Prologue #2
I exited the truck and ran to her side. The door was jammed. After a few hard pulls, I was able to force it open and look at Julianna up close. Nothing appeared askew. I gently helped her out of the vehicle, and she fell over onto me.
I pulled her close, taking her weight. “What’s wrong?”
“My back. It’s probably pulled muscles. I’m sure it’s whiplash. I’m fine.” Her teeth gritted, and I knew it was something more. We could reassess once we made it up the hill.
I put an arm around Julianna and led us, step by step, up the embankment.
It felt like it took forever, but eventually, we came to the empty, dark road where there was no sign of the deer that had darted in front of us.
I looked back down the hill we’d climbed up.
The truck had cut a large swath through the saplings and underbrush.
It was a random detail I’d remember for a long time.
“Should we call 911?” Julianna shook, and her words echoed in the silent darkness.
I looked toward the mangled truck and nodded. Calling for help meant welcoming the authorities. They’d find out I’d been drinking. I’d have a record. Then I’d lose my scholarship. My life was over.
But all of that paled in comparison to Julianna’s injuries.
“Yeah. Of course.” I took the phone out of my pocket where I had stashed it, and nearly fumbled it in my hands.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, but then her eyes went wide as realization dawned.
“We have to call.” I ignored her shock.
“Oh my God, Bram. I shouldn’t have asked you to drive. I shouldn’t have suggested we drive around.” Her voice took on a desperate plea. “Isn’t there someone we can get a hold of? Whit? ”
“You’re injured. You need medical attention now,” I said, shaking my head. “I wouldn’t have driven if I’d thought this would happen. I shouldn’t have risked you.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “There was no way to avoid the deer. It’s not your fault.”
I flipped the phone open, and Julianna grabbed my arm, but I wretched it away.
“I’m calling the ambulance,” I stated definitively.
“Don’t!” she cried, grabbing hold of my arm again. “You’ll lose your scholarship. I can’t live with that.” She squeezed my forearm. “What about Whit? You can’t leave him alone at college. He’s already unhinged. He’s not the same as he was. I can feel it, and?—”
“Stop,” I interrupted, my voice tight.
“Your father will murder you, Bram,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. Her desperation bled into her tone. “What if he takes it out on you or your mother? Why would you risk that?”
I looked directly into her tear-filled eyes, flailing my arms out to the sides. “Because I’d do anything for you. Anything.” My breath hitched, and she froze at my passionate admission.
She opened her mouth as if she were trying to find words, but they would not come.
Without preamble, I pressed my lips to hers. I couldn’t think of any other way to show her how I felt and have her believe it. The kiss was anything but tender. When I pulled away, she was stunned, her eyes wide.
I took a deep breath and returned my attention to the phone in my hand. “I have to call.”
Her face morphed from shock to anger.
“Then leave,” she spat. “Go. Whit left me at the party. You gave me your truck. I lost control. Easy as that.”
I shook my head. “That’s not a solution,” I replied. “How will you explain being out on this road in the middle of nowhere? ”
“Leave that to me,” she insisted. “I’ll call 911. Call someone to get you, someone too stupid to ask questions. If it comes out, I’ll say I made you drive and made you leave me.”
I shook my head and flipped open my phone again.
“I’ll never speak to you again,” she seethed as my fingers hovered over the keys. “I’ll hate you for the rest of my life if you do this to me, if you risk everything. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Julianna—”
“No! If you care for me, then go. Please go.”
We stared at each other in the darkness. The only sounds were the forest rustles and our heavy breaths. Fear had a hold on my mind. Could I leave her? If I did as she said, I might have a chance to walk away unscathed.
“You have too much to lose, and I have nothing to gain. This way, we’ll both be closer to winning,” she said coaxingly, when she sensed I was internally debating.
I scoffed. “None of this is winning for me.” A war played out in my mind, but I knew time was of the essence. Julianna needed help. She was still standing, but slightly slumped. I watched her grit her teeth in pain.
I dialed and handed the phone to her. Her voice sounded garbled in my ears as she talked to the operator. When help was dispatched and locations were given, the operator asked her not to hang up, but she did anyway. She handed the phone back to me.
“It’s done. You don’t have long.” She signaled with her head for me to leave. I closed my eyes.
