“That backstabbing little bitch,” Lindsay hissed under her breath. “I bet she was going to try to steal you from me.”
“Has she even spoken to you recently?”
“No, but that was obviously because she felt guilty about all of this.”
“Maybe,” I started but then the door slid open and Christina stood there a moment taking in the fresh hell Lindsay had made of her apartment in the short time that she was gone. The woman stepped back out, took a look at the numbers that were beside the door, and then moved to look back in the room, as if she thought she had the wrong place. ‘No, sweetheart,’ I wanted to tell her. ‘You’ll wish you did have the wrong place in a moment though.’
It didn’t take long for everything to come to light, and Lindsay to demand I take her back home. We had brought the bike out here today because it had been a nice ride, but night had fallen since then, and she was pregnant. I wasn’t so sure that was good idea. There was no talking her out of heading back home though. Despite the queasiness I felt in my gut, I hopped on my Harley, handed Lindsay her helmet, and we took off into the night, headed back to Charleston. I sort of envied Christina for being able to stay behind. I had a feeling that things for me were only about to get worse once we got back.
We were on Highway 17, heading through Jasper County, when the weather turned. I forgot the other reason we were planning on staying the night. The night sky darkened more than normal with the moon and stars blocked by cloud cover. The little bit of rain that was spitting out in a fine mist still worked to make the roads slick. I almost regretted taking 17 instead of Interstate 95, which ran parallel until they reconnected. Then I figured the road with less traffic on it would be better, all things considered.
Lindsay tapped my shoulder. “Should we pull over?” She shouted. I shook my head. We didn’t have any rain gear and there was no telling how long the weather would remain bad, or if it would get worse. So far, we were lucky that the sky was just sort of spittin’ rain at us instead of coming down in sheets. That was a possibility I didn’t want to have to drive through. We continued on, the rain increased a bit, visibility decreased, and Lindsay tapped my shoulder once more, taking my focus off the road momentarily. I couldn’t hear her any longer since the rain was starting to make a clatter, and the wind was picking up.
When I turned my attention back to the road, I already knew it was too late. A deer stood, trying to make up its mind as to which way was safest to flee. The damn animal’s indecisiveness cost us all. I managed to swerve just enough to miss it, but then the slick roads caught my back tire and the fishtail effect kicked in, sending the tire careening into a second deer that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Lindsay flew from the bike, while I rode it down and slid into the ditch on the side of the road that was quickly filling with cold rainwater. My head was rattled, ribs were screaming at me, and my bike was sunk in mud and water a few feet from where I landed.
It took me a few minutes to get myself clear of the ditch so I wouldn’t drown, and by the time I did, it hurt to take a breath. I glanced around, looking for Lindsay, but couldn’t see her. Thankfully, a passing car noticed the headlight from my Harley, and stopped to call 911 for us. That was just about the time I blacked out.
I didn’t spend much time out of it. Someone was yelling. “Over here!” as I came to again. “There’s another one,” the voice called again.
“Help is on the way,” a man’s voice from somewhere close to me called back to the disembodied one.
“There’s no helping her,” the man yelled.
I groaned as I moved and something in my chest shifted, pulled, and burned like a motherfucker. “Linds,” I attempted to call out. It wasn’t very effective since I couldn’t catch a full breath in order to yell.
“Hey there, pal,” the man closest to me said. “You need to sit tight. Help’s on the way but moving around like you’re tryin’ to do ain’t gonna help ya.”
“Linds,” I called again.
“You had a girl on your bike with you?”
“Yes.”
“My buddy is over there waiting with her,” he mentioned.
“She okay?” I asked.
“Don’t know, seein’ as I’m sitting here with you. Let’s wait until help arrives, and the experts can look ya both over.” The man’s voice quavered as he spoke, and for a brief moment I wondered why that would be. I thought I’d taken pretty good stock of myself and the injuries I most likely had, but maybe he was seeing something I wasn’t.
“She’s pregnant,” I managed to get out on a hoarse groan. Just the effort of trying to breathe through two words was almost too much for my chest to handle.
“Shit,” the man hissed. “Stay still, let me go check on her.” The man ran off and before he made it back to me, there were flashing white and red lights headed our way along with blue ones indicating the police were on their way too. Damn shame they couldn’t arrest the fucking deer. I shook that thought off, but worse ones flooded my mind. It wasn’t the deer they needed to arrest. It was Lindsay for distracting me because she was getting a little wet. She had been the one to insist I take her home. Fuck sake, she was the one trapping me, and suddenly I just wanted it all over with. Seeing Christina’s face completely wash free of color at her friend’s news tonight had killed something inside of me I hadn’t even realized was there. Hope. The girl whose eyes said her soul was just as damaged as mine had been a constant in the back of mine since our first encounter. Now, she would only be a fading memory. I had no doubt she’d be there for her friend, but I could already see the plan forming in her eyes as we stood in her apartment. She was going to distance herself, and possibly ghost out of town again. If she was smart, she’d go further than she had with her move to Savannah. If she were smart, that meant I’d never see her again. All I would be able to do was wonder which colors her hair was streaked with. I’d be left without her talent to recall that beautiful face over and over and have a part of her there to watch over. If she was smart, she’d stay far away from me. My soul was corrupted and only brought pain to the people in my life.
