Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2)

by Harper Dallas

  There was my memory and my dream: JJ as he’s always been, gregarious and golden and grinning, larger than life in his kindness and his humor. And then there’s the horror of JJ in that hospital bed. Of wires, and wasting muscles, and pale skin. Of all the cant’s that hovered around him like a miasma, or a curse, or a bad dream.

  JJ isn’t either of those. He’s something in the middle. Something whole but broken, a beautiful thing shattered. Maybe remade, too. But definitely shattered.

  Chase comes around to help him out of the car, and Hanne slides under his opposite shoulder as he steps down from the truck. Where the loose fabric of his hoodie is defined by her supportive arm at his waist, I can see the outline of the brace. I can see the awkwardness of his movements.

  Between the support of his friends, there’s nowhere for me to hold him.

  When we bought this house, we laughed at how stupid it was to have an elevator in a three-story family home. Now I watch JJ’s friends help him into it, and I can’t make my mouth work. The sight of JJ, pale and clammy with pain, makes me feel sick.

  I remember him turning backflips into the pool and climbing up a tree in the yard to set up a rope swing. Now he can hardly walk.

  Chase sends me one glance over his friend’s head, and I begin to mouth thank you—for being here, for finally stepping up to the plate—when he turns his head away from me.

  As if he hadn’t seen me at all. As if he’ll never speak to me again.

  It’s the most awkward sleepover I’ve ever been a part of. A year ago, this would have been a raucous occasion: them drinking, all of us eating good food, laughing and dancing and having late-night swims in the pool.

  Instead Chase never even comes out of the guest room he retreats to, and Hanne, Hunter and I stand in the kitchen in the most awkward nightcap ever—Hanne of whiskey, Hunter and I of tea. He has a big halfpipe competition in Europe later this week; it’s a big deal he’s here, disrupting his sleep schedule.

  They’re both leaving early in the morning. JJ doesn’t want them to stay here. He hasn’t said why, but we all know: he doesn’t want them seeing him like this, and he doesn’t want reminders of the thing that he’s lost, either.

  We chat about their taxi tomorrow—early—and what I’ll do after.

  “When’s your flight?” Hunter asks over our nightcap.

  I can see it in my mind’s eye: my ticket laid out at the center of the vanity in my room. Like a promise. Or a reminder. “The day after tomorrow. I need to be at the airport at six p.m.”

  “And you’ll be okay with him tomorrow after we go?”

  Hanne has these eyes that look straight through you. Bright and piercing as the midnight sun where she’s from. I feel uncomfortable as her gaze rests on me.

  “It wasn’t one of those break ups. I still care about JJ.”

  When we go to bed, they don’t know how to say goodnight to me. We stand there awkwardly as I slip their glasses into the dishwasher. Hanne gives me a long look before stepping away.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  Hunter gives me a one-armed hug, tugging me under his arm. “See ya, Kel.”

  And then it’s just me, alone in this house. In the silence. It should be empty, but it’s full, and I feel as if I’m intruding. As if by walking the empty rooms I’m forcing myself into somewhere that’s already full.

  Less than forty-eight hours and I’ll be leaving this house for good. This time it really will be my last visit. I’ve had this unexpected, un-looked-for chance to say goodbye. I’ve made the most of it—or at least I’ve tried to. And now, I’ll have to move on.

  I’m halfway through taking off my makeup when I hear it. The crash, and the cry.

  When you leave someone, it isn’t over. When you decide: this much, and no more, you don’t cut all the strings that were tied around your heart.

  The hooks are still inside of you.

  I’m halfway down the hall before I draw breath, catching at the corner of the corridor to swing myself around it. My feet know the way, even if I haven’t been back here in all of these seasons. I know how many paces it is to the door. I know the height of the handle. I know exactly how far to twist it.

  “JJ!”

  My heart only begins to beat when I see him again. He’s kneeling on the floor beside the bed, bent over it, his face white with pain.

