Falling asleep on Liam wasn’t something I’d imagined doing a month ago when I moved in. Hell, there were a lot of things we had done that I’d never imagined would happen between us, and I’d certainly never thought I’d like them as much as I had.
After years of hating Liam Lockwood, I was fantasizing about him and what he would do to me if I let him. If he let himself.
The thought of letting anyone in scared me, but the thought of letting in my brother’s best friend and a guy capable of breaking me even more than I was already broken scared me even more.
18
Avery
Cold water pours through my open window, hitting the right side of my body like an ice bath. My consciousness goes from murky to razor sharp in a heartbeat, but it still takes me a second or two to piece it all together. The last thing I remember is complete and utter weightlessness and a heavy beating in my chest. An earth-shattering collision and then…nothing.
Soon, my clothes are soaked, and my pink Converse are full of water. I’m cold.
So cold.
“Dad?” I cry in short gasps of air, my lungs burning from the wind being knocked out of me.
I reach down to grip the seat belt that feels embedded in my chest. I gasp, grunt, and choke. The pain suddenly registering all over my body is overwhelming.
“Dad, it hurts.”
I hold my head in my hand, and I think I feel something wet, but everything is wet now. It’s too dark to see if there’s anything on my palm when I pull it away.
My mom used to talk about patients’ brains swelling when they hit something hard enough, and mine feels like it’s going to explode out of my skull.
My heartbeat is erratic, each pulse sending a sharp knife to my head.
“Dad,” I sob again, shutting my eyes and waiting for his response. “I hate it. Make it stop. It hurts so bad.”
The moonlight reflects inside the car as we slowly rotate downriver, bringing the vivid red smears on the cracked windshield to light. I inhale sharply.
Blood.
My eyes burn before I can even look at the hunched-over body lying beside me. But I have to. We have to get out. I have to get him out. This isn’t one of those times where I can just look away and hope for the best. No one is here to fix this.
My throat swells the moment I turn my head enough to see him. His eyes are open, but there’s no life behind them. Dark crimson drips down the entire front of his face, covering the creases of his smile lines, the collar of his button-up shirt, the steering wheel.
It’s everywhere.
There’s blood everywhere.
Where are the damn air bags? Why didn’t they deploy?
“Dad, it’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”
My hands shake as I undo my seat belt, the latch releasing me like a cut parachute. I catch myself at the awkward angle right as a piece of shredded metal tears into my skin. I shout incoherent words, the fiery burn across my skin breaking through the numbing chill of the river.
The world turns on me, pulling the view out my window up the steep cliffside. As the car tilts in the water, I can see the car lights on the bridge we fell from, unmoving. They’re stopped but so far away now.
“Help!” I yell, but my voice is small.
I look up at the speckles of light above the fading car lights. The Big Dipper looks like a spoon stuck up among the stars, and I want nothing more than for it to come and scoop me up. Being rescued by stars seems silly, but it is all I can hope for right now.
“Fight, Avery,” I tell myself.
“Dad!” I turn my head and shout, shaking him with one hand and applying pressure to my hip with the other.
The shine of the buckle catches my eye, and I see the seat belt hanging loose against his window.
