Page 38 of You for Her (The Edge of Retaliation 2)
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“Okay,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road in front of us.
I can’t look at him when I tell him this.
I can’t.
“My friends and I were driving, like you heard. We were taking my mom’s car to the lake, we were young, crazy, we had no ill intentions. We just wanted to go for a swim. I wasn’t drinking, but you already know that. Whether you believed it or not is a different story. I wasn’t, though. We lost a can of alcohol on the floor, it seems stupid now, when I look back at it. I’ve thought about it a million times over, and no matter how many times I’ve relived it, it seems so … stupid. Celia’s life … for a can. But that’s how it was, a can of alcohol spilling all over my mom’s carpet in her car, and me, being a sixteen-year-old girl, freaking the hell out.”
I glance in the rearview mirror and see Ethan is watching me, his eyes intense. He’s heard this story a million times, of course, but he’s still listening like it’s the first time he’s heard it.
“Anyway, I reached back with one hand to feel around on the ground. I took my eyes off the road for a second, just a second, at least … that’s how it felt. When I looked back up, I saw her. She was standing on the side of the road. I could tell you down to the finest detail what she was wearing, how her hair was, what color her eyes were. Everything after that seemed in slow motion. I met her eyes, she met mine, and she smiled. Almost as if to say she was sorry. Then she stepped out onto the road. I slammed the brakes, I tried to swerve, but I couldn’t. I hit her. You know the rest.”
“No,” Tanner growls, his voice throaty. “No. I want to know everything. What happened after that? What did it feel like? What did the car do?”
“Tanner …”
“Fuckin’ answer the question, Callie.”
“It was horrible,” I whisper. “I’ve relived that moment every single second since. It was the worst feeling I could ever imagine, hitting a human being. I knew, I knew even before the car went off the road, that I had killed her. I knew from the way it sounded, from the way it felt. We went off the road, I don’t really remember much after that. There was a lot of screaming. A lot of pain. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve suffered every single second. I’m not trying to take the blame off myself, I took my eyes off the road, I just want people to know the truth. Celia deserves to have her family know that she wasn’t okay …”
“Too little too late now,” Tanner rasps.
“Maybe for you, but I still think she deserves it.”
His fingers go white around the wheel, and I glance at Ethan again. He gives me a small smile; he knows just how hard that would have been for me to tell. Especially to Tanner. I look away and glance down at my hands. A few minutes pass by in total silence, and Tanner asks, “What is your question?”
I swallow, and then take a deep breath and say, “Everything that happened between us, all the moments, the things that we shared … Was it all a lie? An act? Was any of it, even for a second, real?”
I turn and glance at him, and his jaw tics. The muscle tightens and his face gets hard. It takes him a long time to answer, a really long time, and then he says, in a gruff voice, “It was all fake. Every second of it.”
It feels like someone has punched me in the stomach. It takes all my willpower not to wince at the pain that radiates through my body. It hurts, so much more than I ever could have imagined. I have pictured asking Tanner that question, over and over. I have lived what every answer would feel like, good and bad, but I didn’t expect this. I thought I would be fine if he told me it didn’t matter, I thought it would make everything easier to close off.
It didn’t.
It hurt like hell.
“Pull over,” I say, my voice ragged.
“What?” Tanner questions.
“I said pull over!” I scream.
Tanner swerves the car off the road, skidding to a stop. The moment it has pulled up, I unclip my belt and launch out, slamming the door. Rage and pain and a heap of emotions I can’t handle burst forth, and I lose it. I just lose it. I spin around just as everyone has exited both trucks. With a rage I didn’t know I had in me, I charge toward Tanner. For whatever reason, he doesn’t step back or shy away.
