Chapter 17 – October 11, 1993 – Camille #2
We hadn’t made it halfway down the road before it clicked.
I was in a car with a drunk driver.
This time, with someone I barely knew.
We swerved, drifting across the road. Neither of us could find the center line, but he didn’t slow down. It felt like waking from a dream, clawing my way through the haze as my body tried to catch up to what was happening.
It sobered me faster than sleep ever could.
I hinted at it—once, twice—but Thomas brushed it off, insisting he was fine. I didn’t want to push. Didn’t want to seem difficult. I’d just met him. Maybe he was always a bad driver.
He was my ride home.
Then it happened.
Thomas was mid-story about his dog when he jerked the wheel to avoid a deer. My scream tore out of me as the car veered off the road and slammed into a tree.
After that—sound. A sickening thunk. A crack.
Later, I’d realize it was him going through the windshield. No seatbelt.
Smoke curled from the hood. Blood smeared across the glass and steering wheel. My hands moved before my brain caught up—I stripped off his jacket, tossed it into the backseat, turned down the music, and fumbled with the door.
I forgot I was wearing a seatbelt and nearly choked myself trying to get out before I realized.
I think I knew he was dead.
But I still had to look.
I wasn’t ready for what I saw.
The boy from the bar—the one I’d planned to bring back to the motel—was gone. What remained didn’t seem human. His body was twisted, broken, wrong. His face—gone to something unrecognizable.
If he’d lived even a second longer, he would’ve begged for death.
All I could think was: shit, shit, shit—
The slam of the passenger door echoed into the empty night. I doubled over, vomiting onto my shoes before collapsing to the ground, fingers clawing into the dirt like I could pull myself out of it. My face was wet—I thought it was tears until my hand brushed glass embedded in my skin.
It stung. Everything stung.
But none of it mattered.
I needed Erich.
I wiped my mouth and turned—leaving the wreck, leaving Thomas—running back toward the bar. Alone, on a dark highway, looking like I’d been mauled by a small animal.
I would’ve been an easy target for anyone.
It was a good fifteen-minute walk. My sniffling, blubbering self didn’t know what else to do.
I didn’t know what I’d do once I got to the bar, but at least it was a straight walk back.
I couldn’t go inside after something like that.
Someone would ask questions about how I looked or connect me to the boy I left with.
My only saving grace was his brother and friends weren’t around when we left for him to take me to his car.
Someone would know what happened or assume the worst. The cops would be called.
The highly unlikely scenario—being put on trial for murder or manslaughter, the right lawyers twisting everything—under a microscope in front of a judge, raced through my panicked mind.
My whole life would be dragged back as the judge pieced together who I was…
I didn’t want that. I wanted to forget it, even if it was wrong to disconnect myself from the accident for the sake of my own safety.
His death could’ve been in my hands, just because I was with him when it happened.
I saw the lights through the bar windows in the distance, and my pace quickened.
Erich was outside—a lucky break that I’d found him after he’d disappeared all night.
The group he was with was gathered, smoking on the front steps.
I arrived just as they were snuffing out their cigarettes, about to head back in for more gambling at the pool table.
I stopped to watch, knowing I didn’t want them to see me.
I needed to get Erich’s attention.
As they turned toward the door, I crossed the lot. “Erich.”
It barely came out—a broken whisper.
He turned.
The others didn’t notice me, but he did. Even in the dim light, I saw it—shock, then something darker. I couldn’t tell if it was my appearance or the fact I’d come to him at all.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. “What the fuck did you do to yourself? Where did you go?”
I didn’t know if he was angry.
I couldn’t handle it if he was.
I broke. Tears came hard as I raised my bloodied hands to my face, smearing it worse. “He’s dead,” I sobbed. “What if they think I killed him?”
The way I said that would have been comical without the trauma of seeing Thomas’s intestines in the branches of the tree, but it wasn’t the time to point out the irony and hilarity in that. I knew the gravity of it in my impaired state.
“What?” His voice dropped. “Who’s dead?”
I sniffled, stumbling up against the wall.
The wall was much closer than I originally thought, and I almost fell flat on my bottom.
Erich came closer, his firm hand gripped me by the arm to hold me up.
He smelled like Jim Beam and cigarette smoke, the faint smell I could only put my finger on as belonging to him covered by it.
The same outdoorsy smell I caught when we first met.
It was a brief salvation from my panic and guilt.
“I met this guy,” I choked, trying to wipe my eyes before stopping at the sight of my hands. “We were going back… to the room… he was driving…”
Erich pulled me in.
My face pressed into his shoulder, stinging as it did. His hand settled at the small of my back, steadying me.
The first time he’d ever held me.
“Where did it happen?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head. “We hit a tree. No one was around… just down the road.” I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. My blood soaked into his jacket, but he didn’t react.
“What am I going to do?” I whispered.
His hand moved to my hair, smoothing it down. “I’ll figure something out,” he said. “But you need to be sure—no one saw you. You have to tell me you were the only one there.”
I stayed quiet, focusing on where his hands rested—and how wrong it was to feel so complete, so aware of his touch.
What was wrong with me? Moments earlier, I had watched a man I fully intended to sleep with get thrown through a windshield, and now, wrapped in Erich’s arms, none of it seemed to matter.
“I don’t think anyone saw us leave,” I murmured, calmed by the steady rhythm of his hand in my hair and the warmth of the other against my back. “His friends left hours ago.”
