Prologue #2
I can only go right. Into the woods, into the trees, into a patch of darkness that will swallow us whole, if that car keeps coming at us, that’s the only thing I can do.
Up above, the moon splits through the clouds, lighting up the curve like it always does: sharp and cruel, a sinister mouth waiting to swallow rubber and steel. Alone or with a passenger, I’d taken it a dozen times before. Hell, cocky as ever, I’d won taking it almost blind.
But not tonight.
Not on Halloween, not when the devil is riding shotgun between me and my girl.
“Johnny!”
That other car comes out of nowhere, headlights blinding me through the growing fog.
Cassie’s second shout is enough to release me from the thrill of the race.
Knowing it’s them or us, I jerk hard, giving the Shoebox the order to swerve…
but something goes wrong. We hit a bump—Cassie screams again, turning to me, pleading.
I see the fear in her pretty brown eyes, I absorb it, and I grit my damn teeth.
I run this road. I own this car. It goes where I say.
So I fight the wheel, but it bucks against me like something possessed. The tires screech, and the smell of smoke—of hot, burning rubber—fills the car as the Shoebox jolts, then bolts, the two of us spinning out into the trees right as that second car rips past us.
I hear it before I feel it: the crunch of metal. The shriek of steel meeting something harder. The Shoebox crumples. The front right tire lifts off the ground. Dirt shifts under the other wheels, but the tree in front of us… it’s unstoppable. The force carries me, leaving me nowhere else to go.
Hands still clutching the wheel, my body jolts forward, ribs slamming into the steering column.
Cassie’s scream cuts through the roar.
The windshield spiderwebs, then splinters, glass raining down on us. My head snaps forward, smacking into something unforgiving. The dash meets my chin like a punch from God.
And just like that—
Silence.
I can’t breathe. My chest…fuck, my chest. It’s caved in. Crushed. Something’s broken, jagged and sharp. I taste metal on my tongue. Through blurry eyes, I see that I’m still grasping the wheel I’m… fuck… I’m impaled on, but I can’t feel my hands.
I can’t feel my hands.
I can feel her.
Cassie.
My sweetheart.
I’m slipping away fast, but this is important. Turning my head, I search for her. There’s blood in my throat, lungs stuttering, and I choke on all of it.
My girl’s slumped over, glass in her hair and blood on her temple.
“Cass…” My voice doesn’t come out right. Barely a rasp. A wordless plea.
She gasps, eyes blinking open just enough for me to see the panicked look in her pretty brown eyes, and I shudder in relief.
She’s alive. I’m dying, but Cassie is alive, and that’s all that fucking matters.
“Johnny,” she whispers, and I know the moment she sees how bad a state I’m in.
The moment when Cassie Miller looks at me and knows that I’m going to die.
“Johnny, no. Don’t leave me. Don’t go.” Trembling fingers go to her forehead, finding the blood.
She jerks forward, bloody hand landing on the seat bench between us. “Stay… stay with me.”
Something inside me cracks worse than the windshield did as I vow: “Always.”
I don’t know if I say the word. If I can manage to spit it out, or if I only mean it down to the depths of my soul. But I do. Mean it. She’s my girl, and not even death will be enough to keep me from loving her.
Cassie knows it, too. She’s trying to reach me, to accept my promise, but her hand falls short. I can’t move an inch. Blackness creeps in, and I’m cold. So fucking cold. I want to go to her instead, especially as her lips part, letting out a gasp of breath. Her final breath.
A single tear slips down her cheek as blood bubbles up from her mouth. The tear reaches it, mingling with the red.
A moment later, she’s still. And I know that, even though my injuries seem so much worse, she’s gone. I stayed with her until the end, but my vow… I’m holding to it. I stayed with her—and now I’ll wait for her.
For now, I scream for her, but there’s no air left for me to make a sound. My lungs are drowning in blood, my heart is trying to beat through the jagged remains of my ribcage.
The cold takes me over. I don’t feel pain anymore. Only regret.
Regret and a fierce determination that this will not be the last time that I’m with my sweetheart—and that’s when I feel it.
A powerful pull that keeps me pinned in place more effectively than the steering column embedded in my chest. It’s like gravity, only crueler. Fate, but colder.
Her whispered words wrap around me even as the world fades away.
Don’t leave me.
That’s what Cassie asked of me. That’s what I’m going to do.
Don’t leave me…
I don’t. Instead, I stay. I’m not alive anymore, but I’m not quite dead, either. I exist as I always have: Johnny Gray, the hotrodder who lost everything on a foggy Shadowvale road one Halloween, and has never left it.
Not until I have my sweetheart back.
Stay with me…
Always, Cassie. You might have left me behind, but I’ll wait for you. We’ll be together again one day, and then you’ll never have to ask me to stay by your side because I will.
Because I love you.
And I always will.