by Various
The dreams were breaking him. And poor DG was his only salvation. He hated being a burden to her. He should be her rock, not the other way around.
Sleep crept up on him even though he resisted. He felt himself falling into that place where a person could never be sure what was real or imagined.
Blackness gave way to a floating, twisted knot of living, pulsing matter. He recoiled from it, disgusted, even as his mind gave it a name. Guilt. The thing in the pit of his stomach he had yet to fully acknowledge.
“It was me.” He didn’t know if he’d said it out loud or just in the dream. “I caused the accident.”
The knot pulsed with approval. It swelled before him, but he also felt a sickening pressure in his gut, like the knot existed within him and this glimpse was just a projection. Its sides ballooned until he thought it would rupture and flood his system with poison. The thought made him sick, but he knew it had to happen. Like puking: once it was over, he’d feel better.
Then he could forget about the accident and the guilt.
The memory of yanking the wheel of his truck to cut off the little Honda assaulted him.
The knot had grown painfully large, pushing at the walls of his stomach.
“I was an asshole. I hurt somebody.”
“It’s okay,” DG said, stroking his hair. She probably thought he was dreaming again.
Maybe he was.
“No. It’s not. I did bad. I really hurt somebody.” Sickening, pulsing pain radiated to his limbs from that frigging knot.
“Then you need to make it right.”
Horror crashed over him as her words penetrated. He startled awake. A layer of sweat had chilled his skin. The full weight of what he had done on Friday sank in. Shame made his face flame and seared the knot into a lump of hard coal that would sit heavy in his gut forever.
So much for getting it to rupture and disappear. That would have been too easy. He didn’t deserve easy. He deserved to suffer.
“Derek?” DG smoothed away the sweat on his brow. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t be okay until he made it right, like DG said, and maybe not even then. He turned to her and stared at her figure in the dark, terrified by what he knew he had to do.
“Derek.” Her voice turned urgent. She cried out in pain. She coughed as if she were choking.
He turned on the light to find her clutching at her throat. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she coughed. “My head hurts. I can’t breathe.”
He reached for her, but his hands didn’t connect with her shoulders. He blinked hard to clear his vision, because what he saw couldn’t possibly be. She was transparent.
“DG! Baby, what’s happening?”
She tried to speak, but could only cough. Her face turned red. Her eyes flew wide. Terror pulled her face taut. She reached for him with one hand while her other scratched pink furrows into her throat.
“DG!” He grabbed for her, but his hands came up empty.
She faded into mist. Her coughing drifted into nothingness. Faintly, he heard her choke out, “I’m not ready to go.”
Then there was nothing left of her.
He clawed at the covers, searching in vain for his dream girl. He launched out of bed, his hands swiping at the air. “DG! Where are you? Come back. Come back!”
Only silence answered him.
He wheeled around to stare at the bed while his pulse pounded in his ears. She didn’t reappear. The clock read 11:47.
His knees hit the floor. DG was gone.
She’d woken him from his nightmares with more than just pleasure. She’d told him she loved him. He hadn’t gotten the chance to tell her he felt the same way about her.
Chapter 13
A woman’s voice faded in and out with the throbbing pain crushing DG’s entire head. “Camilla? Cami? Oh, honey, come back to me, please.” The voice was familiar, and too loud.
The light pushing at her closed eyelids was too sharp.
A whimper climbed her throat and got stuck. She choked. Her body convulsed as she fought for air.
“Yes, hello? Hello? Cami’s waking up. She’s waking up! She’s in pain. Please hurry!”
She recognized the voice she’d heard in the fog when she’d been trying to get back to Derek.
“I’ll be right there, Mrs. Arlington.” Another voice, staticky and small.
“Oh, Cami sweetheart, hang on,” the first voice said. Cami meant nothing to her, but sweetheart did. She was Derek’s sweetheart. His DG. The pain could not rip her in two as long as she had an identity.