Erich was already working through a plan, even as he absently played with my hair—smoothing it, threading his fingers through it. I leaned into it despite everything. It felt… safe. Like the way I imagined small children felt when their mothers tucked them in at night.
He pulled away, some idea forming. Using the sleeve of his jacket, he gently wiped the smeared blood from my face.
“Let’s get in the car,” he said softly. “We can come in through the back entrance at the motel—avoid the front desk. But we’ll have to make sure no one sees you like this.”
I nodded. In the moonlight, his hair shone almost silver. I had the sudden urge to run my fingers through it, the way he had just done to mine.
He slipped off his jacket—revealing the black T-shirt I’d found for him at the same thrift store where I bought my MassArt sweater—and draped it over my shoulders. A full-circle moment. I’d still be going back to the motel in a man’s jacket—just not the one I’d planned.
It was still warm from him. The same faint scent clung to it, and a delayed shiver ran through me as my body remembered the cold.
The hood came up, the zipper slid closed. A decent disguise—so long as no one looked too closely at my face.
Erich gave me a small, lopsided smile of approval before we headed back to the car, the doors shutting quietly behind us as we drove into the night.
We passed only one other car, heading in the opposite direction. No one to stop. No one to notice when Erich slowed near the crash.
I pointed out where it had happened—the place the car veered off the road, down the slope, into the tree. The skid marks were still visible. If I squinted my eyes hard enough, I could see smoke rising from the wreck.
Thankfully, most of it was hidden from the road.
I didn’t want to see it again.
Erich wanted to stop—to assess the damage before deciding whether to call it in—but I told him it wasn’t worth it. It was bad enough that one of us had seen it.
I wasn’t sure how much of my numbness came from the alcohol and how much came from the shock. It came in waves—awareness, then nothing. Adrenaline, maybe. Or denial. It dulled the guilt sitting heavy in my chest.
Because I knew.
My presence in that man’s life had ended it.
I had come to this town with no purpose beyond taking what I could and leaving. But that night, I’d taken more than money.
What would his life have been like if he’d never met me? Would he have gone home with his friends? Finished school? Gotten married? Had children?
Would he have mattered to someone in a way I never could?
Instead, he crossed paths with me—and now his brother, his friends, his parents would be planning a funeral.
And I had come crawling back to Erich—the one I’d tried so hard to provoke. I dumped the consequences at his feet, knowing he would handle it. Clean it up. Get me out.
He always did.
He’d walk me back to the room. Sit with the phone cord in his hands, debating whether to call it in. And we wouldn’t. Someone else would find it. Someone else would ask the questions.
Not us.
No one would ever know the truth. Not about us. Not about what we did, town to town.
That boy’s parents would bury him believing he’d driven drunk. Alone. They’d blame the bartender. Or themselves.
If he hadn’t met me, maybe Henry or Kelly would’ve taken him home.
If he hadn’t met me, he might still be alive.
Erich would be angry. I knew that. But he wouldn’t show it—not tonight. Not when I was like this.
He’d stay calm. Ground me. Save the lecture for later—when the shock wore off and I was forced to sit with what I’d done.
With how reckless I’d been.
How dangerous.
To him. To us. To that boy.
This man I was beginning to love… I made everything harder for him. I was a liability.
If I hadn’t been there, he would’ve had a clean night. Easy money. No complications. No mess to fix.
No me.
Was that why he kept his distance? Why he never let himself get too attached? To avoid exactly this?
Why did I feel everything so intensely while he kept himself so controlled?
We’d both been through too much. So why did it shape us so differently?
The thoughts stacked on top of each other until I felt like I might crack under them. I didn’t even notice how much time passed—didn’t register the moment Erich dropped the phone cord and left the room.
His voice pulled me back when he returned from the bathroom, a washcloth in his hand.
“Camille.” His voice was firm—neither irritated nor overtly worried. He was holding himself in check for me, and my lip began to quiver as I met his gaze from across the room.
“I’m sorry,” I said, settling onto the motel bed.
Erich let out a slow sigh and closed the distance between us. He leaned in, carefully dabbing at my scratched face, searching for any glass that might still be embedded in my skin.
Déjà vu. It reminded me of my split lip back in Tennessee months earlier. But this time, there was something else in the gray of his eyes—something beyond soft empathy. I couldn’t tell if I was imagining it, but a creeping paranoia told me he might be annoyed. Tired of my constant problems.
I couldn’t handle that.
Before the tears could come, I caught his hands in mine, stopping his careful work.
“I’ll do it tomorrow,” I whispered. “Will you stay with me?”
He didn’t pull away. The damp washcloth in his hand dripped onto his wrist as his eyes held mine.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll stay with you.”
I let go, and he moved to put the stained cloth aside. I shifted under the blankets, curling into myself as I waited. When he returned, he didn’t say anything—he climbed into the other side of the bed.
“Come closer,” I murmured from where I lay curled on the far edge.
He hesitated, then moved toward me—stopping just short of touching. I closed the distance myself, leaning back into him. Beneath the blanket, I found his arms and guided them around my waist before settling my head into the pillow.
His heartbeat pressed steady against my back—heavy, but controlled. Mine quickened as I held his arms in place and adjusted into him.
At first, he stayed stiff beneath me. Then, slowly, his shoulders loosened. I felt his breath warm against my hair as his chin rested there.
My legs tingled as I stretched them out, then hooked one back to pull him closer.
He shifted—just slightly—pulling his hips away to leave a small space between us.
I barely registered it.
Sleep took me quickly—his heartbeat at my back, his breathing steady against the crown of my head.