  His jaw is set to a hard line, and in the bulge of its hinge I can see the slow grit of pain. Beneath his forehead his hands are bunched into tight fists, his quick pulse beating below his wrist.

  It hurts. It hurts him. It hurts me. To see him like that, curled beside our bed. To feel in the air the ringing echo of that shout.

  For one year, one month, and one day, JJ and I didn’t see each other at all. Now, in this moment, it’s like that bond was never broken. Like we are still tied together, and I still feel all of his pain and all of his fear.

  “It’s me,” I say, though it doesn’t make JJ look up, or move. “What happened?”

  It’s so long before he speaks that it seems he might not try at all. The words are chewed by the grinding of his teeth. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  I’ve almost touched him before I stop myself, my hand hovering over his shoulder. His skin looks the same. You can’t tell from that curve of muscle below his neck—there aren’t any hints to what’s happened. But the room—the room catches me.

  Our bed has the same comforter on it. The sheets are the same pale eggshell blue. There are still the curtains that I chose, and the TV that we picked out together. JJ’s sister and her wife helped us bring it home, laughing as we tried to fit it through the doorways.

  But it isn’t my room, anymore. My daylight alarm clock is gone from my side of the bed. My Kindle isn’t there, or my essential oils diffuser, or my jewelry tree on which I’d hang my earrings and my watch at the end of the day. The only thing I’d sleep in would be my engagement ring.

  Reflexively, my fingers twitch to find it, and feel nothing but my own skin, bare and alone.

  Only JJ’s side of the bed is ruffled.

  I swallow, and for a moment I’m so glad that he isn’t looking at me. I don’t have to see whatever is in his eyes. Instead I can stare at the back of his head. At the line of his shoulders, wound so tight they might snap.

  “Were you trying to reach something?” His iPad is on the floor, YouTube staring accusingly up at me with footage of last year’s X Games. Rolled away to one side of it is a half-full bottle of pills. “You should have called me—”

  I wasn’t ready to look at JJ, and now he whips his head around to me. His eyes are kind, and soft—or they were, and now they burn.

  “I don’t need your fucking help, Raquel!”

  The word rings in the air, breaking everything around it. The whole world is out of focus, everything focused on that sound. So harsh. So unexpected.

  I force a swallow through my throat, withdrawing my hands. I don’t know what to do with them.

  “Okay. Fine. You could have called one of the others. They’re just downstairs.”

  “I don’t need anyone’s help,” JJ shouts again, too much emotion straining his voice so that the edges of it crack. “Not yours, not theirs, not anyone’s.”

  A saint wouldn’t think of saying it, but I do, and I hate myself for it the second after the thought crosses my head. You don’t look like a man who can look after himself, hunched over on the floor.

  How could I think that? How could I? Even after everything that happened, I’ve never, ever wanted JJ hurt. I’ve never wanted him to face this terrible thing.

  I take a deep breath and try to walk the walk when it comes to all the things that I teach them.

  “Let me help you get up,” I say as calmly as I can, trying to block it all out—our bed, the look on JJ’s face, the memories we wear as heavy as anchors around our necks. “Come on.”

  “Get off me,” JJ shouts, shrugging his shoulder to push away my hand—and the movement makes him y
elp with pain, a sudden animal force of air from his lungs, a sound he has no more control over than a bear in a trap.

  “You can’t do this on your own!”

  The words are out before I can reconsider them. Before I can change my mind. Before my real, thinking self can take over from the adrenaline and the late night and the worry.

  JJ turns to me then. I wish he weren’t on his knees. I can feel his shame as strongly as I can feel his fear. As I can feel the tears in my eyes, and the pain in his back.

  “You want to tell me that you told me so, Raquel? Is that why you’re here? So you can know you were right?”

  JJ’s never looked at me like that. There’s been love, and hurt, and fear, and yes, there was anger too. We were perfect for each other, but we were human. But this... This is a different side of JJ. One that’s hurting and shouting, contorted with pain on the floor.

