Chapter 21 Holden
Twenty-One
Holden
I love you, Holden…
River’s voice was flooded with emotion, his eyes full of me. He kissed me, his lips cold but his mouth warm. Another resuscitation after my own terrible baptism of shame. I clung to him, my own lips trembling against his.
“You’re freezing,” River said. “Let’s get you warm.”
He hooked his arm around me, and we staggered to the shore, my clothes sticking to my skin and wrapping me in the cold. River’s tux was ruined. Water dampened his pants to the waist, and his jacket was dusted with sand.
“I wrecked another dance,” I said as we trudged up the sand to where I’d dropped my coat.
“Maybe not.” His smile was sheepish, almost shy, as he took off his tux jacket and draped it over my shoulders. “Back at the club, I had this vision of you and I dancing together. It’s kind of dumb but…kind of not.”
My eyes fell shut as he wrapped my coat around me too, the enormity of this night chipping away at the cold, little by little.
“You wanted to dance with me? In front of the whole school?”
“I told you. I’m done hiding.” His shy grin came back. “And yeah, I wouldn’t mind dancing with you. I’d suck at it but… I still want to. But we have to warm you up.”
We made it to the parking lot where River reached into James’s sedan that I’d stolen. River shut off the lights, then killed the engine. “We’ll come back for it in the morning.”
“River, what about your dad?”
He straightened, his face grim.
“It’s a matter of a few weeks with Mom. Dad’s going to need me to be there more than he needs me to win football games. He just doesn’t know it yet, but I can see it. Amelia too. There’s no way I can be hundreds of miles from home when…”
He blinked hard and looked away. I didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him. I couldn’t grasp each monumental moment as they led like stepping stones to a future I’d never imagined for myself.
River loves you.
I walked with him to his truck, my own confession locked in my throat. Shame was creeping in, whispering how pathetic I was—driven by old demons to nearly drown myself. Someone who needed to be rescued and watched and taken care of.
“Hey,” River said at his truck, seeing the dark thoughts in my eyes. “Don’t do that. Whatever happens, we just take it one day at a time. We’ll figure it out, okay?”
I nodded and climbed into his cab, my ruined clothes getting sand all over the floor and dampening the seat. River got behind the wheel and put the heater on high. The warm air blasted over me as he pulled back onto the winding, darkened road to get us home.
The heat from the vents slowly made its way through my sodden clothes, and my dunk in the ocean had sobered me.
Or maybe it was just River. I glanced at his profile—so fucking beautiful, his eyes on the road, a small smile playing over his lips.
He looked as if he’d finally set down a heavy burden he’d been carrying for years.
Maybe this is real. Maybe I can have a different kind of life. With him.
Slowly, hesitantly, I reached over and took his hand, warm and strong, and held on.
He turned to me, his smile widening, his fingers twining with mine.
I’d never seen anyone look at me like he did in that moment, and the sudden warmth that flooded me had nothing to do with the truck’s heater.
It flowed between the broken pieces of me, melting them down so maybe they’d have a chance to come back together.
Love. This is love. I’m in love with him.
I swallowed hard, the words on my lips for the first time in my life. “River, I…” In my peripheral vision, I saw a dark shape in the road ten yards ahead. “Look out!”
River dropped my hand and gripped the wheel. “Oh shit,” he bit out and slammed on the brakes, swerving hard right as the headlights illuminated a deer bounding in front of the truck.
I saw the deer’s eyes, wide and black, and then the truck was spinning, sliding off the side of the road. My world tilted sickly. Turned upside down. The sounds of shattering glass, denting metal, and my own blood roared in my ears.
The truck hovered in a frozen moment that lasted forever, then slammed down on its four wheels. The impact reverberated in my skull. In my bones. I saw nothing but black and then the sudden white of an inflating airbag exploding in my face.
Silence. The only sound was the truck settling and the hissing of my breath. I waited for the pain to find me, but shock cocooned me in a bubble, and alcohol had made me limp and loose.
Slowly, I turned my head, and another agonized sound—born in my heart—fell out of my mouth.
River sat slumped forward, tethered by his seat belt.
Blood streaked darkly across the white of the deflating airbag.
With trembling fingers, I reached up and flipped on the cab light, and another strangled sound burbled out of my throat.
River’s face was deathly pale, his chin resting on his chest that rose and fell in almost imperceptible breaths.
“River!”
