I feel the back wheel go.
I feel my jolt recovery only make it worse.
I see the drop.
It isn’t big.
It’ll be fine.
It’ll be fine.
Until I hit the earth and my bike flies over me, and it isn’t.
“JJ!”
Last time Chase screamed her name. Brooke’s. Up on that mountain. I don’t know why I’m aware of that. Perhaps because in this moment, before everything hurts, it’s kind of peaceful. That second after impact, when you don’t know what you’ve done to yourself. And you don’t know if you don’t know because you’re fine—or because you’ve fucked yourself so badly, your body can’t process it yet.
Turns out, this time it’s because I’ve fucked myself.
The pain hits me like a train. A solid ache in my back that explodes into existence and then ripples out over me, making me retch against more than the dirt and pine needles in my mouth. It’s more than that. It’s the bone deep terror.
Not again not again not again not again—
Chase is over me before I realize it. He’s pulled off his helmet, and his hair is standing in all directions. His touch is so gentle. Gentler than a man like Chase has any right to be. He kneels beside me in the dirt and rests his hands on me, all of his usual confidence turned to unsurety.
I look at him through the pain and think: “You came.”
Or say it, apparently, because Chase barks something like laughter. His eyes are glistening.
“Of course I did. Brothers.”
This time, my best friend isn’t leaving me.
I try moving, but the effort makes me grunt. I can’t tell if this is as bad as I think it is, or if it’s just fear, or if—
Or if I’ve done it again.
I make a sound against the dirt, and it sounds a lot like pain and a lot like a cry.
“Easy, man, easy.” Chase’s hands are surer now. They hold me in place, grounding me with the strength of his body. “I’m gonna call 911, okay? Get someone to come check on you.”
“You can’t.” I know that, suddenly sure. “Raquel.”
I’ve proven her right again.
She’ll go.
She’ll leave me.
That feeling of confidence I had when I was flying through the air feels like a sick joke.
“Don’t.” It sounds a lot like begging, but I can hear the sounds of Chase fumbling for his cell from his pocket. “Don’t, I’ll be fine, just give me a minute…”
For a moment it breaks through, Chase’s worry. It frays his voice to something ragged. “You think I’m going to take any risks with your spine? Fuck’s sake, JJ. You can’t do this to me again. I can’t… Shit. Just stay here.”
I close my eyes against the sound of his voice as he sits back on his heels.
“Hi. I’m going to need an EMT for a mountain bike accident. Yep, he’s conscious.”
For one moment, I wish that I weren’t.
JJ
“You’re going to be just fine.”
It should mean something to hear the doctor say that. It doesn’t mean as much as it should.
One, because when she said it I’d already spent over three hours being transported to the hospital and having what felt like a thousand scans and tests done. I’d been pretty sure for a while that nothing was broken.
Two, because I need more than my spine to be fine.
In the summer night the house is just one more dark shape, all of the lights off. Chase pulls us up in front of it before cutting the engine and looking across at the porch.
“You gonna be okay?”
I know he’s talking about Raquel.
And I have no idea.
Chase sighs before slipping out of his door. “Come on,” he says as he opens mine. “Let’s get you to the door.”
I might not have broken anything, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel absolutely fucking awful. After six months of being protected, my body’s forgotten what it’s like to take a bad fall. How pain can come from more places than just my back.
Scrapes sting over my hands and bruises ache at my legs. If I hadn’t been wearing full protective gear, it would’ve been much worse.
Now I just limp along, resting as much of my weight as I can on Chase, and he holds my arm slung over his shoulders and stops whenever I grunt with pain.
It feels good to have him here. To be able to lean on him. It’s not something I can bring myself to talk about right now.
All of my focus is on what’s inside of that house.
“Brooke said Raquel’s pretty pissed,” Chase says in a low voice. “You call me if you need me.”
We both know that means if she leaves you again.
This can’t be my life. It’s all unreal. The ache in my bones and the sick feeling in my stomach.
Chase reaches his free hand across to rest against my chest, tapping lightly at my ribs in a half-hug before stepping away.
“I’ll pick your truck up later tonight and have it back here for you by tomorrow.”
I’m still standing on the porch when the sound of his truck’s wheels moving over gravel draw away up the drive.
The door in front of me is nothing special, but at this moment I can’t even touch it. It represents too much. The threshold between outside and inside. Between the past and the present.
Between before, when I hadn’t done something so goddamn stupid, and now, when I have—and I’m going to face what I’ve done.
I look up for just a moment, a please directed towards the God who has much better stuff to worry about than some idiot.
There’s a trick to doing things you’re afraid of. That’s one thing snowboarding taught me. When you’re nervous before a halfpipe, or a jump, or before you drop down from the peak of a mountain.
The trick is not waiting until it feels okay.
The trick is just doing it even when every atom of your body is screaming out not to.
I push the door open, and step inside.
The house is quiet. Too quiet. Quiet and still in the way things are before something goes horribly wrong.
