True North Book 3 - Finding Now Kate and Sam (17 page)

Something that I can’t lay bare.”

I answered her:

“Baby, all you need to do is trust

We’ll go slow and figure it out …

Ohhh …

Ba ba ba … da da da … Just a little bit, just a little bit …

Ba ba ba … da da da … Just a little bit, just a little bit …”

“Of time,” she sang.

“Yeah … just a little bit of time,” I sang, lifting the tune as I went.

She sang with a pretty, melodic voice that made me wonder how she’d sound if she were to really try.

“How can I trust when all I know

Is the crushing pain that haunts my soul …”

I responded:

“Baby, hold my heart in your hands

Feel it beat for you and believe the words I said.”

We weren’t just writing a song, we were having a conversation between our souls. I felt it and I knew she did too.

“Ba ba ba … da da da … Just a little bit, just a little bit …  

Ba ba ba … da da da … Just a little bit, just a little bit …”

“Of time.”

Goddamn it!
She was strong and fragile and brave and broken and perfect.

Desperation clung to my chest. I wanted to pull her close to my body and keep her safe.

Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” played through my mind before I heard her sniff and realized she’d begun to softly cry.

“He would have liked it … the song.” She reached over and ran her thumb

lingeringly against my lip ring. “He wore one of these for a while too until Becca, this girl he was dating, disapproved and he took it out for her. He was always like that, selfless and giving.”

I steadied myself as she stared blankly into my eyes. It seemed she wasn’t looking at me at all, but through me, to something or someone else.

“I killed him, and he saved my life.” Her voice was no higher than a whisper. She looked back down at the paper we’d written the song on. “I was nineteen and was afraid of driving. I hated the tractor trailer trucks on the highway, so I hadn’t gone for my license. But he talked me into it, bribed me really. Told me he’d take me to see Shinedown, my favorite band, front row tickets and everything if I got it. So I went and got my permit.”

She paused, and I wondered who
he
was while I tried to piece together her cryptic statement about how he had saved her life but she’d killed him.

“For weeks he taught me how to drive on the back roads, until he thought I was ready for my driver’s license. He even brought me to get it.” She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “His name … was … Ethan. He was my older brother by three years.”

She stopped again and slowly put the smooth glass bottle of beer to her lips, swallowing the contents before she started again.

“When he died, my entire world stopped. He just disappeared, simply ceasing to exist.” Jolie fixed her stare across the room onto the empty wall. “I called out to him, talked to him all the time. Hoping some part of him remained, you know? It turns out I was the only ghost.

“Everything else kept going—cars raced over the highways, television stations still broadcasted their shows, babies were born and people were upset about things as petty as a bad manicure. I couldn’t think about anything but death. I thought about the real, living, breathing people who’d gone through horrendous events, like the earthquakes in Haiti and Indonesia; children wandering through the demolished streets, parentless, their world completely destroyed and irreparable. But while they suffered the worst possible fate, somewhere else people were shopping at the mall. Laughing and hanging out. Nobody else’s lives changed, and I was so angry at that—the whole world should have stopped and held its breath like I did—it would have only been right and respectful.”

Silent tears rolled down her face. I wanted to kiss each one away, touch her, comfort her, but I didn’t dare move, not yet.

“My dad stopped talking to me. He shut himself up into his woodshop and that was it. My mom grieves because she didn’t only lose her son that day, but her daughter too.”

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t near enough. I had to relieve that building combustion that threatened to rip her apart like a grenade. I touched her hand with mine, softly, tentatively. She was so broken; could I put the pieces back together again?

“I killed him, Sam. You need to know it, so you can let go of me now and go back to your life.” She took her hand back and swiped roughly at her eyes.

“How did it happen?” I asked tenderly.

“He made good on his promise and we saw Shinedown. When we got out of the concert he talked me into driving home.” A pained expression crossed her face. “So I did. Have you ever heard of guardrail heads?”

“Yeah, the heavy metal apparatus on the end of guardrails. They’re designed to protect cars if they hit it.”

“They don’t always work the way they’re supposed to,” she said, keeping a blank, emotionless expression.

I grimaced.

“We were blasting Shinedown in the car, still high from the excitement of the concert, and um… oh God, I’m sorry…” She rubbed the palms of her hands up and down her legs to her knees and back trying to steady herself. “A drunk driver… he just swerved in front of me; I tried to swerve away. I’ve played it over and over a million times in my mind—If I’d hit the brake a second earlier or swerved more the other way … or … or … something.
Anything.
I should’ve never gotten behind the wheel in the first place because if Ethan had been driving, he would have known exactly what to do and he’d still be …” She shook her head, pain clouding her eyes. “Our cars slammed together with such a sickening force …”

Her eyebrows pressed together as if she were trying to solve a mystery. “I can still hear the metal crushing. I remember what it felt like when the car flipped and rolled, but then I felt nothing.” She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I woke up to Ethan screaming my name … When I opened my eyes it took a minute for me to grasp what had happened. I was sick to my stomach and disoriented. I looked down to scratch my leg and I saw that it was broken. My bone was sticking out and it had ripped right through the denim of my jeans.”

A pained breath escaped my lips.
Oh my God!!

Chapter Thirteen

“You Found Me”

The Fray

Kate

“KATE! KATE!” Ethan screamed to rouse me. For some reason he was panting and coughing. “You have to get yourself out of the car, Kate! Can you hear me?! WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

“I’m awake. Stop yelling at me, you’re hurting my head,” I complained. I was so disoriented. What was happening?

“Get out of the car … and as far away from it as possible!” he said between gasps. “I can smell gas”—he coughed again and then groaned—“and a fire … just started in the back.”