  “How can you say that?” My voice shakes. I can hardly manage the step backwards.

  “Because it’s true!” JJ shouts. He’s so angry he pushes on through the pain, forcing himself to stand, pain dragging at his features, sparking tears at the corner of his eyes which he viciously rubs away. “Because now I’m what you never wanted. You got out just in time.”

  He is in so much pain. Like an animal in a trap, in his struggling he only hurts himself more. Only digs the teeth in deeper, and who knows what parts of himself he would sacrifice to tear himself away.

  “Don’t pretend you’re going to stay when you’re not,” JJ growls.

  I try to speak, but the words tear at something inside of me. They catch on delicate things and hitch in my chest and between my lips I can only force the scared-animal quick of my breath.

  I look at JJ, panting with pain and anger, and all I can do is leave.

  I barrel straight into Hunter. He’s waiting on the staircase with Hanne, his arms immediately moving from a cross over his chest to catch at my biceps.

  “Whoa. You okay?”

  Hunter’s always been the kid of the group. They’ve always babied him. He’s the newbie, the young one. But for now I can’t do anything but lean into his chest and try to swallow down all the tears I don’t want to be crying. It takes a moment for me to get the jerking of my lungs under control enough to speak.

  “He just—He—”

  Go to him, I want to say. He shouldn’t be alone. But my chest is being torn apart, those old wounds opening up. I don’t even know what’s wrong. All of it. That we were once together, that now we’re not, that JJ is wounded, that JJ is angry, that he might never ride again, that he might ride and do this again...

  Hunter is a playboy and a kid and sometimes he can be pretty vapid. But in this moment he wraps his arms around me and gives me a squeeze, and I’m so glad that he’s here.

  “Let’s get you a nice herbal tea, huh?” His gaze moves over my shoulder, and I feel him there before I turn to look.

  Chase storms past us without saying anything. He takes the stairs two at a time before his footsteps thump down the hall. When the door to the master bedroom opens, it’s so loud I can feel it.

  When Chase’s voice comes, it’s so soft it shocks me.

  “Hey, man. What’s up?”

  And then the door clicks shut.

  Hunter squeezes gently at my arms again. “Come on. Chase will look after him.”

  I stand there on the stairs, shaking, and listen to JJ shouting at Chase too. I can’t hear the words through the closed door. I can only hear the anger, and the pain, and the silence as Chase takes all of his friend’s rage.

  Hunter and Hanne share a look with each other, and even though he has his arm around me and Hanne has reached for my hand, I can feel how outside of this I am. They’re a crew and me…

  I’m not part of it anymore.

  JJ—Before

  I should have seen it coming.

  Maybe when the skier she was working with died on a run.

  Maybe when I blew out my ACL.

  Maybe that time we were in a tent in Alaska, pinned by a hundred-year storm and far out of the reach of any helicopter, and we couldn’t get an update to base camp for days.

  But I didn’t. I kept telling her: It’ll be okay. Don’t think about that stuff. It’s not worth worrying about.

  Even last night, when she was crying in the bed beside me. Trying not to let me hear, but knowing that I could.

  It’s okay, I told her, and it just made it worse.

  Even then, I didn’t think it would come down to this: Raquel standing in front of me, begging me not to get on that helicopter.

  “Please,” she says, and I can see how much it hurts her to plead with me like this, all of her pride in tatters. “You’ve heard what they’re saying about the snow. You know what the risks are.”

  I smile the best that I can, trying to brush her hair away from her face. She pushes my hand away.

  “I’m serious, JJ. Don’t do it. Don’t make me sit here and worry about you like this. Don’t make me think you…”

  Her voice cracks to a halt.

  “Please,” she whispers.

  I can’t do this. Not before a run with stakes this high. Not now, in this competition. I love her more than anything—I always have—but this moment, now… I can’t do it.

  “I’ll talk to you after the run, okay?” I try to hold her gaze, to make my own expression as relaxed as ever. “Hey. It’s not a big deal, Kel.”

