I saw him yards away, off to the side, just over the hill. He was lying still, not moving, not calling for help.
I pushed up to run to him, but my body refused to obey. “Matt,” I called out. My voice was weak and my throat scratched, but I yelled anyway.
He didn’t reply. He acted as if he didn’t even hear.
I heard other sounds, shouts behind me somewhere nearby, but I blocked it all out.
I gave one last valiant attempt to rush to Matt’s side, but there would be no rushing today. My body failed me, refusing to walk.
I clenched my hands and flexed my fingers. They still worked, so I used them. I pulled myself in a half crawl, half drag toward Matt, the entire time trying to remain focused and call his name.
It seemed it took forever to get to him. The entire time, I prayed to God he was going to be okay.
Please, please, God, I begged. Don’t let the death that was meant for me claim him. He is too good for death.
I reached him, my hand closing around his boot. “Matty,” I sobbed. “I’m here. Oh fuck, I’m sorry.”
He still didn’t reply, so I crawled up his body, partly sprawled over his chest.
The helmet was shattered. Blood covered what I could see of his face. “Matt.” I tried again, gripping the helmet with barely any strength.
I tugged and pulled, but I couldn’t get it off.
A sob broke in my chest, and the sound catapulted out of my throat like a high keen or a howl at a full moon.
I shook his shoulders, grabbed his hand, and hit his chest. “Wake up!” I demanded.
But he didn’t.
“Call 9-1-1!” I yelled, but I don’t know who I spoke to.
“Hang in there,” I told him, all my energy seeping away, leaving me feeling strangely void. Wetness leaked out of my eyes as my head fell onto his chest. I tried to hang on to consciousness. I struggled to stay there in the moment with Matt. “Everything’s going to be fine,” I told him.
But everything wasn’t fine. I knew it deep inside me. Even the blow to my head, the wreck, and then literally crawling to his body wasn’t enough to block out the fact that this was all my fault.
Sirens in the distance were a welcome sound. Help for Matt was on the way.
The beckoning darkness swallowed me whole.
We all know we don’t have enough time.
It’s common knowledge. So common it’s often overlooked. Kind of like the heat in the dead of summer in the south. It’s easy to forget how brutal the humidity is, how intense the sun can be, when we’re able to close the door to it and revel in air-conditioning. Or sit in a restaurant, impervious to the heat, sipping a cold beer with a frosty-to-the-touch mug.
The thing is with heat, with time, there are always reminders.
Like when you first climb into your car after exiting an efficiently cooled place and nearly melting off half your skin. Or when you tell yourself “tomorrow,” then…
Tomorrow never comes.
Infinity is just an illusion. Something we tell ourselves we have, because truly realizing just how fragile time is would be close to crippling.
The silence around me was absolute. So soundless there was this static energy about it that almost fooled me into thinking I wasn’t actually waking.
But I was. Slowly, my eyelids fluttered. Pricks of light filtered beneath the dark curtain of my vision. I blinked against the bright haziness, trying to get everything to come into focus.
Urgency, I could feel it in the way my heart rate accelerated despite the fact my body was at rest. Imperative terror, the kind that gripped your chest and made it hard to think, rose inside me.
My body bolted upright, lips parting to gasp for air. Beside my hips, my hands fisted into the fabric nearby as I tried to make sense of my surroundings and everything my mind and body was trying to tell me.
It was so much. So much so fast.
The annoying sound of beeping barely registered, only enough to make me wish it would stop because I had more important things to think about.
The walls were white; the window was large and boasted drawn generic blinds. This wasn’t my apartment, my bed… my home.
This room was empty except for me, this bed, and a few other no-nonsense pieces of furniture I couldn’t care less about.
I tugged at the covers, trying to get free because there was somewhere I had to be. Someone who needed me.
Matt.
Just the whisper of his name in the back of my consciousness alarmed me. My breathing became desperate, coming in short gasps, almost as if I were hyperventilating, but not quite.
“Sir.” A woman in a pair of scrubs rushed into the room. “Jayson? You’re doing just fine.” She hurried over to my side as I struggled with the blankets and tried to calm me by putting a hand to the center of my chest, gently pushing me back.
The beeping silenced. I realized it was coming from the machine beside the bed. There was also an IV stand. I followed the cord all the way to where it stuck out of the back of my hand, the needle concealed by about three pounds of medical tape.
“Where is he?” I gasped, struggling against her hold. “Where’s Matt?”
I was confused, my mind muddled. I searched desperately for the answers I needed, begging the knowledge to burst through the fog.
“You were in a serious accident. You have serious injuries. You need to lie back and rest. You don’t want to rip out any stitches.”
I grabbed her arm, my eyes fastened on her face. “Matt,” I implored.
Suddenly, everything around me turned inward. I heard metal scraping over the ground, parts scattering, and a sick engine sputtering out as the smell of burning rubber filled my senses. The sight of a tire that spun even though it was no longer on the road completed the horrible memory.
“Sir,” the nurse said again, calling me back.
“Matt!” I hollered, sounding raspy and old. “Where the hell is Matt?”
