Chapter 12
Crash?
I got it.
It’s not glamorous. It’s not high-paying. It sure as hell isn’t tied to some magical past-life epiphany where I remember I’m a tech mogul or international assassin.
But it’s something.
Cashier.
Gas station 7-Eleven.
The graveyard of ambition.
I walked in that morning on a whim, wearing that worn-in leather jacket and a face full of charm. Told the owner my story—amnesia, no ID, just trying to get back on my feet without begging or stealing. She looked me up and down, narrowed her eyes, and said, “You clean?”
“Clean and pitiful,” I told her.
She smirked and handed me a paper hat.
So now I run the register.
I make microwave coffee. I restock Snickers and beer. I tell teenagers they can’t loiter and smile at hungover businessmen trying to buy scratch-offs like it’ll fix their lives.
I clock in at 7AM, clock out at 2PM.
It’s humiliating. It’s hot. It smells like gasoline and regret.
But it’s mine.
And it means when I come home, I’m not dragging the weight of being a fucking freeloader behind me anymore.
I head back to Carol’s—my key, now—and the second the door opens, I’m hit with a wall of rage.
She’s pacing. Wild. Hair a mess, eyes flashing, phone clenched in her hand like she’s about to throw it through the window.
“Where the hell were you?” she snaps, voice pitched sharp with panic and fury. “Do you have any idea how much I worried?! I started calling hospitals, Crash! Hospitals! I thought maybe you fell down a subway stairwell or got hit by a goddamn taxi!”
I blink.
Drop my bag by the door.
Smell like fryer oil and stale jerky.
And I don’t even get a hi.
“I—uh,” I scratch the back of my neck. “I was working.”
She freezes mid-step, squints at me like I just said I joined a cult.
“Working? What the fuck do you mean working?”
“I got a job,” I say, holding my hands up like she’s about to tase me. “At the 7-Eleven. Morning shift. Nothing big. Just… something. I wanted to do something. Something that wasn’t just eating your leftovers and breathing your air.”
She just stares.
And it’s not anger anymore.
It’s something worse.
It’s that look like she’s about to cry but would rather eat glass than let it happen in front of me.
“You could’ve told me,” she says, quieter now. “A note. Anything. I thought you vanished. I thought—fuck, I thought something happened to you.”
Shit.
I move closer. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just… I didn’t wanna jinx it. Didn’t even know if they’d keep me after the first day.”
She exhales, like the world is right again. Then before I know it, she’s wrapping her arms around me, burying her face on my chest.
She melts into me like she’s been waiting to.
Arms locked tight around my ribs, face pressed to my chest like she’s anchoring herself to me—and for a second, I forget every fucking hole in my memory.
Every unanswered question. Because all that matters is this, right here.
Her warmth. Her breath on my shirt. Her whisper curling against my skin.
“Okay,” she murmurs, voice thick with emotion, “I’m happy for you, I am… I just… I got scared.”
And fuck, if that doesn’t gut me right down to the bone.
Like someone reached in and twisted something vital.
I wrap my arms around her.
Tighter.
Face buried in that golden hair that smells like lemon shampoo and salvation.
“I’m fine,” I mutter into her crown. “I just didn’t want to keep living off you. I had to do something.”
“Crash, you’re not a freeloader,” she says, pulling back just enough to look up at me, eyes sharp but wet. “You’re just in recovery. From a literal brain injury, remember? You almost died. You’re allowed to not have your shit together right now.”
I shake my head. “Yeah, but what if it doesn’t come back? What if this is it? What if I never remember who I was? I can’t keep leaning on you like this forever, Carol. I can’t keep eating your food and sleeping in your bed like some broken pet project.”
Her brows twitch. “You’re not a fucking project, Crash.”
“I feel like one,” I say, jaw tight. “And you—you—deserve someone who brings something to the goddamn table. Who makes your life easier. Not harder. Not heavier.”
She starts to say something, but I stop her.
My voice low. Raw.
“I want to deserve you, Carol.”
And there it is.
The truth, cracked open and bleeding.
Her mouth parts, soft. Shocked, maybe. Or just breathing it in.
“I don’t want to be some puzzle you’re stuck with. I want to be someone you choose. Not because I need help. But because I’m fucking worth it.”
Her hand comes up to my jaw, thumb brushing the edge of my stubble, her touch grounding and infuriatingly kind.
“Crash,” she says, steady. “You don’t have to earn the right to be cared for.”
“Yeah,” I say, bitter, low, “but I want to.”
She exhales again, a little broken, a little fierce.
And then she kisses me.
