The memory slammed home and her stomach twisted.
She hadn't stopped it. She'd gotten in the car knowing Delilah was drunk, knowing it was dangerous, and she'd done it anyway because she always did. Always followed, always tried to fix it, always failed.
She blinked, trying to focus. The world tilted, refused to straighten. Underground bypass. Concrete walls. The flyer car Delilah had hired?—
The smell hit her then. Burning metal, acrid and chemical, mixing with fuel and something sweet that made her stomach turn. The scent crawled into her lungs, coated her tongue, and her mind stuttered.
No.
Not again.
The spinning started before she could stop it. The world twisted, metal shrieked, and she was twelve years old, trapped in twisted wreckage with her parents dying. Her hands flew to the seatbelt, fingers scrabbling at the release. Trapped. She was trapped and the groaning wreckage would collapse any second and crush her and she couldn't get out, couldn't?—
The release clicked, but her hands were shaking too hard to pull the belt away. It tangled around her shoulders, across her chest, holding her in place while the smoke thickened and the sirens wailed and somewhere someone was screaming.
Was that her?
She didn't know. Couldn't tell. The sound filled her ears, high and terrified and endless. Her throat was raw, but the screaming wouldn't stop.
"—survivors in the wreckage?—"
Voices. Distant. Muffled like they were coming through water. She tried to focus on them, tried to grab onto something real, but the smell of burning metal dragged her under again.
Her parents' car. The intersection. The truck that ran the red light.
No. The flyer car. The bypass. Delilah at the controls, drunk and laughing, ignoring her warnings to slow down, to be careful, to?—
Both. Neither. The crashes bled together, two moments occupying the same space in her mind. She was twelve and thirty-two simultaneously, watching her parents die and watching Delilah die and surviving both because that's what she did. She survived. Always survived while everyone around her?—
Her fingers found the scar on her left forearm, traced the thin ridge of tissue that marked where glass had sliced her open in the first crash. The touch grounded her for three seconds before fresh pain flared and she looked down to see new cuts crossing the old scar. Blood welled up, bright red against pale skin, past and present literally layered on the same patch of flesh.
I survived that one too.
The thought came with bitter certainty. Of course she had. She always did.
Her vision swam. The smoke thickened, or maybe it was her own tears, she couldn't tell anymore. The seatbelt finally came free and she lurched forward, gasping, reaching for the door handle with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Movement to her left made her freeze.
Delilah.
Her cousin slumped in the driver's seat, head lolled to the side at an angle that made her stomach drop. Blood matted the honey blonde hair she'd watched Delilah style just hours ago, bright and dark against her too-pale face. The fitted top she'd changed into for their "wild weekend" was torn, soaked through with red.
So much red.
Too much red. She didn't need medical training to know that much blood meant nothing good. The angle of Delilah's neck, the shallow breathing, the way her skin had gone gray under the strobing emergency lights—this was bad. Critical. The kind of bad that meant minutes mattered and she was pinned three feet away, useless, watching her cousin die the way she'd watched her parents die.
"Delilah?" Her voice cracked. She reached out with trembling fingers, touched her cousin's shoulder. "Delilah, wake up. Come on, we have to?—"
Nothing. No response. No movement except the shallow rise and fall of Delilah's chest that she had to watch for ten seconds to even confirm.
Alive. Still alive.
But for how long?
The guilt crashed over her in waves that stole what little air she had left. This was her fault. She should have stopped Delilah from taking the money, from going drinking, from hiring the flyer car. Should have refused to get in. Should have been more responsible, more forceful, more?—
More what? She'd tried. God, she'd tried. Spent the whole night trailing after Delilah through bars she couldn't afford, watching her cousin drink away the signing bonus that was supposed to save them both. Reminding her over and over that they should go back to the LMP office, wait for pickup like they were supposed to. But Delilah had laughed and ordered another round and she'd stayed because she always stayed, always tried to keep her cousin safe, always failed?—
