Chapter 22 #2
“I couldn’t get out of it. I couldn’t feel my hands moving the wheel or my foot pushing on the brakes.
I couldn’t take in a full breath. All I could see were black dots all over.
Lea was screaming for me to push on the pedal.
Turn the wheel. Go. I didn’t even realize we were stopped in the middle of the road until a horn was blaring, and it was too late.
This blinding flash of headlights came straight at us. Brakes squealed, and a car hit us.”
I nestled her back tighter against me. Normally, I avoided other people’s baggage, other than my brothers’, but Alice’s vulnerability held me captive.
I wanted to soak in her pain, compare it to my own, and see which one won out.
It was sick and demented, but where I was stalling, she functioned.
She hoped. She hadn’t given up, and I needed to know how she fucking did it.
“I’ve got you. Let it out.”
“It still replays in slow motion in my head. The screams. The crackles and pops of glass. The crunches of metal. The rolls. The prick and slice of cuts. The snap of the seat belt against my chest. The punch of the airbag.” She smacked her face with brutal wipes of her tears.
“We tumbled off the side of the road down a short hill. Every millisecond felt like minutes. Rolling and rolling until finally the car teetered to a stop. The first thing I saw was Lea’s eyes.
They were so empty, and I knew right away.
The other car never stopped to check on us, and by the time my family’s men found us, her body was cold. She died because of me. I killed her.”
“Aye, you did.”
She scoffed a whimper and weakly jabbed an elbow into my gut. “That’s a prick answer.”
“It won’t make you feel better if I lie to you. Just like you pretending her death is the source of your trauma doesn’t help.”
“What?” Outrage tinged her tone. Good, that was better than wallowing in despair.
“Exactly that. Your friend’s death’s not why you had a panic attack tonight.”
Our gazes locked. Hers searching, mine analyzing. A shared understanding spread between us, and she slowly exhaled.
“It’s not.”
“So why lie?”
She shifted around to face me. My arm wrapped around her middle and back.
“Because no one understands the real reason, but they accept the car accident.”
I tilted her chin up, putting the blood decorating her throat on display. It was a little stain against the perfection she flaunted.
“Give me the truth, or give me nothing at all.”
“Why?”
“For your tears. I want to see your pain.”
Her cracks were showing. They were splintering her bit by bit into a creature far more interesting than the woman starving for attention I’d first met.
“You won’t be able to use it against me, you know. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have told you.”
“I believe that.” She was too strong not to face her weaknesses head-on.
The tips of her fingers grazed over my chin. “Would you return the favor?”
A prickling unease wrapped around my throat and squeezed. “There’s nothing to find.”
“There you go again, closing yourself off.” She smoothed my brows out, the touch freezing me solid. “Hiding your pain doesn’t erase it. It’ll only make you more vulnerable to it.”
I brushed her hand away. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know more than you think.”
Her sigh rankled my nerves. It was oppressive and foreboding, a warning that flashed at me to kick her out of my bed and life before she uttered another word.
It battled against the feel of her weight against me, against the rawness of her words, and against this crawling desire to hammer through her cracks and watch more truths seep out.
“I doubt that.”
Her lips grazed my chest, and every nerve fired, begging for attention.
“I can see the pain in your eyes,” she said.
“It’s obvious from the way they drift the moment you don’t have to pay attention.
It’s in your posture too. I’ve watched you sit on the edge of your bed every morning before leaving and at the end of your day, staring at nothing at all.
Something is bubbling and churning beneath your surface.
You keep pushing it down, and it keeps fighting you. I get it. I’ve lived it too.”
“Lies.”
She snickered with derision. “You’re not the only one hiding a sob story. Did you know when I was eleven, two of my brothers were kidnapped and tortured for a month?”
“What the fuck do I care?” I snapped.
She laid on her back and stared at the ceiling, ignoring my outburst.
“Everyone always worries about the survivors and victims, and they should. What my brothers went through…nobody should ever have to live through that.”
“I fail to see how this applies to you.”
“Shut up and listen.” The need for validation practically oozed out of her, but she didn’t look at me to seek it out.
If anything, it was like she expected the opposite.
“I wasn’t abducted or hurt like my brothers, but I was still only eleven years old when it happened.
I wasn’t just a spectator watching a film of what happened.
I existed through its chaos and the aftermath.
Every night they were missing, I cried. Every time I was left alone, I worried that the next one taken would be me.
Night terrors woke me every time I tried to sleep.
So most nights, I stayed up watching the door in case someone broke in.
I hid at every loud noise. Anytime something planned went even a little off track, I retreated or shut down.
I started constantly second-guessing if something new was good or bad and carried knives everywhere I went, just in case.