No warning. No hesitation. Just leans in and presses her mouth to mine like she’s been fighting the urge every goddamn night we’ve been sharing a bed and pretending not to burn for it.
And fuck me—everything stops.
No noise. No doubt. No past. Just her.
Her lips are warm and soft and the kind of addictive that ruins a man. She tastes like coffee and breath mints and the promise of something real, something earned. She smells like lemon and skin and something I want to bury my entire fucking life in.
I breathe her in and she parts her lips, just slightly—just enough—and I lose whatever self-control I had left.
I kiss her deep, sliding one hand into her hair, the other curling against the small of her back, holding her like I’ve been dreaming of this since before I forgot my goddamn name. She sighs into my mouth, soft and needy, and that sound—Jesus Christ—it lights my spine on fire.
Her hands fist in my shirt like she wants to drag me inside her, right there in the middle of her kitchen, fluorescent light humming overhead, my hoodie still smelling like gas station coffee and desperation.
But she doesn’t care.
She kisses me like she doesn’t give a single fuck what I’ve forgotten.
Like she wants the man I am now.
The one trying. The one aching to be worthy of her.
I pull back just an inch, just enough to speak against her lips.
“Carol…”
She opens her eyes—big, brown, wrecked—and whispers, “Shut the fuck up, Crash,” before dragging me right back in.
So I do.
I shut the fuck up.
And I kiss her like I mean it.
Because I do.
She presses against me like gravity isn’t optional anymore, like she’s been holding this tension between us in her chest for weeks and now it’s breaking loose, flooding everything.
Her fingers thread into my hair, pulling just enough to make me groan low in my throat, the sound catching somewhere between relief and fuck yes.
My cast makes it awkward, but I don’t give a single shit.
I pull her tighter with the other hand, hand splayed wide on her back, feeling the curve of her waist, the heat of her skin under that paper-thin t-shirt she calls pajamas.
I nip her bottom lip just a little, and she gasps into my mouth, all breath and heat and goddamn yes.
She tastes like something sweet I’ll never earn and still take with both hands.
She backs us up, bumping into the counter, never breaking the kiss.
We move like drunks, like we’re staggering through heat and gravity and finally.
She backs into the counter, hips bumping, hands dragging across my back like she’s starving for skin, and I swear my knees nearly buckle from the contact.
My cast knocks against the edge of the wall, makes this dull thump—neither of us flinches.
We don’t care. We’re all mouths and hands and friction now.
Two weeks.
Two fucking weeks of breathing the same air, sleeping shoulder to shoulder, pretending we weren’t crawling out of our skin every time our legs brushed under the covers.
Two weeks of playing nice. Of “accidental” touches and looks that lasted a little too long.
Of me waking up hard and aching, and her pretending not to notice.
She breaks the kiss just long enough to murmur, hot and desperate against my lips, “You’ve been driving me insane…”
And then she grabs my shirt, and pulls. We’re stumbling down the hall, tangled, hungry, breathless, like the apartment shrunk down to just this path, her bedroom at the end of it, and the need boiling in our chests.
She tugs me toward the bed—her bed, our bed, fuck it mine now—and it’s awkward, limbs colliding, my cast snagging her sheets, our mouths fumbling between moans and stifled gasps. But none of it matters. None of it’s stopping us.
I hover over her, one hand braced near her shoulder, body caging hers, eyes locked on her flushed face as I kiss her like I’ve never kissed anyone before.
“Fuck,” I groan, lips brushing her cheek, her jaw, the curve of her throat, “I’ve been trying to be good, Carol…”
Her nails dig into my back, dragging down, blunt and perfect. “Don’t be good,” she whispers, breath shaky. “I don’t want good—fuck, I want you.”
And holy shit—that cracks me wide open.
The cast’s in the way, but I shift, grind my hips into hers and she whines, tilts her head back like an offering. Her legs wrap around me instinctively, and I can feel her through the thin cotton of those tiny shorts she wears to torment me—heat, softness, wet, fuck me wet already—
I kiss her hard, biting her lower lip, and her breath stutters.
“Tell me to stop,” I rasp.
She pulls me down, hips lifting to meet mine. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
She tugs my shirt like it offended her, quick and a little desperate, but still careful around the cast, like even now—even now—she’s not gonna risk hurting me.
The thing comes off in a twist of fabric and heat, lands somewhere on the floor, forgotten, and then—fuck—
Her mouth is on me.
Hot tongue, wet and slow, licking a stripe right up the middle of my chest like she owns me now. And maybe she does. My breath catches, muscles tensing as her lips follow that path, open-mouthed kisses trailing lower, dragging fire behind them.