The lights are off. I flick them on, one by one, as I shuffle from the entranceway into the kitchen, leaning heavily against the wall and pressing my hand to my ribs.
I can feel her here in this house. I can feel her anger and her hurt. And I can see traces of what’s happened while I’m gone.
There’s a smashed glass in a dustpan left beside the door.
There’s water still over the kitchen tile, not all mopped up.
There are tissues with mascara on them, the marks of all the crying that she’s done.
Oh, Raquel.
I should call for her straight away, but for one moment I just want to appreciate this: the evidence that the woman I love has been here with me, sharing my life.
Because on some level, I’m pretty sure that this could be it.
Her purse is on the table. I reach out and touch it carefully, sliding my hand over the leather.
“How could you?”
She’s a mess. I don’t know how long she’s been there, watching me from the doorway, with her hair frizzy from her fingers running through it, with mascara down her cheeks. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot. Her skin is pale. She stands with her arms crossed tight over her stomach, as if to protect herself from me.
I can’t manage to form words. Any word. I should stop being aware of the pain in my body—isn’t that how it’s meant to go? That emotional pain trumps the physical. But they’re all the same. I’m suddenly nauseated and winded like I was punched in the stomach, my hands clammy as I rub them over my jeans.
I want to reach for her, but the few steps between us might as well be the space between mountains.
Raquel shakes her head, and it breaks the glistening sheen over her eyes. Fresh tears tumble over her cheeks.
“Don’t worry.” Something that isn’t a smile cuts over her face. I half expect to see blood drip
ping from it. Clearly it hurts her. “I won’t make you decide again.”
I shake my head. “Raquel. You know I didn’t mean…”
“Didn’t mean what?” Her voice tremors, on the edge of raising. On the edge of breaking into sobs. Balanced precariously between the two. “Didn’t mean to remind me what really matters to you?”
“You really matter to me,” I say, my own voice cracking under the weight of how much I need her to know that. Because it’s true. Because looking at her now, hurting like this, makes my heart break. “You always have.”
Raquel snorts. “Right.” She shakes her head, and I see as she reaches to twitch her hair behind her ear that her hand is shaking. “Of course I do. Just not enough.”
“How can you say that? I love you more than anyone in the world.”
“Not more than anything,” she corrects.
My heart beats harder in my chest as I throw my arms up. “What do you want, Raquel? For me to say that it doesn’t matter to me? I can’t not board. It’s who I am. It’s what I’ve always done.”
“I know. Trust me, I do.”
I take one step forward, wincing against the pain down my ribs. “Please. I love you.”
Raquel laughs, the sound desolate. “The issue was never that we didn’t love each other.” She turns her face away, drawing a breath that I can see shudder over her chest. “It just isn’t enough.”
She’s so small. It would be so easy to pull her against my chest, to stroke away her tears. But I know that even if I caught Raquel’s body, I could never catch her heart. Not if she didn’t want to give it to me.
“You of all people know why I do this,” I say, stumbling over the words. “You know what it gives me. What it means.”
The friendship. The sense of purpose. The sheer fucking joy of doing what I do.
I guess that’s the fucked up thing. That even now, looking at the woman I love breaking into pieces, I can’t forget how much I love boarding, too.
I can’t lose it. I can’t.
She bites at her lip so hard that the skin turns white.
“Do you want me to give it up?” My voice cracks. “Is that what you’re asking me?”
“I said I wouldn’t ask you to choose again,” Raquel snaps back. “I made a mistake coming back.”
“You didn’t,” I protest. “Raquel—it’s not over. It’s never been over between us. We both know that. I love you. I love you so fucking much. And you love me.”
Once the words are said, they sound unsure.
Not that it’s untrue. I know Raquel loves me. She has to. That’s why she’s breaking apart.
“I love you,” I say again. Because it’s the truth. Because it’s what matters. Because I wish it could be all that matters.
Raquel closes her eyes. Somehow she turns even paler. The shake of her head is hardly there, one twitch of the slim cording over her neck.
“I can’t do this.”
“You can,” I say, pushing forward stupidly. I try to reach for her hand, even though she jerks it away. “We did this for years. It’s okay. We’ll get over it.”
“I can’t get over you going out to do this.” Her voice is rising, cracking, her eyes fixed to me again. “I can’t live like this! I can’t handle it. I can’t wait for the next time you get hurt. I can’t wait for…”
A sound breaks out from her. It’s the purest noise of pain I’ve ever heard. She closes her eyes tight shut, pressing her palms to her face, as the sound shatters into a sob.
I couldn’t not try to hold her. Not anymore than I could try not to breathe. Because I want to make it better. Because I want to bring her back to me. Because I want so bad for this not to be real.
For everything to be like it was before.
Raquel jerks back from my touch at her hips, her eyes opening with tears and her body shaking as she screams at me.
“You’re going to die, James!”
Raquel
The words suck all the air from the room.
JJ is motionless. I am too. We’re both stuck in the middle of our movement, stunned by this thing I’ve put into words.
