26. Neil
— ? —
Neil
I wanted to drive.
After breakfast, after the test, after sitting on the floor processing the fact that I was going to be a father, I needed to do something. Needed to feel in control of something, even if it was just a car on a coastal road.
The rental company had delivered a new Porsche that morning.
Black, sleek, completely impractical for the winding coastal roads.
I didn’t care. I needed the weight of a steering wheel in my hands, the focus that driving demanded, the illusion that I could control something in a world that had just tilted on its axis.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Anika asked as I opened the passenger door for her.
“I’m fine.”
“You just found out you’re going to be a dad. That’s a lot to process. You might get shaky.”
“Which is exactly why I need to drive. Sitting still makes me crazy. You know that.”
She gave me a look. The one that said she saw right through me, that she knew I was running from something instead of toward it. But she got in the car anyway.
“Where are we going?” she asked as I pulled onto the main road.
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.”
The Amalfi coast road was beautiful. Terrifying, but beautiful. Narrow lanes carved into cliffsides, hairpin turns with drops that would kill you if you got them wrong. Stone walls on one side, nothing but air on the other. The kind of road that demanded attention, that punished distraction.
I was giving it attention. Mostly.
The morning light was golden, spilling across the water below like something from a painting. Anika had her window cracked, the wind catching her hair. She looked peaceful. Like the news this morning had settled something in her that had been unsettled for a long time.
I wished I felt the same.
Instead, I felt terrified, overwhelmed. Completely unprepared for the responsibility that was growing inside her, that would someday be a person who looked at me and expected me to know what I was doing.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never known. I’d just gotten very good at faking it.
My phone buzzed in the center console.
I glanced at it. Half a second, even less.
Just a reflex, muscle memory, the instinct of a decade spent tethered to that screen.
I didn’t even see what the notification said.
Didn’t process whose name was on the screen.
It was just movement, light, the Pavlovian response of a man who’d trained himself to always be available.
Half a second.
I looked back at the road.
The truck was in my lane.
Time stretched and compressed at once. I saw the chrome grille filling my windshield. Saw the driver’s face, eyes wide with the same horror I felt. Heard Anika’s sharp intake of breath beside me.
My hands moved before my brain caught up.
I jerked the wheel right. Too hard, too fast. The car responded like the precision machine it was, tires screaming against asphalt, the back end swinging out in a wild arc. I tried to correct, tried to regain control, but we were already spinning.
The world became a blur of blue sky and gray road and green hillside. I heard gravel spraying against the undercarriage. Heard Anika scream my name. Heard the sickening crunch as we hit something, the guardrail maybe, and then we stopped.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead at the empty road in front of us.
Then I looked at Anika.
Her side of the car was hanging over the edge.
The guardrail had given way. I could see it now, twisted metal behind us, and beyond it nothing. Just air and a drop that went down and down and down to rocks and water far below.
“Don’t move.”
My voice came out steady, which was insane, because my heart was trying to tear through my chest and my hands were shaking so badly I could barely unclench them from the wheel.
“Neil…” Her voice was thin, scared. I’d never heard her sound like that before.
“Don’t move. The car is balanced. If you shift your weight, it could go over.”
I could feel it, the precarious tilt of the vehicle. Could feel the way it wanted to tip, gravity pulling at Anika’s side, only my weight on the driver’s side keeping us from following the guardrail into oblivion.
I looked at her. At the mother of my child. At everything that mattered in this world, suspended over a cliff because I’d looked at my phone for half a second.
“I’m going to get out,” I said. “Slowly. Then I’m going to come around and get you. Don’t move until I tell you.”
“Okay.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Okay.”
I unbuckled my seatbelt. The car shifted slightly, and Anika gasped.
“It’s okay. I’ve got this. Just stay still.”
I opened my door, inch by inch. The car groaned, metal protesting, but held.
I climbed out. One foot on the ground, then the other. Moving like I was defusing a bomb, which in a way I was. The car rocked slightly as my weight left it, but it didn’t tip.
The ground was solid beneath my feet.
I wanted to collapse. Wanted to fall to my knees and thank God or the universe or whatever force had kept us alive. But Anika was still in the car.
I made myself walk around to the passenger side.
The rear wheel on Anika’s side was in the air. Two feet of car hanging over nothing. I could see the drop now, the rocks below, the wreckage we’d barely avoided becoming.
“Hand,” I said. “Now.”
She reached for me through the open window. I grabbed her wrist with both hands, planted my feet, and pulled.
She came out of the car just as it tipped.
The Porsche went over the edge in slow motion. I watched it tumble, heard the crunch of metal on rock, saw it roll once, twice, three times before coming to rest a hundred feet below in a mangled heap that didn’t look like anything anymore.
That could have been us.
I had Anika in my arms, holding her so tight she probably couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t let go. Couldn’t loosen my grip for even a second. She was here, alive. She was warm and real and breathing against my chest.
She pulled back and looked at me. Her face was pale, her hands shaking, but her eyes were clear. She wasn’t crying or hysterical. She was just looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“We could have died,” she said. “Both of us. All three of us.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
I fell to my knees.
Right there on the side of the road, with the wreckage of the car below and the cliff behind us. I fell to my knees and pressed my forehead against her stomach and felt myself shatter.
“I almost killed you,” I said. “Both of you.”
Her hands found my hair. Held me there.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”