My voice was tattered, torn to shreds with fear, my hands shaking as I fumbled at my seat belt, then the door handle. The door gave and I tumbled out onto the pine needle–covered ground. My body bent in half, and vomit spewed out of me in an acid fountain of vodka and sour bile.
When I could stand, I made my way around the truck, legs buckling every other step. The roof of the car was dented, and River’s side was crushed.
We rolled. Holy fuck…
With strangled moans, I made it to the driver’s side door.
The window was smashed in; safety glass glittered over River’s black pants like diamonds.
By the lone light of the cab, River looked asleep but for the blood staining his shirt.
A gash had been torn into the left side of his temple, and his breath hitched shallowly.
A fresh shock wave of terror bolted through me to see blood trickling from his ear.
“River, no…”
I yanked at the handle, but the metal was warped, the side mirror gone. Sagging against the door, I reached inside the broken window and took River’s hand in mine. He was limp, unmoving.
“Please…wake up. River, wake up…”
Tears blurred my vision as I fumbled my other hand in my coat pocket for my phone.
The screen was cracked, but it still worked.
With a trembling thumb, I dialed 911 and put the phone to my ear.
Taking off my coat with my phone in it before I walked into the fucking ocean was the only thing I’d done right the whole night.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“There’s been an accident. It’s bad. Hurry, please.”
“Where are you?”
I fell back against the door, staring around the darkened forest and the ocean beyond, hopeless panic rising as I struggled to remember a road sign…anything.
This is my fault. And he’s going to die…
“I don’t know… On the 1, eastbound.” Then a flash of memory cut across the dark night. “We passed a sign…Wilder Ranch.”
“Okay, stay on the line with me. I’m sending emergency response to your location. Is anyone injured?”
I gripped River’s hand tighter. “Yes. He won’t wake up. Please, hurry… Please.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Barely. I can’t open the door.”
“He’s trapped in the vehicle?”
“Yes…” Tears slipped down my cheeks in burning tracks of heat, and I watched River’s chest rise and fall. I let go of his hand long enough to feel for his pulse. Faint and erratic, but it was there. But the blood coming from his ear…
“Please, fucking hurry…”
“Okay, help is on the way, sir. Stay on the line with me.”
The phone dropped back into my pocket from nerveless fingers. There was nothing she could tell me. River was trapped inside, and I was locked outside, and all I could do was hold his hand and beg him not to leave me.
After what felt like hours, sirens broke through the quiet. Fire trucks, police, and an ambulance arrived. The night sky was painted in syrupy blues and reds. White light flooded the cab of the truck, making the trickle of blood coming out of River’s ear look black against his pale skin.
Officers and EMTs surrounded me, and I was forced to let go of his hand. A police officer led me away, shining a flashlight in my face.
“Have you been drinking, son?”
“Me, but not him. There was a deer…”
“Uh-huh. Come over here with me.”
He took hold of my upper arm and gently guided me to the side of the road, where I sat down hard, hands dangling from my knees. My eyes drifted again and again to the team working to pry the door open and get to River. The cold was surging back in, making me numb.
If he dies…
A small pained sound escaped me, my body racked with shivers.
“What happened tonight?” the officer asked. He had a kind but serious face. His name tag said Tran.
Another officer with a name tag reading Dowd loomed over me, a sneer curling his lips. “Why are your clothes wet?”
“I took a swim,” I said, my teeth chattering.
“A swim?” Dowd asked. He snorted. “You trying to kill yourself?”
Officer Tran shot him a look. “Easy.”
I shook my head. “I did what they taught me to do.”
My gaze drifted back to the mangled wreck of the truck and the EMTs who were putting River’s motionless body on a stretcher. His neck was in a brace, an oxygen mask covering his mouth.
“My fault,” I whispered. “It’s all my fault.”
“You hurt anywhere?” Officer Tran asked gently.
“No,” I muttered with a harsh, rasping laugh. “What a joke. A sick fucking joke.”
Aside from minor burns on my cheek from the airbag, there wasn’t a scratch on me. But River was being loaded into an ambulance. Unconscious. Maybe brain damaged. Or paralyzed. He might be dead already while I was breathing and walking and alive.
This is wrong. All wrong. It should be me.
The cops asked me more questions, my name and age, and then the ambulance was pulling away…
“Wait.” I scrambled to my feet. “Wait, I have to go with him. Please…”
Dowd held out an arm and shoved me back down. “You’re not going anywhere.” He grimaced. “You look mighty broken up. That your boyfriend, son?”