Remembrance (The Transcend Time Saga) (20 page)

CHAPTER 33

Not only was Chelsea lounging on top of the mahogany desk at the end of the room, but Drew was there too, leaning against the bookshelf closest to her. He was only a foot away from Chelsea, who looked at him like he was an expensive chocolate she wanted to eat right up. She leaned forward, her hair cascading in front of her shoulders, and he listened to whatever it was that she was saying.

Then I saw what it was that Drew didn’t want me to remember.

The scene in front of me was replaced by a flash of a party long past, except the inside of the room was lit with candles instead of electricity. An orchestra played in the background, and the women’s dresses covered up much more of their bodies than most of the tiny ones the girls wore at Shannon’s party. I walked into the library and saw Drew and Catherine standing close to each other—closer than he was with Chelsea, while Chelsea was doing what she said she was going to do all night—getting Drew back. Catherine was as near to him as her large party dress allowed, and by the time they spotted me it was too late. I had already seen her kiss him, and him not move away.

Tears blurred my vision, and I fell against the heavy door, leaning against it for support. I felt like I was about to be sick. Catherine—no, Chelsea turned to look at me, and a smile formed across her face. She must have somehow found out about Drew and me. The worst part of it was that even though she knew I had feelings for him, she still tried to get him back.

I couldn’t even look at Drew. He promised me that everything was going to change and we would be together like we were supposed to. But he lied.

He opened his mouth to speak, and I slammed the door shut, the echo traveling through the foyer. Unable to hold it back any longer, I allowed myself to cry, not bothering to wipe the tears off my cheeks.

“Liz?” Jeremy asked from somewhere far away. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head no, burying my face in my hands to prevent myself from crying even harder, hoping that the darkness would erase the scene from my memory. Everything from the past blended with the present, and I couldn’t separate them anymore.

“I need to get out of here,” I said to Jeremy, gasping for air through the tears. “Take me home.”

Not waiting for his response, I rushed towards the front door and stepped into the cold, trying to focus on the icy rain hitting my skin as it froze the tears running down my face. Jeremy slammed the front doors shut so Drew and Chelsea couldn’t follow. I looked around for the familiar red Jeep, my thoughts drifting to the last time I was stuck in the rain when Drew drove me home after the soccer game.

Don’t think about him
, I told myself as I hurried towards the car, yanking the handle to open the door. The vents blew freezing air onto my face and the tires screeched against the icy pavement as Jeremy weaved the car through the others parked in front of Shannon’s house. Sleet pelted against the windshield and he pressed his foot harder on the pedal, jerking the wheel to the side. The tires squealed again as he wound along the twisting street, the high-pitched noise sharp in the air.

“Slow down,” I told him, my voice cracking through the tears.

“You’re the one who said you wanted to get out of there.” He laughed, speeding up even more. “So that’s what I’m doing—getting you out of there. You see, Liz, I’m doing you a favor. Chelsea was right, but I’m giving you another chance. You should be grateful.”

I turned to look at him, gasping at the rage shining in his ice-blue eyes. “Right about what?” I whispered, not wanting to know the answer.

He turned to look at me, breaking his eyes from the road. “About you and Drew. Don’t play stupid, Liz. I know you too well to fall for that.”

I leaned back in the seat at the mention of Drew’s name, unable to believe he would cheat on me. I trusted him; I loved him with everything I had. His voice, deep and reassuring, played through my head again.
You’re everything to me. Always and forever.
All lies.

The car squealed around another corner, slamming my body into the door and sending a sharp pain through my head. That was when it came back to me. The memories filled my mind too fast, spinning in a blur of images I couldn’t piece together. I tried to push them away—I didn’t want to remember any more of my past life with Drew, but they forced their way to the forefront of my mind, too strong for me to control.

The car, the speed, the rain. This had happened before. 