Hands on her shoulders tried to restrain her, but they were tentative and therefore didn’t belong to Derek. She fought them.
Noise bombarded her in a rush of urgent voices and the rattle of wheels over tile. More hands restrained her, not tentatively.
She fought those as well, still choking, dying.
Someone pried one of her eyes open and blinded her with needles of light. An authoritative female voice said, “Stop fighting the tube, Cami. You need it to help you breathe.
You’ve been in an accident. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”
She squeezed the cool hand gripping hers, not sure why she obeyed. These people…they were killing her. Where was Derek? She tried to ask and only choked more.
“Cami, I need you to calm down.” The no-nonsense voice sounded clear and close to her ear. “You’re in the hospital. You’re hurt very badly. You need to calm down so you don’t hurt yourself worse.”
The words hospital and hurt registered. She forced herself to relax in stages. Air filled her lungs.
Is Derek coming? She wanted to ask, but the air-giving tube prevented it.
He’d said he wouldn’t let go, but he must have, because she’d been ripped away from him again, just not by the fog this time.
Agony at the forced separation burned her from the inside out. She scrunched up her face with the empty ache, only to have pain scour her cheeks and forehead, her left eye and ear, her scalp.
“You have to relax, Cami. Please try to remain calm.” Someone Velcro’d a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Other hands were on her, too, and other people spoke nearby, but she focused on the calm voice. “Your face is bruised, and you have some stitches. I need you to try to keep still. You won’t be able to talk, but we’ll bring you a pad and a pencil so you can communicate. I’ll answer all your questions, but first I’m going to examine you. Can you open your eye on your own?”
Eye? Not eyes? That didn’t sound good. She tried to breathe through the impossible sense of loss, and focused on opening her “eye.” The right one opened a crack. She slammed it shut again as angry sparks of light stabbed through to her brain.
“Good, Cami. That’s really good. You other eye is swollen. You won’t be able to open it just yet. You were in a car accident. We’re taking care of you here at Mercy Med. I’m Dr. Grant. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”
She obeyed the voice, because it brooked no argument.
“The pain should be better now. I’ve increased your morphine drip. Squeeze my hand if your pain is tolerable. Let go of my hand if your pain is bad.”
She squeezed, grateful the pain was fading.
The next hour was both grounding and terrifying. She’d been in a coma for four days, they told her. She’d had part of her skull removed to allow for swelling. Her name was Cami.
Once she started remembering, she couldn’t stop. She saw that white tailgate again, too close. Way too close. She heard the groan of buckling metal, the crash of breaking glass. She relived the surge of terror until her skin flashed with cold sweats.
It had happened again. She’d had another accident.
As the last nurse left her room, she tried to sit up, an important question doing battle with her blasted breathing tube.
“Don’t try to talk, sweetie,” the auburn-haired woman she began to remember as her mother said. “Easy, easy does it.”
&nbs
p; She made frantic hand motions, wanting the promised pad and pen.
Her mother fished in her purse and finally put a pen in her hand. She smoothed an old receipt out on the bed.
Cami wrote on it, Was anyone else hurt?
Her mother shook her head, her lips quirking despite sad eyes that remembered a time when smiles had been impossible. “Just like you, sweetheart, always thinking of others. Two other cars were involved, but other than some mild whiplash, everyone else is okay.” Her voice faltered at the end. A tear slid down her cheek, and she discretely blotted it with a tissue from her purse.
Her chest relaxed a fraction to know no one had died, even as her heart ached with eight-year-old guilt. She’d been driving then, too. It had been raining, and her father had been in the passenger seat. They were coming home from a daddy-daughter date. Pizza and a movie. His last words to her had been, “Don’t rush it, sweetheart. Merge when you’re ready.” She hadn’t listened, had rolled her eyes at his overreacting hand clenched on the armrest. She’d been impatient. She’d been eighteen and invincible.