“I can’t do this, Julianna. I can’t leave you.” It went against every instinct I had. I would face the music. Maybe my Dad would have a way to cover it all up.
“You can and you will.”
“Whit will know I left you.”
“Whit will know what I tell him,” she said plainly .
I ran my hands through my hair, over and over, the tension so tight between us I thought it might snap.
Without a word, I collided with her again, my mouth covering hers, my hand splaying across her back gently, holding her up.
I funneled my frustration and grief into our kiss, a complex and passionate thing.
She acquiesced, but just for a moment, before she pushed away from me.
“No, you need to go. You don’t have long. Please.”
“I can’t.” I reached for her again. “I’m crazy about you. And?—”
She pushed me, her palms against my hard chest. “We’ll talk about it later. Go!”
I knew we wouldn’t talk about it later.
“Good girls like you don’t end up with assholes like me,” I scoffed, the other part of my thoughts unsaid.
Her eyes met mine. I couldn’t stand the tears that began to fall down her cheeks. Shame poured over me like scalding water.
I turned into the night and ran down the dark highway. I did not stop or look back.
The putrid smell of weed and sweat permeated my senses as I shoved my shivering body into the front seat of the tiny brown Cavalier.
“Shit, man.” Billy looked at me from the driver’s seat with his glassy eyes and snarling lip. “Looks like someone busted you up bad.”
Billy wasn’t a close friend. He was a groundskeeper at my parents’ estate, someone I would sometimes shoot hoops with when I was home. He didn’t ask questions when I asked him to come pick me up on the side of the road. He took my directions and found me .
My chest was tight from the running and the cold. I bet Julianna was more injured than she’d let on. The adrenaline had kept us at a peak, but mine was wearing off. I looked down at my lap, unable to unclench my fists.
“You okay?”
I was broken, but my fight wasn’t physical. It was mental.
Julianna begged me to leave her. Threatened me, even. But I knew as sure as I was alive that no excuse would ever justify me abandoning her. I had left her alone. I chose myself over her. Nothing would ever change that.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. “Drive.”
Billy turned on some hard rock I couldn’t be bothered to identify and whipped the small car around multiple curves in the forest. He was moving so fast that it was making me sick.
“Dude, slow down,” I demanded, knowing I was taking my anger and worry out on Billy unfairly. Yet, the last thing I needed was another impaired wreck.
“Geez, fine.” Billy put on the brakes, and I lurched forward. He resumed at a more leisurely speed. “Grandma poke slow enough for you?”
“Perfect,” I muttered and looked out the passenger window.
With every heartbeat, her name ran through my head, followed by definitive thoughts: Why are you doing this? Why did you leave her?
I could go back.
My father could disinherit me. Whit might hate me, at least for a while, and I would lose my scholarship. Yet all of it would be bearable if Julianna knew, truly knew, that I cared more about her than myself.
“Stop the car.”
Billy slammed on the brakes, and the car halted in the middle of the road. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes .
“Listen, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re totally killing my buzz.”
“Take me back to where we came from. There’s something I have to do. I’ll make it worth your while.” Cash, weed, booze—whatever Billy wanted, I’d find it for him.
He gave me a weird look, but he turned the car around and headed back from where we’d come.
I held my breath as new fears assaulted my mind.
Had Julianna been keeping the full extent of her pain from me?
She had been limping while we argued, and she had let me bear her weight up the hill. How bad was the damage?
Soon enough, we came to the scene.
“Whoa, what’s this?”
Billy slowed to a crawl as we approached the flashing lights on the road.
“Let me out here and then get out of here unless you want to be caught with all this smoke,” I told him, and he stopped right in the road, some thousand feet or so from the nearest cop car. “And thanks for answering when I called. I owe you.”
I didn’t have time for a handshake or further words. I unraveled myself from the tiny vehicle and willed my feet to walk toward the lights. I felt the chill of the night in my bones.
There were four cop cars and a wrecker on the scene. A man was making his way down the hill toward the truck. There was no ambulance. No sign of Julianna.
I put my head in my hands, unable to stem the rising tide of emotions overwhelming me. I wanted her to be there still, so she would know I came back for her, but I was too late for all that.
I walked up to the first officer I found, a man in his mid-fifties with a thin mustache and even thinner, gray hair on his head.
“Sir? Where’s the girl?” I asked in a rushed inquiry, tapping him on the shoulder .