The beeping of the machines started up again, but I blocked it out.
The vision of a prone body, a body I knew as well as my own, lying near the wreckage stole over me. I let out a strangled sound. His helmet was shattered, his leg awkwardly bent, and there was blood…
Too much blood.
“I’m so terribly sorry.” The nurse began.
My voice broke. A sob caught in the back of my throat. “No.”
Her voice was gentle and swift. “Your friend that was also in the accident… he didn’t make it.”
“No,” I keened, finally collapsing against the pillow. I rolled onto my side. Pain seared me everywhere, and a breath hissed between my teeth.
Visions of the man I loved in various states of our relationship flashed through my mind. Smiling, laughing… wet in the shower.
He was gone.
All those visions were now memories. Memories of what would never be again.
“Are you in pain?” The nurse hovered. “I need to get the doctor.”
I was crying. I felt the wetness on my cheeks. Utter despair tightened my chest.
After a second of hesitation, the nurse laid her hand on my shoulder. Hers wasn’t the touch I drew comfort from. Hers wasn’t the hand that knew me.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she whispered.
She bustled from the room, saying something about a doctor. I heard the door close behind her.
The silence that pressed on me when I first awoke… it was back. I was alone in this room.
Matt was dead.
Because of me.
I killed the one person I loved most in this world.
Solitude was now my permanent and only companion.
It was more than I deserved.
I went to the morgue. To identify the body.
He wasn’t just a body.
He wasn’t just lifeless flesh, broken and torn in an unfortunate accident, that just needed to be labeled correctly.
My feet were bare. They slapped along the cold, hard hospital corrid
or as I walked unsteadily toward the wing where Matt’s shell lay. The IV stand I leaned on had a squeaky, crooked wheel that echoed around us as we went. I was dressed in a hospital gown, one I didn’t even bother to make sure was closed. The cold air in the hall brushed against the small of my back and the backs of my thighs as I walked, but it didn’t matter.
My bare feet, unclothed state… even the pain radiating in my body was of no importance.
He was gone.
I was here.
Left behind. Living… but dead.
My heart still beat, my lungs still took in air, but it was all details now because life as I knew it was shattered.
I limped, leaned a little farther against the pole as I trudged on. They’d wanted to wait. The nurses, the doctors, the police, even my managers.
Waiting wouldn’t make it any easier. I wanted to see Matt. The thought of him lying on some sterile, cold table beneath a scratchy white sheet surrounded by other lifeless bodies made me so incredibly sad.
And so incredibly angry.
He deserved better than this. How could a man with so much life inside him be drained and reduced to this in only fleeting moments?
A swinging door was held open for me. I pushed inside a square room with a single table that looked like a slab of steel.
The white sheet was exactly as I imagined. Exactly as it was portrayed on movies and TV.
The coroner was standing nearby. A white lab coat covered his body, a pair of blue latex gloves on his hands.
My stomach lurched and churned. I knew I wouldn’t throw up; there was nothing inside me. Absolutely nothing.
I stopped beside the body, near his head.
The coroner moved up, grabbed the edge of the sheets, and glanced at me.
I nodded once, then fixed my eyes downward.
Matt’s face and upper body was revealed to me.
He was still. Eerily so.
His lips were blue, his skin was white, and the dark hair that always fell over his forehead was shoved back off his face. I wanted to reach out and ruffle it, to put it back in its rightful place. Maybe then he wouldn’t appear so inert. There was no fixing his hair, putting it back the way it should be, because it was matted and stiff with dried blood.
I stared at him. I stared so long my legs fell asleep and my hand trembled with weakness where I gripped the pole at my side.
All the injuries he incurred from the race that should have killed me marred his body, making him appear even more garish. It was unsettling to see so much violence on such a still being.
“Can you give us confirmation?” the coroner asked, his voice low.
I glanced up, then immediately back down.
“Is this Matthew Lewis?” He pressed.
“Matt.” My voice scratched out. “He liked to be called Matt.”
I felt rather than saw the coroner motion to someone, and then he began raising the sheet.
My arm shot out and gripped his, squeezing so hard my fingers ached. I was weak, far weaker than I’d ever been.
Weak in body. Weak in spirit. Weak in mind.
He didn’t even wince at the way I grabbed him, even though I gave it everything I had.
“No,” I begged. “Not yet.”
“You should get back to bed.” The nurse spoke softly from the door.
“I’m never going to see him again!” I raged. “This is the last moment I will ever have with him. I don’t give a damn about bed!”
The coroner cleared his throat, smoothed the sheet back, and stepped away. “We’ll give you a few moments.”
The door closed audibly.
I sucked in a shuddering breath.
Tears blurred my vision as I clung to the image of my lover’s face.
I stepped forward until my body hit the side of the table. I smoothed a shaking hand over his bare shoulder.
I knew he wasn’t here. Not really.
But this was all I had left.
“I’m sorry, Matt,” I told him, my voice shattering. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
It didn’t matter that he was broken, bloody, and just an empty shell. He was still everything to me. I leaned forward, wrapped my arms around his cold, stiff shoulders, and pressed my face into the side of his neck.