The crash … we crashed. My leg felt strange. I bent down to scratch it and saw bone jutting out through my jeans. For a moment, all I could do was stare at it, dumbly.

“KATE!”

Why did Ethan keep screaming at me? I shook my head and tried to focus, but it was hard when my body felt so wrong. I looked back and saw smoke. Ethan was right, we needed to get out of here.

“Okay, come on then, let’s hurry up.” I unsnapped my seatbelt and pushed my door open. But Ethan hadn’t made a move. “Ethan, come on!’ I said, lurching toward the door.

“I’m not … going with you this time, sugarcane.” He stopped and wheezed, coughing harder this time. Was the smoke already so thick? “You’re on your own.”

I finally looked over at him just as he rested his head on the back of his seat.

That’s when I saw it.

The guardrail had broken free from the head and had come straight through the front of the car on the passenger side, slicing Ethan nearly in half. It had literally torn through the steel of the car like an ultra-sharp Ginsu knife and had pinned him into his seat, severing his right leg at the hip. I didn’t know how he was conscious, much less talking to me.

I panicked, nearly screaming, “I’ll get it out!” I started pulling desperately at the metal monstrosity, but it didn’t budge. I only managed to cut my hand on the jagged metal edge, sending more blood pouring down my arm, mingling with Ethan’s.

“You’re not getting it out, Kate,” he said, suddenly strangely calm. “I’m pretty sure it’s severed the artery …”—his eyes started to flutter, as if he were having trouble keeping them open—“and it definitely skewered some major organs.”

“ETHAN!” I cried.

“I love you, Kate … but that was our last ride together.” He was gasping for air now, barely able to pull in a breath. “Now, you have to get out of the car.”

“I’m not leaving without you!” I promised.

“Oh, yes you are … because two of us are not dying today.” He coughed again, grimacing. “I love you, sis … You’re going to have to live for the both of us.” And with that, his head lulled forward as if he were losing consciousness.

I grabbed him, trying to shake him awake, to see how I could free him, but everything was covered with blood. His blood.

His eyes stayed closed, but I heard him whisper … they were the last words he’d ever say: “Please, Kate.”

At that moment I heard a crack at the back of the car and saw flames erupting around us. The heat was becoming unbearable, but Ethan didn’t flinch. His chest had gone completely still, and a thin trickle of blood ran down his chin, coming from his mouth.

I knew he was dead.

I used my arms to drag myself out and away from the car. Somehow I got about twenty feet from it before the entire thing was consumed by the fire.

“ETHAN!” I couldn’t stop screaming his name.
“ETHAN!”

I was left alone in the darkness, splayed out in the scorched grass, forced to watch this macabre bonfire that was using my brother as fuel.

It was a lifetime before the rescue vehicles started to come.

“He was already gone,” I said after describing it all to him. “I can still feel the heat and smell the gas and the hot twisted metal … I can still hear the music that kept playing until the stereo melted, and I can still see him, sliced apart and mangled.” I rose from the loveseat and stood in front of Sam, a complete mess. “I did it! I was driving! It was my fault!” I broke down, sobbing. “And I can’t get him back, Sam! And that’s all I want—Ethan back! He was my best friend.”

Sam broke in, a look of pity on his face. “That could have happened to anyone, Jolie. Even experienced drivers—”

I shook my head incredulously and tilted it, trying to hold the tears back, but they spilled from my eyes anyway. “I could have reacted differently! If I hadn’t been listening to that CD, so caught up in the excitement of the concert, maybe I would’ve been paying more attention to the cars around me—I would have
seen
that the guy was about to swerve. It’s my fault he’s dead.” I sobbed again, the ache in the pit of my stomach threatening to tear me apart. “
I
wanted to die! I can’t even describe the guilt I feel every morning when I wake up. It’s like opening your eyes and realizing the building you were in collapsed, and you’re trapped underneath the debris, and you know there’s no way you can get out from under it yourself, and the chances of anyone finding you in time”—I shrugged sadly, defeated—“are next to nothing. And you’ll never be able to take a breath of clean air ever again. You suffocate, slowly and painfully because you don’t have
enough
oxygen, but somehow you’re still alive, caught and crushed in the concrete rubble, hoping and praying that someone will find you and pull you out, and at the same time praying you’ll just die so the pain and nightmare will be over.” I ran my fingers back through my hair as I let the words spill out. “Then you panic further as you wonder, if you do die, and there is an afterlife, where are you going to go? And could hell’s torment possibly be any worse? Because you know, after what you’ve done, you’re not getting the golden ticket through the pearly gates into heaven.” I took a step backwards away from him. “I can’t get past it, past him screaming my name, or the smells, or his face! No, Sam, headshrinks are all liars. There is no getting past that. No one could get past that!”

I couldn’t look at him anymore, couldn’t handle the ferocity of confessing and reliving. I stumbled to the bathroom and locked the door. Now he knew! Now he could see! Now he could leave and this game could be over!

Sam

The bathroom door slammed and Jolie disappeared behind it. I sat stunned for a moment as I tried to keep myself together. I’d known what she’d gone through was going to be bad, but I had never imagined it would be as horrendous as that. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried, but listening to her recount the terror … I was there. I pinched the bridge of my nose. She needed me now. I stepped to the bathroom door and gently touched the wood grain with my fingertips, wondering what to say. There were no words. There could never be any words to comfort her after that. I loved my family so fucking much, I couldn’t …
I didn’t
want to imagine any one of us in that situation. How fucking helpless she must have felt. And she was so close to him. She’d been carrying that agony and guilt all by herself all these years.