I heard the clatter of the horses’ hooves pounding on the ground in a steady rhythm, the whip slapping against their backs as a gruff voice that I vaguely placed as James’s screamed at them to run faster through the storm. I yelled through the open window in the front, telling him to slow down—he was going too fast for the winding road. He didn’t listen to me, instead pushing the horses faster each time I tried to speak. I eventually stopped trying, closing my eyes so I couldn’t see the trees rushing by as the carriage bumped along the road. Drew had to be following, so perhaps the speed was good. I didn’t want him to gain on us. I didn’t want to see him again for as long as I lived—not with the image of Catherine and him kissing in the library burning in my mind.

I saw the bend in the road before James reacted, and he yanked the reins to the right, but it was too late. The wheels lifted off the ground, tilting further and further up until the carriage felt like it was floating through the air. Seconds slowed, and for a moment it felt like I was flying. Then the side of the carriage crashed to the ground, everything speeding up as it rolled over more times than I could count, slamming my head into the glass window. I closed my eyes, wishing it to stop. Finally it did.

Cold mud pressed against the side of my face, the rocks wedged into my cheek. Broken glass from the windows scattered across the ground. I raised my left hand to feel the back of my neck, pulling out a shard of glass piercing my skin and holding it in front of my eyes to see how bad it was. It should have hurt, but my skin was tingling, numb. The rain washed away the blood coating the glass that was as big as my finger, and I watched the red rivulets trickle down my hand, dropping to the ground.

The world grew hazy and started spinning around me, so I closed my eyes, not wanting to feel the pain anymore.

CHAPTER 34

My eyes snapped open and I jumped in my seat, grabbing the armrest as I took a few deep breaths to calm my heart pounding in my chest. I looked around, taking in my surroundings to re-orient myself into the present. There was no carriage or horses. I was in Jeremy’s Jeep, the windows protecting me from the pounding rain outside that was impossible to drown out, even with the music blaring through the car.

I focused on breathing evenly to push the images of the crash out of my thoughts. Each breath was forced, and the lack of oxygen made everything hazy, like I was watching my life through someone else’s eyes and not living it myself. I tried to calm myself, attempting to forget the feeling of lying helpless in the cold, surrounded by rain, ice, and blood. What I had just experienced was all in my mind—I was okay. 

But what I’d seen was more than my fear of speed. It was a flash of the past, and I had to stop it from repeating itself. I tried to remember what had happened after the crash, but it felt like I was slamming myself into a brick wall. There was nothing more to see.

This must be what Drew meant
, I thought. He wasn’t referring to what had happened with Catherine—although I didn’t know which was worse—seeing the two of them together, or a fatal accident in the freezing rain. At least the lies about what he’d remembered were to save me. I suppose it made him somewhat of a martyr.

I tried to push the thought out of my mind. He could have stayed away from her if he’d wanted to—he promised that he wouldn’t let history repeat itself. At this point, it would be easiest to let fate take its course. It would be better than seeing Drew and Chelsea together again, and maybe he’d feel guilty about hurting me so deeply.

This was too much to handle. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball, close my eyes, and make it go away.

The car shifted gears, and I looked at the speedometer passing the sixty mph line, which was too fast for the icy, winding road. Jeremy swerved around another curve and I shut my eyes in preparation for the crash, waiting for the car to start rolling over itself until coming to a stop in the mud, but he made it around the bend. I opened my eyes when I realized that the car wasn’t about to go spinning out of control and looked ahead at the upcoming hill, knowing it would be impossible to get Jeremy to stop the car before we reached the top.

A bolt of lighting illuminated the sky, and I allowed myself to realize what I was about to let happen. Everything would be over if I didn’t try to stop the accident, and I wasn’t so stupid as to throw my whole life away in the heat of one moment. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to make peace with Chelsea or find someone that I shared as deep of a connection with that I did with Drew, but I would never find out if I let events continue on their current path. It would lead to my death.

There was no evidence I could do anything to change destiny, but I owed it to myself to try.

“Jeremy.” My voice was surprisingly calm. “Stop the car.”

