Prologue
LYRIC
Then
A steady, pulsing drumbeat filled my head, the deep, rhythmic thumping inside my cranium matching my heartbeat. I lifted my hand, pressing my palm against my temple as I blinked, squinting against the flashing emergency lights that lit the night sky with muddied reds and blues and whites, having little effect on the shadows surrounding us. The blood rushing in my ears sounded like white water rapids, making it hard to hear the scattering of voices coming from the first responders rushing all around me.
Something warm and wet coated my palm, and when I pulled my hand back, I saw the deep crimson of blood in the headlights of the police car pointing toward where I sat on the side of the road.
I wasn’t sure how I ended up there, or how I even got out of the car.
The car.
My head whipped in its direction. What had once been a car was now a mangled, twisted mess of metal and fiberglass. The car we’d hit was resting upside down, the front end of it hanging part way down into the deep ditch on the side of the road. I watched as though I was floating over the scene as firefighters cut away huge chunks of the car and reached for the person still inside. My heartrate picked up, thundering at a dangerously fast pace as I saw them place the prone body on the ground and begin CPR. Over and over, they pumped the man’s chest, trying to force his heart to beat. Pump, breathe, pump, breathe.
The firefighter was at it for so long he exhausted himself and had to switch out with one of his crew members. The tiny flare of hope that had sparked in my belly when they refused to give up slowly dimmed to ash the longer they worked on the man. Bile swirled in my stomach and clawed at my throat, the tears welling in my eyes making it difficult to see.
I forced myself to look away, a sense of dread sweeping over me as I settled into the knowledge that the outcome for that man was most likely going to be devastating. The cold, salty tears broke free and tracked down my cheek as I took in the rest of the scene. The person we hit was a stranger, but nevertheless, it was a life senselessly cut short. And there was only one person to blame.
The car I’d been riding in had been crunched like an empty soda can to only half its original size.
I looked frantically for Cal. My little brother had been in the back, right behind me. I sat in the passenger seat, gripping onto the dash for dear life as fear clogged my throat, making my screams silent.
I remembered the paralyzing terror I felt before the impact, the begging and pleading and crying. The shouts and squeals of rubber against cement. The nauseating thrash of our car as my father took twists and turns at dangerous speeds, tossing my brother and me around inside the cab like rag dolls.
I had to find Cal. He was all that mattered.
I tried to stand, but the ground beneath my feet wavered and my vision swirled. It suddenly felt like I was trying to stand on water, the pitch causing my stomach to roil before I fell back onto my behind, the ground once again hard and painful.
“Whoa, just hold on now. Don’t try to get up.” A figure stepped in front of me, easing me to sitting and blocking my view of the mangled wreckage as he lowered into a crouch in front of me. I tried to look past him, but a moment later, a bright beam of white light flashed directly into my eyes, sending a sharp lance of pain through my skull.
“Can you follow the light?” the man asked with a gentle voice, breaking through the vibrating thump of my heartbeat in my ears.
I shook my head weakly, knowing that trying to follow that light was a pointless effort. It was too painful just looking at it. “It hurts,” I murmured, and blessedly, it clicked off a second later. I blinked several times, trying to bring everything around me into focus, but that damn pen light certainly hadn’t helped, and neither did the prodding touch of the paramedic in front of me as he inspected the cut on my temple that was steadily oozing blood. “We need to load you up, sweetheart, get you to the hospital.”
My heart clattered out of my chest and fell right to the ground between my feet. Panic gripped my stomach with tight fists that twisted and squeezed, knotting my insides until they felt like balloon animals.
I snatched at the paramedic’s wrists as he continued to poke and prod, my eyes beseeching as I caught glimpses of his profile in the harsh red and blue from the lights atop the emergency vehicles.
“Please. My brother. You have to tell me. Is he okay?”
The man in front of me shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
The din around me grew clearer just then, the voices forming as though they were coming from the depths of a long, dark tunnel. For the first time since the crash, I could make out the words being spoken and shouted around me.
“I’ve got a pulse over here!” someone called out, and I could just make out that it was coming from the direction of my family’s car.
I sent up a frenzied, silent prayer. Please, God, let it be Cal they’re talking about.
I tried looking around the man who was currently trying to staunch the flow of blood leaking sticky, hot liquid down the side of my head and face. I somehow needed to find Cal in all the havoc around me. But it was getting harder and harder to maintain focus. The thrumming in my skull was getting steadily worse, and the edges of my vision were starting to fade, turning from gray to black as it closed in.
“Ma’am, we need to get you to the hospital. Now.”
My head was swimming, my current state no match for his persistence and firm hand as he pressed me backward. My back met something hard and cold, a backboard that I was quickly being strapped to for safety and security.
“Please,” I pleaded quietly, tears swimming in my eyes as I stared up at the sky, hoping my prayer was heard. “Please let my brother be okay, God. If you have to take someone, please let it be that monster.”
What I didn’t realize was that I’d spoken the end of my prayer aloud. I didn’t notice the way the paramedic at my head shot his attention down to me, or how his brow creased in concern.
Because as soon as the words left my lips, my whole world was swallowed up into blackness.
Chapter One
LYRIC
NOW
I knew this day was going to be difficult; it was the hardest day of each year, no matter how many had passed, but the heartbreak never failed to take me by surprise. From one year to the next, I kept waiting for the pain that came every time my little brother’s birthday rolled around to stop feeling like a white-hot poker being stabbed beneath my ribs, but that never happened.
This year, however, was exceptionally worse. When I’d woken up this morning, after the haze of sleep wore off and realization kicked in, the memories created an agony so intense it could have kept me in bed, curled up in a tight ball, all day long. It had taken everything in me to keep from falling down a deep black hole of misery and sadness. The pain in my heart had been almost physical—a stabbing, burning, throbbing thing that only got worse with every passing moment. But I’d still managed to drag myself out of bed. I’d gone through the motions of getting ready for the day and forced myself into the town’s public library where I worked.
Every minute was its own special kind of torture, having to go through the motions, wearing a fake smile and pretending everything was just peachy, when in reality I was trapped in my own personal hell. Yet, somehow, I managed. The seconds ticked by slower than usual, time moving at a snail’s pace until it felt like the day would last an eternity, but, damn it, I’d managed. I was giving myself that win.