Survival (Twisted Book 1) (24 page)

“I just don’t get it,” he switched lanes and turned on the cold air. We were both seething. We were both angry. With me. “Why did you go in? Why didn’t you turn around and go home? Why didn’t you answer the damn phone and tell me you needed me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I wasn’t okay. I just needed to get to you.”

“You didn’t see the look in your eyes. I did. I saw it and you’ve kept that from me for years.”

“I’m sorry.” I had hurt him. I had kept something from him. We had always spoken.
Always.
He told me everything and I had denied him the most important truth. “I’m so sorry.”

“Damn it, Skye, that’s not good enough!”

He slammed his hands on the wheel and turned his head to look at me.

“Thomas!”

Life.
You blood sucking, soul destroying piece of shit…Take mine, I don’t need it.

March 19
th
, 2011.

Glass. There was glass everywhere. I opened my eyes to see it covering my lap in little glittering clusters. It was in my hair. I lifted my fingers to my hair to comb it out. Warmth. I looked at my fingers. Blood.

Thomas.

I turned to him. He was quiet, slumped over the steering wheel.

“Thomas?”

I pulled him back and his head fell against the headrest. Blood poured from his nose; it ran down his jaw as it trickled from his ear.

He was wheezing, struggling to breathe as he turned his head and looked at me.

“Skye.”

The words gurgled from his lips as he reached for me and wiped my own blood away with his thumb.

“Ssh,” I choked. “We’re going to be okay.”

There was a bang on my window. Someone had stopped to help us. Headlights shone into the car from every direction.

“Help is on the way,” someone’s muffled voice came through the window and seeped into the non-existent windscreen.

I could feel the cold air rushing in through the hole, but I didn’t take my eyes off Thomas.

“Skye,” blood spat from his mouth as he coughed and took my hand.

“Don’t talk. Help is coming.”

He shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and tears streamed from them. He was in so much pain.

“I love you…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you dare,” I whimpered. I tried with everything I had to hold it in. “Don’t you dare apologise and don’t tell me you love me again until we’re in the hospital. We’re going to be okay.”

He coughed again and winced as blood fell from his mouth and soaked into his shirt. He was paling. His temperature was dropping. I felt it as his grip on me loosened.

“Squeeze, Thomas. Squeeze my hand.”

I felt the twitch. He was trying.

“Just tell me,” he rasped. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you. I love you with everything I have and all that I am. And I will continue to love you when we get out of this mess.”

“Tell my parents,” he choked. Each breath was getting harder. “Tell them I love them. Tell Ava I’m sorry and…and hug the boys.”

“You can do it yourself,” I used my teeth to pull my ring from my finger and slid it onto his blood stained little finger. “You promised. You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”

I could barely see his face through the tears that blurred my vision, but I kept my eyes on his.

“I’ll never leave you.”

His other hand reached for me. I reached for him. We were stuck. The tears poured until I could taste the salt and the metallic taste of blood.

“Where does it hurt?”

I tried to let go of his hand to feel for a bleed – I could try to stop it – but he squeezed my hand and tried to shake his head.

“It doesn’t,” another cough.
More blood. “The only thing I feel is how much I love you.” He tried to take a deep breath. He couldn’t. I saw it then; he was suffocating. “You made…you made my life. You…you completed it.”

“No,” I sobbed. “Don’t you
dare.”

I saw the flashing lights.

So many lights.

So much noise.

“They’re here, Thomas. They’re going to save you,” I gripped his hand with both of mine and kissed it over and over. I prayed my pulse would kick start his. I could feel it fading.

“Don’t leave me, Thomas.”

He wheezed, “Never.”

“Stay with me.
Baby, fight with me. Please.”

“Always.”

The doors were wrenched from the car and strangers burst through our bubble.

“We’re going to get you out,” one of them said.

“Save her,” Thomas sobbed and used all his might to breathe. More blood coated his chin. “Get her out…Save
her!”

Someone strapped something around my neck. Hands slid under my body and pulled.

“No!” I screamed and gripped Thomas’ forearm. “No! Please! Don’t!”

I held onto Thomas until I was torn from him and pulled from the wreckage.

Through the sirens and whirring tools and voices, all I heard was Thomas tell me he loved me.

No words. I had no words.

March, 2012.

I pulled the patchwork blanket, the one we had bought for our future baby, around my shoulder
s as I stared out of the window. Buster rested his head on my lap and I dropped my hand to his head.

One year. It had been one year since I died in the passenger seat of my car.

The blood pumped through my veins.

The oxygen made its way into my lungs because I had no choice but to let it.

But I had died one year ago with the man who owned my heart.

I didn’t want to live without Thomas.

I quit my job and completed an online course in proofreading. I worked from home, accepting files from strangers and taking their money for changing punctuation marks and correcting syntax errors, and then I emailed the file back. There was no interaction, no personal relationships, no coffee meetings to discuss my changes. I switched off the night Thomas died and my last ounce of self-worth was used up when I passed his message onto his family, remembering the terrified expression on his face as he spoke it. He wasn’t ready to die. He was afraid of death because we hadn’t done everything we wanted to do. He was afraid of dying because it shouldn’t have been him losing his life with every beat of his heart that allowed more blood into his lung. His rib had broken upon impact with the central reservation and pierced his lung. He drowned in his own blood. The internal bleeding was so severe by the time he got to hospital, that there was nothing they could do.

