“Miles, please just tell me what’s wrong. We can talk about this.”
The rain falls in a constant sheet now, the visibility so poor that the white and yellow lines on the road disappear altogether. Miles leans to the left, focusing on the only spot on the windshield clear enough to make out the center line. A car honks when he hugs it, and he swerves to correct. My heart races faster than the truck moves, barreling along in fear.
“Miles, watch out!” I scream as the center line becomes blocked by a mass of grey. He yanks the steering wheel away from the oncoming semi-truck, but it’s too fast. Too hard. Not enough time to correct it.
He careens the passenger side into the trunk of a tree.
The side I’m sitting on.
The side that is now a hunk of shrouded metal, trapping me beneath the dashboard and smashing my head through glass.
Then everything goes black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NOW
Iblink a handful of times, digging up my memories with a figurative shovel.
The day I met Miles. The love that I felt for him. The kiss with Reed. But that moment…
“What are you talking aboutit was you?” I study him, unseeing, unable to believe what he’s saying.
He’s Miles. My best friend. The one who I’ve loved since the summer I was ten. He would never…
“There was so much rain that night,” he says, shaking his head like he’s sifting through moments he wishes he didn’t remember. “And I?—”
“You what?” I press, not even giving him the chance to finish his sentence. I lean toward him, as if closer proximity will help me hear it faster. No one would tell me this part of my past. They’ve filled in every other gap but this one.
You were in Bear Lake when it happened, they told me.You hit your head. You were lucky to walk away with your life.
He swallows and drops his gaze to where his hands clasp around his knees, squeezing them into a vise.
“I saw you with Reed.”
Wait, I thought he just said this was his fault? Somehow, it’s sounding like mine.
“You kissed him, and I couldn’t stand it… the thought of you with anyone but me.”
A strangled noise vibrates from his throat. His face pinches in torment, and he starts to shake. Instinct wants me to wrap my arms around him but I… can’t.
Confusion swims in my head. “I’m sorry?”
“No, it’s me who’s sorry! I was so mad at myself for waiting too long back then to tell you how every waking moment I thought of you!”
That should make me feel good, right? To know all those years, he was thinking of me. Instead, it stirs up dread for whatever is about to come next.
“I begged you to get out of the car. I knew it wasn’t safe to be driving. But after seeing you with him, I snapped. I just wanted you with me. I wanted to take us as far away from here as possible so we could live free of every distraction that ever stood in our way.”
But he didn’t. Otherwise, we would be at that place right now. Happy, and with all my memories intact.
Bile rises in my throat.
“But the rain was so thick I couldn’t see anything.”
He’s sobbing now, and I’m not stroking his arms and whispering in hushed tones to soothe his devastation. As much as I’m trying to make sense of this memory, it’s not working. The Miles I knew wouldn’t do this to someone he loved. He would never be so careless and selfish. Maybe what I remembered is all wrong, and I don’t know him at all.
Then it hits—blasts through my brain like the steel doorframe of Miles’s 1965 truck did. Fragmented images piece together the scene I’ve been missing. A shattered windowsending shards of glass across my face. A lurch of the truck from slamming on the brakes. The whip of the tires as the wheels locked and the back spun toward the oncoming tree. No airbag deployed. Little chance of…
