Love Me | Series Book #1

EPILOGUE

Breaks shredded through my ears. My arms cocooned myself against the airbag that was sure to plunge into my face any second now. Burnt rubber tinged my nostrils.

As the scene became clear around me, I was wondering if this is what it meant to be trapped somewhere timeless.  Between death and hell. Purgatory? Maybe. Nothing was happening. The motion had stopped. I felt another layer of warmth and drew my eyes to Chase's hand resting atop mine.

Our eyes made contact. His face returning to color,  mirroring the sheer relief I felt as a breath passed between us.

But the smoke.

I shot up from the seat, taking in the sight of Mason's Camry plowed into the guardrail, with a dark cloud leaking from its engine. Draining the life force that tormented  me for the last three years. Who whispered empty promises of hope and change, for a tomorrow that never came.

I don't know what version was more disappointing. The phantom of who he used to be, or the fantasy of who I thought he'd one day become..had only, I'd  done it all right. Dressed in longer shorts that day. Had a different group  friends. Offered my love on a  night that he'd won the game, instead of losing his tempter.

I used to believe that had I chose differently, I wouldn't be witnissing my former relationship go up in flames. That it might have been the both us in that car, cruising the highway towards the next chapter of our lives, with a Texas State star sticker in the center of the bumper.

But now, I was beginning to believe  that that nothing I did, could have made a bit of a difference.  Somehow he'd conjure a new excuse. And, a way into every safe haven I thought I had.

My job.

My friends.

My family.

My home.

My body.

And, even with a thick wall of smoke expanding beween us, I couldn't be certain, that this was the place we'd part.

The voice in my mind...that used to call mine, had his words surrounding me on repeat. Calling me stupid. Taunting me for lacking something innate, and natural within. The intuition all girls were supposedly born with, that was never supposed to let me down.  It hadn't only let me down...it was worse - it didn't even seem to exist.

Otherwise why wasn't the first, second or even the god damn third time enough? Was I so desperate to be loved?

I had wasted so much time.

Angry at all the wrong people. My parents, Aly, Rachel and and Chase...for being blind to my  suffering. I had hoped that one of them might care just enough to do the one thing that I couldn't and love me enough to save me. Now that someone had, I was left with nothing but rubble of a life I'd tried to fabricate out of shattered pieces, and turn into something worth saving. It was fading into something almost as dim as the memory of who I was before I met him.

It suddently occured to me, I didn't remember the type of clothes I used to wear, without asking the mirror for twenty minutes if the fabric fit  too tight, or the hemline was low enough to warrant being called a slut. I couldn't remember which songs I used hum  all the way through, whisked away by the promise that  a  true love without pain could really exist for me. 

I didn't quite remember who I was before I was forced to become a part of him.

+++

2 months later....

Summer was always my favorite season. The one and only break where I'd use vacation as valid excuse to get away from him. I'd call up Aly and Rachel from a hotel a hundred miles away,  and spend hours on the line with Chase without things feeling super weird and awkward, as though I were crossing some line that didn't used to exist before we hit 9th grade.