It’s hovered between us. It’s threatened. It’s been the elephant in the room. And yet here it is, now, a hurting truth thrown up from where it’s been poisoning me slowly, from the inside out. The certainty that makes a lie of his sweet promises.
“You’re going to die,” I say, quieter, trying to steady myself with breaths I can’t fully take. “You’re going to leave me alone forever because this fucking thing matters more to you than being with me.”
“I’m not going to die,” JJ says. He doesn’t mean it. He’s too smart to think he can say that with any surety. “Not any more than you are.”
“Not like that.” I shake my head, and yet more tears fracture in my eyes, a mirror breaking with seven years’ bad luck. “I’m going to get a call that you’ve gone. That you’ve left me. And I’m going to have do this on my own. And I have never, ever wanted to do this on my own, do you understand? Not since the day I—” my voice cracks—“since the day I met you.”
JJ’s face falls. It hurts to see him like this. I hate how much it hurts. To see pain over his face, and sadness, and the understanding of what I’m doing. Of what I’m saying. His arms fall open, a half-step bringing him toward me. “Raquel…”
He wants me to say that it’s all okay. He wants me to swallow down my fear and my hurt and to accept how things have always been. To go back to closing my eyes and keeping my head in the sand, ignoring the truth that’s coming for us.
And I’ve wanted to. I’ve wanted to so much. But I can’t.
I can’t live with this sword hanging over me. Hanging over us.
My heart tears inside of me, and my voice chokes on the pain of it. “If you love me, you wouldn’t leave me. Not for this.”
“Me? Leave you?”
JJ’s bitter laugh is enough to make me recoil, stunned back onto my heels. He raises his hands in disbelief, his fingers trembling with the same emotion that’s left him pale, his eyes shining. “I’m not the one who leaves. I would never have left you, Kel. Not for anything. I’d walk through hell for you. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, no risk I wouldn’t take.”
I want to believe him so much. I want to see the man I love shouting with passion and to be able to trust what he’s saying. I want the world he talks about, where I’m the most important thing to him. I want to have faith that he’d do anything for me.
But no matter how much I want to believe this beautiful lie, I can’t accept the comfort of something untrue.
I can’t settle for the scraps of his love, even if it’s all that I want.
“Anything?” I force the words out. “You won’t stop jumping out of helicopters. You won’t stop tempting fate. You won’t stop taking these stupid risks. You won’t choose to value me more than your next fucking thrill.”
He can’t deny it. It’s JJ’s turn to roll back, and I see in the widening of his eyes that it’s true.
“It’s not like that.” He’s fumbling for words. “This is who I am.”
“You are more than snowboarding!” I shout back to him. “You are not defined by your career. You are more than—more than everything. Than this,” I wave my hand at the house. “You’re more than your crew, than who you ride for. You are more than all of it, JJ.” My voice cracks as the shout fades and it’s all I can do to force these words out. To lay the whole bleeding, vulnerable truth out for him to smash with his choices.
“You’re the man I love. You’re everything to me. And you’re willing to throw it away—for what? Why would you give up on us?”
JJ’s look snaps shut. “You’re the one who gave up on us.”
The words hit me like a fist to the chest, and I’m left breathless. Empty.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t take a breath.
“You think I don’t love you enough, Kel?” JJ can’t stop, not anymore than I can start. His voice is rising and
rising, frayed with pain, harsh with emotion. “Well you’re the one who walked away from me. You’re the one who decided we weren’t worth it. I have always fucking loved you. Can you say the same thing?”
“James…”
My voice cracks.
“I love you,” he shouts at me, the words crumbling with pain. “I. Love. You. So what’s your decision, Raquel? What’s it going to be?”
There is the pain of not being enough.
There is the pain of someone choosing something else over you.
And then there is the pain of making your own choice. The cruelest choice of all.
That you can’t be with someone precisely because of how much you love them.
I wouldn’t care if I saw anyone. I stumble along the road in the darkness, pulling my jacket tighter around myself. Under the cave of the trees my breaths come loud and broken, scratching over the shards of chokes and cries.
I can’t stop crying, and the hot tears slide over my face and mingle on my lips into a taste that’s less like salt and more like pure sadness and anger.
How could he?
How could he choose risking everything again over us?
How am I leaving again, with the connection between us a thing that hurts—like we’ve been tied together all along, this thing we’ve never cut?
It takes me a long moment to realize what the scraping, growling sound behind me is. A truck, coming up quick behind and then slowing to a crawl.
Despite everything, a shiver of fear slithers from my animal brain down my spinal column. I pull my jacket closer and try to look over my shoulder subtly, steadying my step, preparing myself in case I have to—what? Throw myself down the slope into the bushes that edge the Morgansen’s property?
The truck pulls up parallel to me, and I’m frozen with indecision when the window rolls down and I see Chase’s concerned face looking over from the driver’s side. “Hey.”
JJ called him. Of course he did. And Chase is here to take me back, so we can—what, scream at each other some more? Drag ourselves over the wreckage of us again, like the dreams we used to have are so much shattered glass?
Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2) Page 26