Focused on the car she’d be slipping in behind, she’d clipped the bumper of the car in her blind spot. The wheel jerked in her hands, and she’d overcompensated by yanking it in the other direction. They’d spun out of control. Her world had changed. She was not invincible. Neither was her father.
She closed her eyes against the fresh wave of remorse. When she opened them, she picked up the pen again and wrote,
I’m a menace. I’m never driving again.
Not even for Helping Hand. As soon as she got off the breathing tube, she’d call Ellen and quit. She’d find a volunteer position that didn’t require her to drive, like she should have a long time ago.
“Shhh, sweetheart,” her mother said, holding her hand and stroking her arm. “The accident wasn’t your fault. Witnesses said a white truck cut you off. The police are looking for the person responsible. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t cry. It wasn’t your fault.” She heard the this time, even though her mother never would have said it.
It was a lie anyway. Yes, she’d been cut off—how anyone could be so callous or at the very least oblivious on the road was beyond her—but it had ultimately been her foot that slammed on the brakes too hard. It had been her hands on the wheel, panicking, yanking her car into the fast lane, into the path of speeding cars that hadn’t had enough time to avoid colliding with her.
She never should have gotten on the freeway.
She’d messed up. Again. But at least the damage seemed limited mostly to herself. Last time, she’d destroyed her entire family.
Her mother clasped her hands around one of Cami’s. Her mouth pursed in a grief-tinged smile. Her auburn eyebrows pinched in concern, not accusation, never accusation. Yet Cami couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. Hadn’t been able to since the other accident.
Intellectually, she knew forgiveness was possible. She urged the kids she counseled to forgive all the time. It was a staple in the counselor’s handbook. And yet, deep down in her heart, where who she was always seemed to trump what she knew, she didn’t understand how her mother could still love her, how she could have truly forgiven her for causing the accident that had killed her father. In that secret, private place, she suspected her mother’s love was merely a facade. She worried that like her brother, her mother had never really forgiven her.
She wiggled her hand out of her mother’s grasp, the contact suddenly unbearable. Why couldn’t Derek be here to hold her hand, instead? With Derek, she hadn’t obsessed about the past. There hadn’t been any past to obsess about. Even if there had been, he would have kept her preoccupied enough it wouldn’t have been a wall between them like this awkwardness between her and her mother.
Under her pain, her face heated with the memory of making love with Derek what felt like mere moments ago. Their handful of nights together rushed through her consciousness with fierce longing. Her heart contracted with horrible understanding.
He wasn’t real.
She’d been here in the hospital, unconscious and hooked up to tubes and wires the last four days. Derek had been no more than a random creation of her concussed neurons, a desperate reaching of her subconscious for acceptance and love as a reaction to her massive insecurities.
But oh, how her heart wanted him to be real!
Regret clogged her chest until she was sure she would have died from lack of air if not for the breathing tube.
“Sweetheart?” her mother said. “Are you okay?”
She wanted to tell her mother never to call her that again. That’s what Derek had called her. She’d been his sweetheart, his dream girl. But she had no strength to protest the endearment.
She was too busy trying to survive the ache of her broken heart.
* * * *
Derek shuffled to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He normally didn’t have any until he got to the job site, but he wouldn’t be going to work today. He might not be going to work for a while. Deadlines or no deadlines, Jibb’s Construction would just have to make do without him. He had something he needed to do.
After DG had disappeared, he’d realized what had happened. Denying his part in the accident on Friday had done a number on his conscience. Nightmares had led to sleep deprivation, sleep deprivation had led to hallucinations, and before he knew it, his strained mind had made up a sexy-as-hell comfort for himself whose unwavering compassion had led him to the only conclusion that would make it all stop. He had to turn himself in.
Once he’d accepted that and the fact DG didn’t exist, he’d slept like a baby for six blessed hours before his alarm had gone off in time for him to call in sick and snooze for another two. With some solid sleep under his belt, he felt better than he had in days, except for the heavy pain in his chest from the loss of his dream girl.