“In the middle of nowhere?” A cruel laugh escaped his lips. “Don’t tell me you’re about to crawl back to Drew and beg for his forgiveness.” Thunder rumbled through the air and he sped up even faster, soaring towards the clouds that seemed to be getting darker by the second. “Don’t you see that I love you, Liz?” he said, his eyes burning with rage as he looked over at me, turning back to face the road a moment later. “It wasn’t until we broke up that I realized how much I was lost without you. Then Chelsea came to me with this crazy idea. She claimed that you cheated on me with Drew, saying that Shannon saw the two of you out in his boat on the lake in the middle of the night. I said that Shannon must have seen wrong, but Chelsea promised she could prove it, so I let her. I just wasn’t expecting…” He turned to look at me again, his eyes flashing with pain as he searched for the words. “I wasn’t expecting her to be right.”

“She wasn’t right,” I cried, another tear rolling down my cheek. “I never cheated on you. I promise.”

“So you and Drew were never together?”

“Not exactly.” I shook my head, unable to look at him. “We were. It was just… after I broke up with you. And after Drew broke up with Chelsea.”

“That just makes it so much better.” He pressed his foot harder on the pedal, forcing the car to seventy miles per hour. “I trusted you, Liz. I don’t see how you could do this—to me or to Chelsea. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know, Jere,” I whispered, realizing for the first time how deeply I’d hurt him. We’d known each other for so long, and while the relationship felt over for me, it wasn’t the same for him.

The only way I could get out of the car alive was to use Jeremy’s weakness to my advantage. The thought made me sick. It was awful to lie to him, but I couldn’t think of another option. While my feelings for Jeremy weren’t the same as with Drew, I still cared for him, and didn’t want to add more lies to the twisted situation. But I had no other choice.

“I don’t love Drew,” I forced out, the words feeling like sandpaper in my throat. I looked over to gage his reaction, relieved to see his hands loosen around the steering wheel and some color return to his knuckles. But the car continued flying up the pavement, and his face remained hard and focused on the road. “I promise you, Jere,” I continued, “everything that happened between Drew and me was a mistake. He means nothing to me. I was upset because of our breakup, and I couldn’t talk to you, or Chelsea, or even my mom. He was there for me, but the whole time, you were the only one I thought about.”

My head pounded from the lie combined with the speed, and I directed the vent towards my face for some fresh air, hoping I didn’t get sick all over Jeremy’s leather seats.  He slowed the car as it climbed the hill, the speedometer falling below sixty.

He was silent for a moment, thinking. “I don’t believe you,” he said, pushing the car faster, the gears begging him to slow down. “You never were a good liar.”

I leaned back on the headrest, trying to drown out the sound of the wind rushing past the car. I would have to try harder. We were almost to the hill—it wouldn’t be long until we got to the top, and then it would be too late.

“You need to trust me,” I begged, hoping he would listen. “Stop the car. Please.”

“In the middle of the road?” He sneered. “You’re not making any sense.”

The crest of the hill quickly approached, and I knew what I had to say if I wanted to get through this alive. I crossed my fingers behind my back, knowing the superstition was silly, but hoping that whatever was up there looking down on us would understand why I had to lie to him.

“I love you, Jeremy,” I choked out, my eyes filling with tears at how much this was going to hurt him later. I leaned in his direction and brushed my fingers against his hand that gripped the steering wheel. His fist loosened, and a surge of hope rushed through my body that my plan might work. “I’ve always loved you, even before we started dating in eighth grade, and you’ve been here for me through everything,” I said, my voice trembling. “You’re the only one I can trust. Drew means nothing to me.” I leaned closer towards him and he lifted his right hand off the wheel, intertwining his fingers with mine. “You’re the only one I’ve ever loved,” I said, the lie feeling like rusted metal on my lips. “It’s always been you.”

He swerved to the right and my hand tightened around his as I squeezed my eyes together, preparing to crash against the window as the car rolled to the side, unable to stop because of the ice and the drop on the side of the road. At least I wouldn’t be alone when I died. Despite everything that had happened between Jeremy and me, it was comforting to know that he would be with me in those last few seconds.