He wasn’t warm like usual. He didn’t smell of pine and dirt.
It was then I truly realized just how quickly infinity can be ripped away.
In many respects, it left me crippled.
I found myself caught between two different worlds.
How did I end up here again?
I told myself the last time there would never be another. I would always remain true to who I was, no matter the cost.
After all, I’d already paid so heavy a price. There couldn’t possibly be anything worse.
Regardless, choices were heavy.
Perhaps that was why so many of us lived in limbo. Sometimes the discomfort of indecision was preferable to the pain of choice. Especially when so many of the decisions we made in a moment could alter the rest of our lives.
I knew that better than most.
Maybe life was a series of crossroads, and it seemed I was doomed to stayed at the junction and debate which way to go so long it was almost crippling.
Maybe that’s why I was always alone.
Left behind.
Everyone else was whizzing past me as I stood still, waiting for some sign I wasn’t going to do something that would cause a belly full of regret.
Thing was I didn’t want to stand still.
I was a racer, destined for speed. Destined to go until everything around me was a blur.
What a giant juxtaposition I’d become. Wanting badly to drive fast, but always, always hitting the brakes.
My life didn’t turn out the way I expected. Hell, where I was now wasn’t even something I’d ever imagined.
However…
Where I was, it wasn’t a bad place to be.
I found myself in a unique situation. With a unique opportunity. Not one, actually, but two.
Indie or pro.
To some, maybe this was a no-brainer. Not for me. The decision to drive in the NRR with my brother, my new sister, and my best friend Drew or take a spot up for grabs with NASCAR with a heavyweight sponsor was something I’d been sitting on for months.
Months.
The clock on patience was running down with everyone involved. Pretty soon, I was going to have to put up or shut up.
I couldn’t shut up. This was my chance, an opportunity to break free of where I was and start over. I was no stranger to starting over.
Or was I?
Maybe that’s why this choice was so hard. Maybe it was why the call to take a spot right next to my family wasn’t such a no-brainer.
Perhaps all this time, I’d only been in limbo.
I’d jumped in the car, sped away from what use to be, but the engine stalled on the side of an empty road. There I’d sat.
Lorhaven tried to tow me. In fact, he did.
But a man can only be carried so far until he must stand on his own two feet.
The clock was ticking. Days rolled by on the calendar. I felt a season of change in the air, something inside me unsettling more every day.
My phone taunted me with the voicemail.
Ron Gamble had called. He wanted to see me.
He wanted a decision.
Only problem?
I was scared.
I couldn’t sleep.
I had an early morning meeting, but that wasn’t why.
Insomnia was my best friend. Sometimes my only companion.
When sleep eluded me, I wasn’t the type to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Instead, I got up, got dressed, and left.
Throughout the years, I’d become a connoisseur of the night, more familiar with downtown in the midnight and early hours than I was at any other time.
I liked darkness. It shrouded a lot of things. It was also quiet, which lent itself to lots of thoug
ht.
I avoided it as much as possible, but you couldn’t run from what was in your own head very easily. It always came out one way or another.
The thump of my black boots echoed off the pavement as I walked across the newly dampened street. The rain had stopped, but the air was still thick with the kind of cold drizzle that possessed the ability to seep past your skin and deep into your bones.
The red neon COFFEE sign hanging off the building cast a red glow on nearby puddles and neon stripes over the rusty-red brick. My leather jacket was broken in, a little shabby, but it was thick and kept out the worst bite in the air. Beneath it, I wore a plain black hoodie, the hood pulled up, concealing my hair and face. I walked hunched in on myself, my shoulders drawn up beneath my ears and both hands shoved deep into the pockets of my jeans.
The large glass window at the front of the coffee shop was lit up from inside. Why the place stayed open practically all night was something I never bothered to ask. I was just glad it did. I ended up here more often than not—me and a few other night refugees who never spoke to one another.
No one was there to talk, but in a way, it was a support group all the same. After all, whatever had these people downtown in a coffee shop in the middle of the night probably wasn’t good.
The deep scent of strong coffee hit me the second the door opened. Next, a brush of warmth against my cheeks. I pulled my hands out of my pockets and pulled off the hood concealing my head. At the same time, I nodded to the woman behind the counter and took up my customary seat near the window in the corner.
Here I could look out on the street, stare out into the night, but it was harder to look back at me because of my position.
A white mug filled with black brew appeared in front of me. Steam wafted upward toward my lips.
“Thanks,” I said, gruff.
She dropped a few packs of creamer on the brown tabletop beside the cup and shuffled away. Her feet never seemed to leave the ground. I don’t know why she always left the creamer packs. I never used them. Not once.
Sometimes I thought it was her way of acknowledging the anonymity I wore like a cloak. As if she’d never seen me before, I’d never sat in this corner booth, and she had no idea how I took my coffee.
Or maybe she was lazy and didn’t want to take the chance I’d ask for it the one time she didn’t bring it over.
#Blur (The GearShark Series Book 4) Page 10