A crunch of metal and my world shifted between red and black—blood and death.
Ears ringing and the scent of gasoline stinging my nose, I fought for breath as all movement ceased around me. Blinking my eyes as the numbness of mind began to fade, pain radiated from my skull and down my back, shutting off completely at my waist. I couldn’t feel my toes.
Rain continued to pound against the car—I couldn’t move more than the hand of my arm that pressed between my chest and metal.
“Nat?” I gasped, trying to call out to my four-year-old in the backseat since I couldn’t turn to check on her. She didn’t answer, and I blinked again, trying to clear the hot wetness sliding down my forehead into my eyes.
“Nat?” I tried again as headlights swept over me, the rumble of another vehicle cutting out seconds later.
“Alana!” My twin brother’s scream reached me, and I tried to move, the panic in his voice making me want to get to him—soothe him. I should have let him take us home. Should have let him...
“Alana! Oh, God. Oh, fuck … Alana.” His hand cupped my cheek, and I fought to focus on his face through my shattered driver-side window.
I smiled… or I tried to as rain dripped off the end of his nose, his dirty blond hair soaked and plastered to his head.
Lightning split the sky behind him, and thunder cracked one second after the bright flash.
“Charley,” I croaked on a whisper, my chest growing heavier as he wiped across my face. “Sorry. Should have let you...”
“Shh. Hold still. An ambulance is on its way.”
Ambulance.
“What h-happened?” Shooting pain raced down my spine … it hurt to frown.
“You hydroplaned.” He swallowed and cursed as hot wetness continued to slide down my forehead and over the bridge of my nose. “Hit a tree.”
Stubborn. I’d been too damn stubborn.
“Nat?” I whispered.
Charley left my field of vision, but I couldn’t turn my head to track where he’d gone.
“Oh, no. Oh God, no.” His voice cracked, and I closed my eyes.
“P-please tell me she’s okay, Charley,” I sputtered through the wetness dribbling down over my mouth. I couldn’t have hurt my baby. Please, God.
He came back to my window, his face pale even in the headlights of his truck illuminating the immediate vicinity.
Another flash of lightning and the grief in his eyes caught a sob in my throat.
“No,” I whispered, my eyes welling. Stupid, stupid woman.
“Hang on, Alana.” He yanked his sweatshirt off, tenderly wiped my face, and pressed the soft cotton to the side of my head.
“Charley?” Focusing on his face proved hard, and I blinked at the haze of red.
“You’re going to be okay.” His jaw clenched, and lightning flashed.
“Nat?”
“It’s not good, Alana.”
“H-help her!” My voice rose as motherly instinct grabbed hold of my heart, and my body fought to move—but couldn’t. “Help my baby!”
“I can’t,” he choked out. Another flash lit his face, and I knew.
A lone whine rose in my crushed chest as the realization I’d killed my baby knifed my heart.
“Noooo!”
Charley held my gaze, his palm warm on my neck while holding his sweatshirt on the wound I realized had dripped the blood into my eyes and over my face.
“No, Charley...”
He didn’t answer, and I couldn’t twist from the metal crushing against me on all sides. I couldn’t see my baby … couldn’t hold her.
“Charley!” I holler whispered, my lungs constricting, my heart breaking.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Hold on for me. Please.”
My gaze slipped to the darkness beyond him, the trees in the distance lighting up like noon with another flash from the storm hovering above. Deep shadows beckoned, promising to relieve my pain, my grief.
“Alana.”
I gasped for breath.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but another truck rumbled close, headlights flashing. A car door slammed.
“Alana! Nat!”
Kane. I relaxed in my steel cage at the sound of my husband’s voice. Everything will be okay. He’ll forgive me. He always does.
My man, my first and only love, dropped to his knees beside Charley, his hands finding my face as my brother gave him room.
“Alana,” he whispered my name like a prayer, and as with every time I stared into his hazel eyes, my lips lifted.
“I’m so sorry, Kane. I-I shouldn’t have left. So … sorry.”
“It’s gonna be alright, love. I forgive you. We’ll get you out of here, and you’re coming back home. Promise.” He glanced behind me as though searching for our daughter, and Charley clasped his shoulder.