  “Not a big deal?” She barks a sound that’s like laughter except it cuts somewhere inside of her, making her body twitch. She looks as if she might turn, she looks as if she might go—and then when I catch her wrist she whips around back to me, her look desperate, her whole body shaking.

  “Which one is it, JJ? This? Or us?”

  “Jesus, Kel. This is my life. This everything to me. This is what I love.”

  Her face breaks, and she begins to turn away, and what I said hits me square in the chest. Panic bites at my stomach. I shoot a hand out to reach for her wrist, trying to stay the backward motion I can already see.

  “That’s not what I meant.” If I could eat the words I would, pull all that bile back into myself. “Kel, that’s not—”

  “Really?” Raquel is too quick for me. She jerks her arm away from mine, and though it doesn’t hurt me at all it feels like someone just kneed me in the stomach. Her voice is quivering, shivering as if it might crack under the weight of the things that swirl inside of her. “It sounded like a decision to me.”

  “Raquel.” Her name sounds like begging, so much that it surprises me. Like my body realized how serious this is before my head got there. “Listen to me.”

  “I’ve always listened to you.” Her voice is rising now, so everyone can hear that she’s going to cry. So I’m not the only one here with the glisten in her eyes and the heave of her chest and God, just like always I want to kill whichever motherfucker is hurting her.

  But this time, that motherfucker is me. The knowledge eats inside of me like a rot.

  “I’ve listened to you about every trip, and every risk, and every jump, and every challenge.” Her voice is rising, steady as she runs through the list of things that sure, I know I could do better on, but she has to know this is what I love, this is everything.

  “I’ve stood beside you for every broken bone, every snapped tendon, and I have never, ever questioned it.”

  “Yeah.” I can feel myself grasping for control of this situation, but trying to catch it is like reaching for a child running away in the darkness. Always just out of your grip. And this panic is rising in me, the terror that I might not get it under control, that something impossibly precious might get broken beyond repair. “You have and I appreciate it—”

  “Then listen to me!”

  Raquel’s voice rings out loud, and suddenly we’re here in silence. Not just me and her. All of us. Everyone in hearing distance, roped in to this silence so tense and tight that we can’t breathe. My heart is trying its best to beat its way o
ut of my chest, hammering itself against my ribs until it feels like they might shatter from the pressure.

  “Listen to me,” Raquel says, quieter. Her lip trembles and then thins to white as she presses it closed. She folds her arms over her chest, her hands tightened to fists, knuckles as pallid as her lips. She’s girding herself to say this, pulling herself together, pulling in all of that formidable self-possession, and suddenly—oh shit—

  Don’t say it. Don’t do this. Please, don’t.

  Certainty falls over me. Dread like a weighted blanket falling heavy, heavy. Like powder fall that muffles the world and extinguishes any life left up on the mountain.

  “You need to decide what you love most,” she says, and her voice is suddenly a normal pitch, but it doesn’t change a thing, because everyone is listening to her so intently they hear her better than their own thoughts. In the vacuum left after her shouting, everything feels loud, like the lightest of touches hurting over a bruise.

  My mouth is gaping, and it’s all flashing before me.

  Everything I love about Raquel.

  Everything I love about riding.

  “This is it.” Raquel’s voice cracks. “Now or never.”

  How beautiful she looks when she smiles. The way I feel just hanging around with her. The rooms we’ve already labeled, just for the two of us, in the house: the eldest one. The middle one. The little one.

  All those people who—is she really threatening they won’t exist?

  And then all the riding. My friends. My coworkers. All of my career, this thing that makes my heart sing.

  It’s who I am. It always has been. Who am I, without that?

  Imagine a life without your job. Now make it a career you love. The one you’ve dreamed about since you were a little kid.

  Now make it your calling, and your best friend, and the thing that’s given you meaning when everything else has seemed meaningless.

  Snowboarding and my life aren’t separate. They have always been exactly the same thing.