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“He’s not going to catch her.” We were under the overhang now, and Moira was brushing her wet hair out of her eyes.
The hands holding me finally released. I whirled on the moms as they came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Moira. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight, and the shock of seeing Emma’s face imprinted over the imagined carnage of my encounter with Jason was still ricocheting through my body. I felt like every emotion I’d ever had was flooding into my bloodstream.
“You don’t know that,” I yelled at Moira.
She looked at me, water dripping off the end of her nose, compassion in her eyes. It was echoed on the faces of the other moms. Renee and the others had come over to flank me. All the people who were supposed to protect Quinn from Jason were here, protecting me from myself. Like I was the one who needed help.
“I don’t know where she’s going. I don’t know if she has a plan. But I know my daughter,” Moira said, her voice just audible over the rain pounding down on the roof of the overhang. “She doesn’t want to run anymore. She’s trying to figure this out.Trust her.”
I opened my mouth, but before my tongue could form a retort, the sound of metal crunching ripped through the air, tearing easily through the sound of the rain. My heart stopped in my chest. Everyone froze and pivoted toward the sound, eyes narrowed as we tried to peer through the harsh gray landscape.
“Was it thunder?” Renee yelled.
“No,” I said with unbearable certainty. “It was a car.”
I started running. I heard others splashing through the rain beside me, but I didn’t turn my head to see who. All I could see was Quinn. Even before I got to the edge of the parking lot, I could see the red smear in the distance that told me it was Jason’s car and not the Tesla. I only had a second to feel my ribs release with the force of my relief before I realized how bad it was. His little car was impossibly small now, crushed up against a large brick monument sign advertisingThe Shops at Belmont–a grand name for a strip mall. An oversized opponent for a car.
“Call 911,” I yelled to Renee, who was right on my heels. I went to the driver’s side first. Jason was crumpled up in the front seat with the car contorted around him. He was face down in an air bag, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I tried the door, but it was twisted in a way that would never swing out on its hinges again. I banged on the window with my fist, expecting the spiderweb in the center to deepen and release the glass. Somehow it held, but Jason’s body jerked. He turned his head sideways. I couldn’t see him clearly–his face was just a bloody mess through the spiderwebbed glass.
“Callum, I think I smell gas.” Renee was at my side, her voice eerily calm. Her phone was still in her hand, connected to the 911 operator.
I swore and ran around to the other side of the car. The damage wasn’t so bad over there. I might be able to get the door open. When Renee came around with me, I swore at her, too. “Get back, you idiot.” I could smell the gas now too. If the electrical system in the car shorted, it would explode. Even this rain wouldn’t be a match for the flames.
“You first.” She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back, but I shook her off. “It’s just Jason,” she yelled, like I needed reminding.
Iknewit was just Jason. And intellectually, I knew that letting him die would solve a lot of problems. But I couldn’t do it. I’d spent too many years cursed with the question of whether I could have saved Emma if I had been there. If I had just gotten to the accident in time.
Well here I fucking was, and I couldn’t walk away.
“He’d roast marshmallows over you,” Renee yelled, still right at my side. “Callum, you could die. Think about Noah!”
That made me hesitate, but before I could decide anything, a large shape lumbered through the rain, coalescing into a soaking wet Jimmy. He shouldered me aside and wrestled with the passenger side door, then shook his head.
“Get back, Renee,” I yelled one last time, then followed Jimmy back around to the driver’s side door. He had stripped down to the white tank top he wore underneath his button-down shirt, and now he wrapped the soaking wet plaid around his fist and began punching the window until the glass gave way and fell in on Jason.
“Help me pull the door off,” he yelled, knocking out the remaining shards.
I locked my hands over the newly created ledge, ignoring the tiny bits of remaining glass that dug into my palm. At first, I thought it would be no good. Even the combination of mine and Jimmy’s strength wouldn’t be enough to rip the door free. I kicked the hinge, trying to break the door’s compromised attachment to the car. Jason’s eyes were closed again. I wondered if we wererisking our lives for a corpse, but even then couldn’t bring myself to walk away.
Slowly, with a shriek that rose even above the lashing rain, the door tore away from the frame. The smell of blood and burning rubber competed with the scent of gas, plugging up my nostrils as I wrestled with the seatbelt holding Jason to the seat. When I finally got it off of him, I froze. All the power that had surrounded Jason all these years was gone. This was a broken, vulnerable body. Leaving him in the car was a death sentence but dragging him free would inflict more trauma. I twisted to look at Jimmy.
“Just do it,” Jimmy yelled, sensing my dilemma. “Better paralyzed than blown up.”
Jimmy’s frank assessment of the situation was what I needed to wrench Jason’s body free. His head flopped onto my shoulder as I wrapped my arms around his waist and began dragging him out and then back. Only a choked groan from deep in his throat told me he was still alive.
Jimmy tried to help, but there was nothing he could do. Jason and I were locked in a macabre embrace, his blood soaking into my clothes and running red. His leather jacket was slippery, and I had to jerk him up higher to keep my grip on him as I dragged him down the side of the road.
“Here,” Jimmy said when we were about thirty feet away. “We’ll be okay here.” He helped me lay Jason down, but a sick gurgling in Jason’s throat had us frantically lifting his head. His eyes opened briefly, then rolled back in his head.
I couldn’t breathe. I knew it was Jason lying on the ground, but had Emma suffered this way, too? “You’ll be okay,” I yelled. “Help is coming. They’re almost here.”
Thankfully, a flash of brilliant red cut through the gray sky, followed by the scream of sirens as an ambulance barreled down the road. Jimmy jumped up to wave them down, and before I knew it, Jason had been surrounded by paramedics. Two pulled me aside, unsure of whether the blood that plastered my clothes to my body was mine or his.
“It’s his,” I insisted, but then I looked down at myself. My palms were lacerated, and there were diagonal slashes through my jeans where I’d knelt down in the glass shards. Jimmy’s hands were worse than mine, shredded deeply enough that the paramedic called for another ambulance.
As Jason was strapped to a gurney and loaded in the back, Mia, Joanne, and the moms surrounded me. Hands settled on my shoulder and my back as they guided me back toward Jimmy’swhere Noah was waiting with my parents.
“What the hell happened?” my dad asked, taking in the whole scene with a wide eyed, disbelieving stare. He’d gotten there sometime after Jimmy, Renee, and I had run toward the sound of the crash. The enormity of explaining it all–Jason’s arrival, his threats, Quinn’s inexplicable departure–was too much. I collapsed into a chair with a thud and dropped my soaked head into my stinging palms and told the truth.