She had felt real. He wanted her to be real, wanted to have her in his bed every night, wake up beside her every morning. He wanted her as a girlfriend. Could imagine her as even more. And he’d made every last nuance up, from her short, polish-free fingernails to her gorgeous breasts to the perfect blend of sexiness and innocence. She’d been perfect because he’d made her up to be exactly what he wanted.
What an idiot he’d been to believe it all. His subconscious had done a number on him.
He’d gone loony-toons for days on end and thanked his lucky stars he’d come to his senses before anyone found out about it.
Now he needed to own up to being an asshole on the road and take his lumps. Even if it meant a suspended license. Fines. Gulp, jail time. Double gulp, humiliation as he faced Deidre and saw the inevitable judgment in her eyes. Shit. Would she try to keep Haley away from him?
He couldn’t allow that. He’d accept the consequences of his temper, but he’d be damned if he’d let those consequences affect Haley any more than they had to. She enjoyed their weekends together as much as he did, and it would feel like a punishment to her if Deidre tried to keep them apart.
After showering, he poured his coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with the phone book. The blue pages were no help whatsoever in a search for the non-emergency police number.
Why did the cops have to have so many phone numbers? Which one should he call? There was no entry for Turning yourself in? Call 555-FUKT.
He tossed the useless book on the counter and grabbed his keys and Thermos before he changed his mind. He might as well do this in person. It might be his last chance to drive for a while.
Forty-five minutes later—yeah, they made him wait to turn himself in—he shook hands with Lieutenant Christy, a tall, hard-eyed man with gray hair buzzed so close his tan scalp showed through.
“What brings you in, today, Mr. Summers?” Lt. Christy asked as he showed Derek into his office, a claustrophobic eight-by-eight cube of plaster, industrial-grade blue carpet, and reinforced glass that looked out at the reception area. Christy’s desk was neat, but his walls were overrun with layer upon layer of tacked up pictures, fly
ers, and clippings. All that paper smothered the corkboards like multicolored kudzu.
Derek took the offered chair, sucked a deep breath, and fessed up.
Christy listened as he described how he’d cut off the Honda, and mentioned the other two cars he’d seen get involved in the accident. His embarrassment at his behavior grew with every word. It was one thing to act the way he had Friday without an audience, quite another to tell a cop about it. He’d called the driver of that Honda some nasty names, but the real jerk looked back at him from the mirror every morning. In all his self-righteous glory, he’d proclaimed himself judge, jury, and executioner of the highway. A little patience, and he could have eased up on the gas just a hair while a less confident driver took a little longer to change lanes than he thought reasonable. Would that have killed him? No. But acting impatiently might have caused irreparable harm.
He deserved whatever punishment Christy set in motion. He only hoped it wouldn’t ruin his relationship with Haley or end his career with Jibb’s.
When he finished, Christy grunted, his face unreadable.
“Been looking for you,” he said after the most uncomfortable minute of silence Derek had ever endured. “What’s your plate number?”
Derek told him.
Christy fished a file folder out from a drawer and slid a carbon-copy yellow sheet partway out. He gave the sheet a quick scan before tucking it back in and slapping the folder on his desk. “Fits the partial we got.” He leaned back in his swiveling chair. “What took you so long to come forward?”
Perspiration tickled under his collar and down his spine. His face burned with shame.
“Denial,” he said. “Cowardice. Fear of consequences. Shit.” He shook his head, hating himself. He met Christy’s eyes with difficulty. “Was anyone hurt?”
Christy nodded, his face grim. “A woman. Driver of the red Honda you described.”
His stomach contracted with remorse. The driver had been a woman. Somehow that made it worse. In his mind’s eye, he saw the red Honda rolling, the crushed roof, the airbag. In an instant, he relived the terror he’d felt when his dreams had dumped him behind the wheel of that little car. “How bad?” he forced out.