It was my fault. If I hadn’t lost my mind and gone searching for the past when I had everything I ever needed in my present, Thomas would have still been alive, blowing raspberries on my neck while I tried to work, or combing his fingers through my hair as we laid in the sun.

But he wasn’t. He was gone and I was a prisoner in our house, surrounded by ghosts and the reminders of what could have been. They say the good die young, but I didn’t believe it. The good deserve to live. The good deserve the precious gift of life they’ve been given. Thomas deserved to live, and it was my fault he couldn’t.

Beth came by every weekend and Jack came with her to do things around the house that Thomas would have done. He mowed the lawn and fixed whatever had broken while Beth cleaned. A few months after the funeral I went to the DIY store and bought new door handles with locks. I had Jack fit them and when they’d gone, I walked around the house; I said goodbye to the games room, the wet room, the office and our bedroom before shutting and locking each door.

I slept on the sofa or in the spare room and I worked from the lounge while listening to the playlist Thomas had made me.

Even after a year, Jen, Amanda and Penelope still stopped by. They took it in shifts to bring me food and watch me eat it. They took such pride in the meals they brought, but it could have been anything. I ate it to keep me alive, but I couldn’t taste anything.

Sometimes they’d all come together, the girls and Beth, and talk about their days, just to get me to interact. I stared off into space and shut them out; I didn’t want the sound of their voices to erase the memory of Thomas’.

When they left, I’d switch on his phone and watch the videos we’d made; silly videos of us singing to each other, or arguments that quickly turned into a tickle fight because we couldn’t stand to be mad at each other. I couldn’t bring myself to watch our intimate videos. I craved his hands on me, or linked with mine as we made love. I craved his smell. I craved how I smelled after we’d been together. I just missed
him
; it didn’t even cover how I felt but that’s all I had.

I couldn’t breathe when I thought about living out the rest of my days without him. I wasn’t living; I just existed. But I didn’t want to. Every time my breath halted and the pain and regret overpowered my will to live, I hoped the venomous guilt I deserved to wallow in would stop my heart and allow me to slip away and find my beloved.

Maybe the good did die young. If they did, I would spend long years alone and I deserved every heartbreaking, soul crushing minute of it.

“Is there anything I can do?” Beth asked as she and Jack prepared to leave.

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll pop in tomorrow.”

“It’s okay,” My voice was a drone, a monotone. “I don’t need anything.”

“I’ll send one of the girls, then.”

“Beth, I'm fine.”

She made me jump when she spoke minutes later. I thought they’d left.

“You’re a fighter, Skye. You’ll get through this,” she kissed the top of my head. “I love you.”

“Me too.”

She knew I couldn’t say the words, so she gave my shoulder a soft squeeze and they left.

“What are we going to do, Buster?”

He whimpered and nuzzled into my hand for a stroke.

I
was
a fighter. I always had been.

Not anymore.

What was the point in pulling on the gloves and climbing into the ring when you had nothing left to fight for?

I didn’t have my happily ever after. My fairy tale had come to a sickening end. I couldn’t be the reason someone else suffered the same fate.

March 7
th
, 2012.

There was a knock at the door. I opened my eyes and squinted when the bright light invaded them. I heard a voice outside. I closed my eyes again. They would go away.

“Skye?”

I jumped and fell off the sofa when I heard Ava’s voice. She was standing at one end and I was in a tangle on the floor at the other.

“How did you get in?” I asked as I got up. I hadn’t heard her come in.

“Beth told me where the spare key was.”

“Great.
Sorry, Ava.”

I wasn’t apologising for letting her in; I didn’t want anyone and if she had been speaking to my sister she knew that already. I was apologising for my state. I pulled my tearstained t-shirt of Thomas’ – the one I lived in – to my knees.

She nodded her head towards the kitchen and I reluctantly followed her.

“Coffee?” she filled the kettle as I slumped on the stool.

“No thanks,” she took two cups from the cupboard anyway. “You came here from Jersey?”

“I left the boys with Kevin. They’re going to have some boy time. They’re camping in the garden tonight.”

“Sounds nice.” I mumbled, trying to squash the thought that Thomas and I would never do that with our own children. “But why are you here?”

“I’ve been speaking to Beth.”

I knew it, “And?”

She placed my coffee in front of me and I wrapped my hands around the cup for warmth. I was always cold.

“And we think you should get away for a while.”

“I don’t need an intervention, Ava.”

“I know,” she sat opposite me and I pulled away as she reached for my hand. “You’ve been fighting on your own for too long. It’s time to tag someone else in.”

“I’m fine.”

Of course I wasn’t fine, but Ava had lost her brother. I knew how that felt. There was nothing that compared to the way she was feeling and I couldn’t wallow in self-pity in front of her.

“Thomas wouldn’t want you to be fine. He would want you to live.”

“He would hate me for taking his life. He would wish it was me instead of him.”

I told everyone, anyone who would listen,
everything about the night of the crash. I told them to push them away. I wanted them to hate me as much as I hated myself, but it had the opposite effect. It made them pity me more, which made me hate myself more than I ever thought possible.

“Do you really believe that?” She cocked her brow just like Thomas did – used to do.