save myself, and the people who had stopped are gone.
For the first time in my life, I can feel the unquestionable hand of death slipping around my throat and squeezing.
I shout as loud as I can. “Help!” But I have no idea if they hear me. I can’t see anything anymore. I strain to hear any other sound than my own breathing. I can only feel the suffocating embrace of the seat belt that cuts into the skin on my chest, making it impossible to take a complete breath. While waiting to see if I’ll be saved, I slip away, once more embracing oblivion and the hope that I somehow manage to survive the night.
“Cole.”
She touches my face, and I jerk away unconsciously.
“Cole.”
I open my eyes, and Casper’s despair fills my vision. I’ll never, not until the day I die, forget the way she looks at me. Hope, trust, and love flash through her amber eyes before she shutters them. They shine, tears already streaming down her cheeks.
“Please, Cole.”
I jerk at her plea and pull out of her touch, her grasp. Self-loathing fills my veins.
Casper moves forward when I step back, refusing to back away until she has an answer to her question. Her demand.
“Tell me you didn’t do this. Tell me I didn’t give myself to the man who killed my sister.”
My heart shatters in my chest because I can’t tell her that. I can’t say anything… And that’s when Joel steps up again.
“He can’t tell you that, Casper. He’s the one who did it. He needs to go. You need to go home. To Maine.”
The venom that douchebag is spitting is enough to set my blood on fire, and I push Casper out of the way to grab him by the throat.
He smiles. That little fucker smiles while I hold him by the throat and lift him off his feet.
“You’re a killer,” he gasps. “And now you’re going to lose everything.”
I want to squeeze, to make him go away, to end him, but most of all, I want him to be lying.
But I don’t know the truth. So I let him go, dropping him to the floor when all I want to do is the opposite.
Joel manages to catch himself, putting one hand on the wall and the other on his neck.
“He’s a monster, Casper.” Joel turns to her and his expression changes. “You can’t trust him. He’s going to lie to you about this. We need to turn this information over to the police. Let them handle it. Send him to prison.”
She stands directly behind me, listening to what he says, and I lose her to him. To his words and his accusation I can’t deny.
“Cole.”
Both Joel and I turn to face her, and even though I want to punch the other man in the face, I hold back. He isn’t the one to blame for this. I am. I just don’t remember it.
“Tell me you remember.” Her eyes are hard, devoid of the emotion I saw when we were together. “Tell me that you know what happened that night.”
I see the truth in her eyes though. She knows, just like I do, there is nothing there. Nothing from before the accident. Nothing but the panic, the terror, the self-loathing that comes with the knowledge that I might be the one that tore her sister from her life.
There will be no coming back from what happens next.