“Sir, we’re going to get you on this board and get you loaded up, okay?”
“No,” I told them. “Take her first,” I struggled to get out. “She’s pregnant.”
“It’s okay, she’s going in another bus.”
“Okay,” I managed to say, not realizing at the time that there was only one ambulance pulled off to the side of the road.
Chapter 16
Punishment
Christina
Why did the fates feel like torturing me?
I couldn’t answer that question because I’d tried to live a good life. I’d only had one boyfriend in my life, and I’d married that man, only to find out he hadn’t been faithful right before he took his own life. How cruel was it that he did that, knowing how my parents left this world? I wanted to scream and throw things, but the only things at my fingertips were the fucking canvases that my best friend had dragged out of their bedroom vault where I normally kept them sealed away. Out of sight, out of mind had been the plan. It hadn’t worked though. Now, the disaster of the previous night sat staring me in the face. Those haunted eyes I used to get lost in painting now looked at me accusingly.
For a brief moment, I wondered if taking myself out of the equation would spare everyone else. I’d never even contemplated suicide as an option before, but if everyone around me thought death was a far better option, then maybe I was the one who needed to go into the beyond with my head held high? I questioned this as I wondered if my parents would still be around if I had done so as a child. Would Steven still be alive if he’d never met me? Possibly. Maybe he would be happy with his other woman and child.
“Ugh!” I screamed out in frustration while actually forcing my ass to get up off the couch. Yes, the same couch I had to remove some paintings from in order to park my ass on it in the first place. I moved into the kitchen area of the open-plan space and managed to get to the
coffee maker with no trouble, thankfully. It seemed that Lindsay hadn’t wanted to spread the mess of paintings out everywhere, just where they would be most noticeable when I walked back through my door. She had definitely made her point though. I was a crazy creeper lady who had become so obsessed with a man I saw once that he was literally everywhere in my apartment now. I knew it wasn’t healthy, and yet I couldn’t help that he was one of the only things I’d been able to paint with any accuracy in ages.
My spark had died when I read my husband’s suicide note, and the admission he’d made within it. The creativity I had once enjoyed had dried up until the day at the cemetery when a stranger’s soul-deep pain brought my own to life through the paint I put to canvas or the sketch work I did. I wouldn’t be sorry for that, or feel guilty, no matter how crazy it made me seem. I also probably would never see him or my best friend again. Lindsay and I had steadily been growing apart anyway. That was the way of life at our age. We both moved on to different things, and now I was pretty sure we were at our end. There really wasn’t any coming back from the fact that she was having a baby with the man she had been telling me was my soulmate for two years. It left us both feeling a bit betrayed by the other, even if that was completely irrational considering the circumstances.
That was why I was surprised to see Lindsay’s name on my cell phone when it rang a few minutes later. I took a sip of my coffee just as I hit the button to answer the call. “Hey, Linds,” I called into the phone.
“It’s not Lindsay,” a male voice stated. I knew who it must be, but I had no idea why he would have stolen Lindsay’s phone to call me.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you using Lindsay’s phone to call me,” I told him honestly. There was already enough strain between Lindsay and me after last night. Knowing her, she would flip out over this.
“She’s not going to mind,” he told me.
“Yeah? Why is that?”
“We were in an accident last night. I need you to get to the hospital as soon as possible.”
“What? Is she okay? Are you okay?” I babbled the questions off as I slipped my feet into shoes.
“Please, just get here,” he pleaded. “I’m texting you the information now.” He hung up without saying anything else and then my phone pinged with an incoming text for the hospital, floor, and room number. That was a good sign, I thought. That meant they were admitted and not in the emergency room still, or worse.
An hour and a half later I finally arrived, followed the directions to room 204, and was immediately caught off guard by who was lying in the bed. “What is going on? Where is Lindsay?” I asked, causing him to open his eyes and look up.
“I wanted you to hear it from me,” he said quietly.
That was really all I needed to hear to know what he was about to say. “No!” I called out. Jay leaned up, wincing as he did, and slid his legs that were bruised and on display just under the hospital gown he was wearing. “No, please tell me you meant something different.” He tried to stand and hissed out a few expletives. That got me moving. I pushed closer to the bed and held onto his broad shoulder as lightly as possibly, unsure of where else he was hurt. “Please, lie down before you hurt yourself worse.”
“You should listen to her,” the nurse said as she came charging in the room. “Do I need to get some restraints for that bed? You were told to get your rest, and not to move around too much, as I recall.” Her chiding seemed to go in one ear and out the other as she helped maneuver Jay back into bed and quickly covered his lower half up to help preserve his modesty.
“Fine!” He called out. “I’m in bed. Leave us for a minute.”
The nurse threw him a dirty look but did as he asked and stepped out of the room. Jay took my hand in his and squeezed. “It started raining on us, there were deer in the road,” he tried explaining. “She was trying to get me to pull over because she was getting wet, but there was nowhere around to pull off to. Then the deer were there.”