“Don’t, Kane,” my brother mumbled, but Kane tore from his grasp and disappeared to check on our daughter, his anguished sobs a mere heartbeat later, ripping me apart.
“Oh, God. No, no, no … Nat!”
Tears slid down my cheeks as fists pounded on metal.
“Kane!” Charley hollered at him, but my husband continued to try to get to our little girl, fists banging on metal.
“She’s dead,” I whispered, but neither man seemed to hear me over the crash of thunder. My fault.
Darkness crept in around the edges of my vision, and I fought to stay conscious. Rain slashed at my face as the wind shifted. Thunder boomed, shaking the mangled car around me. One fight, unkind words. I shouldn’t have left.
“We’ve got to get them out!” Kane hollered as my eyesight hazed.
Sirens drawing closer and flashing red and blue lights kept me conscious.
Time slowed—or did it pass at all? Cold raindrops pelted me through the broken-out windshield in slow motion, my eyelids barely moving to blink them away...
A face I knew well slid into the window, returning reality in vivid detail.
Pain.
Cold.
The soft murmurings of my brother, trying to comfort my wailing husband, reached me over the rain pounding on metal, but my focal point became life. Hanging on regardless of guilt and shame as the face in the window peered at me.
“Andy.” I tried to smile at the EMT I bossed around while on duty at dispatch. Rain dripped off the long dark strands of hair hanging down over his forehead.
“Alana.” Lips thinned, his dark gaze flitted over me, hand gently lifting Charley’s sweatshirt from my head.
“How bad?” I managed, blinking to stave off the darkness, cold numbness creeping across my fingertips and through my heart.
He hesitated before answering, “Not good.”
My chest ached, more from grief than the crush of the wreck around me. “Nat?” I whispered as lightning flashed across the sky, the crack atop it shivering my skin.
Andy disappeared and returned before I could draw breath, shaking his head.
“Andy?” I squeaked as he refused to meet my gaze and surveyed the damage I couldn’t see around me, the metal pressing against my chest.
Feeling my pulse, he finally looked me in the eye. “Kane!” he called, his voice firm. His furrowed brow and the worry in his eyes said it all. “Your wife needs you!”
I struggled for breath.
“She doesn’t have much time,” I barely heard Andy tell my husband, and my pulse slowed.
Clarity broke through the slashing rain, the pain in my back, and my heart. I blinked against the rain.
I’m going to die...
My life didn’t flash before my eyes, simply the face of the man I had adored since we’d been children—my best friend, my twin brother’s best friend, my lover.
He fought to be strong for me, but his working throat and the anguish in his beautiful hazel eyes betrayed his heart—my sweet, loving man.
“So sorry.”
“Shh.” He tried to smile but sobbed. “Okay, Alana. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t.
“Kiss me,” I whispered, needing his forgiveness, his love, knowing I couldn’t go to the grave without it.
A gentle brush left his lips tainted red with my life’s blood. I blinked hard against the blackness creeping into my periphery.
“Always love you,” I whispered. “Always be with you. No more … long walks after d-dinner.” I grimaced, wondering how much longer I had. “I’ll b-be there in the breeze, though.” I gasped for breath as he gripped my hand, squeezing tight the beads of Nat’s favorite bracelet between our palms.
“Don’t leave me,” he begged, his voice broken and lips trembling.
“I’ll whisper sweet nothings in your ear.” He loved my breath on his neck and ear.
“Alana, please.”
I lifted my gaze to Charley behind my husband, stoic as always, another flash of lightning showing fists clenched at his side and rain slashing at his body. He would find a way to blame himself, even though I’d insisted on driving.
“He’ll need you,” I whispered to Kane. “I know you’ve always … loved him.”
Pain lanced through my chest. Oh God, the pain...
“Alana.”
“Maybe he’ll—” I gasped for breath.
“Don’t go, my love.” Kane kissed my lips hard, his sob escaping into my mouth. “Don’t go.” He peppered my face with kisses, the rain dripping off his nose to mix with the blood smeared over my face as his pleadings faded in my ears.
“Please don’t go. Don’t leave me all alone. I can’t do this without you, Alana. Please.”
“Charley … always love....”
Darkness won, and the weight lifted off my chest as my vision faded to black.