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“I thought she’d survived. The man who found us, he said he was checking on her. The ambulance driver said they were putting her in another one.” His words were mumbled as he frantically attempted to explain. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know what?”
“She was already dead,” he hissed out. “When she flew off of the bike after we hit the second deer, she must have hit a tree. They said,” he stopped and placed a hand to his chest. I wasn’t sure if that was to stave off the internal ache from his wounds or from her loss. “They said she didn’t suffer. It was quick.”
Hot tears streamed rivers down my cheeks. “It wasn’t your fault,” I told him. He quickly pulled his hand from mine.
“It was,” he disagreed.
“No, it was an accident. There was rain and deer,” I attempted to soothe his guilt. I knew he had to be feeling guilty, because I did. I felt guilty because they were driving that road in the rain after she found those paintings in my house. She was trying to escape from me. I had wished her gone. I had… Oh God! I had wished her gone and now she was. I truly was a curse on those around me. “I have to go,” I told him and then I was moving away from the bed.
“Christina, wait,” he called out to me.
“I hope you get better soon,” I told him and then I left, because there was no way I could stay there and face him. All of it had been my fault. How could he even want me there to face him?
Two days later, I received a text from an unknown number telling me when and where the service for Lindsay would take place. I debated on whether or not I should show up, but in the end, I had to go to say my final goodbyes. Her family had opted out of the traditional affair of having a service separate from the graveside. I stood in the back, listening as they spoke about the woman as if she had been a saint when she was on this earth. I loved Lindsay for who she was, but that was never a saint. Actually, I could imagine her rolling her eyes at the things her mother had spoken about, only half of them had been true. Included in those untruths was a mention of the friendship Lindsay and I had shared. Once upon a time it would have been true, but we’d been slipping ever since. It was yet another thing I felt guilty about, because she had wanted me to forget the way my husband had betrayed me and to stop talking about it, to get over it. I couldn’t, so she stopped coming around as much. Then, she switched schools and we grew further apart.
I tuned out the rest of what was said. While I stood there in the same cemetery where my husband had been buried, I silently said my goodbyes to the woman who had once been there for me in my grief. She had held me together until she couldn’t any longer. Now, she was gone. There was nothing left for me here, or anywhere really. I started to walk away from the funeral proceedings, which should have been easy since I was in the back, but a hand caught my wrist before I could go.
“Christina,” he breathed out. I had already known it would be him since shockwaves of electricity were running up and down my arm from our point of contact. Jesus, even when my best friend was being laid to rest, I couldn’t help betraying her with how my body reacted to his. “Please, don’t go,” he whispered. “There are things you need to know.”
“I need to go. I’m sorry! I can’t do this,” I told him as I wrenched my arm free and moved quickly away. Another man moved in and clamped a hand down on Jay’s shoulder to keep him in place. That didn’t stop a woman from following me to the car I had rented earlier though.
“Christina?” The woman asked. I had never met her before and didn’t know how she knew who I was.
“It’s all my fault,” I told her. “I wished for this and it happened. I’m a horrible person. Please, let me leave. I don’t deserve to be here. My wish did this. It’s always me. Always my fault. They’re all gone now. She’s gone too because of me.” Okay, so most of what I was saying came out more as incoherent babbling, but that was the gist of it. I had wished her away and now my friend was gone for good. There was no coming back from tha
t. No redemption could be found in the fact that I had wished ill upon her and it happened. I climbed in the car that I had already packed, and I watched as the woman spoke to Jay as I pulled away. No doubt, she was telling him I was crazy and that he needed to let me go.
I had already prepped the GPS to take me to the mountains. I had a friend, he used to be Steven’s best friend, who lived there. He was going to let me stay a few days so I could just decompress in the middle of nowhere. Once I had a few days, I planned on figuring out my next move.
Chapter 17
Vanished
J-Bird
Christina was in her car, headed away from me, the cemetery, and her dead friend. Ever held my arm steady as I tried to breathe. Damn if my lungs weren’t on fire along with the ribs I’d broken.
“Jay, she seems to think this is all her fault,” Ever quietly told me.
“What? How the hell could she think that?” How in the hell was it possible that she had been blaming herself for this? None of it was her fault at all.
“From the sounds of it, she wished Lindsay was out of the picture,” Ever enlightened me. She mentioned others too.
“Her husband died,” I stated.
“Oh, that poor girl,” Ever whispered. “She seems so young.”
“Lindsay told me about them. They were high school sweethearts, but he was cheating on her and knocked up some other woman then took his own life. Christina never knew until she read the letter he left behind for her.”
“He left a confession for her after killing himself?” Ever hissed. I nodded and almost smiled at the fact that she was fuming mad on Christina’s behalf. “We should do some voodoo shit, bring him back, and torture him before killing him again,” she stated coldly. “Who does something like that to a person?”
I shrugged. “He told her in case the other woman came around demanding shit for the kid.” At least, that was what Lindsay had mentioned. She also said there would never be a kid coming around, and I wasn’t too sure how she knew that part. It made me wonder is she had known who had been messing around behind her best friend’s back. Then something else clicked. “She wasn’t pregnant,” I told Ever.
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