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Authors: Colleen Hoover

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BOOK: Reminders of Him
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“Kenna?” We glance at each other at the same time. “I want to know what happened that night.”

The air develops a weight to it, and it feels harder to breathe in.

I think I just made it harder for her to breathe too. She inhales a slow breath and releases my hand. She flexes her fingers and grips her thighs.

“You said you wrote about it. Will you read it to me?”

Her expression is filled with what looks like fear now, like she’s too scared to go back to that night. Or too scared to take me there with her. I don’t blame her, and I feel bad asking her to, but I want to know.

I need to know.

If I’m going to drop to my knees in front of Patrick and Grace when I beg them to give her a chance, I need to fully know the person I’m fighting for. Even though at this point she couldn’t say anything that would change my mind about her. I know she’s a good person. A good person who had one bad night. It happens to the best of us. The worst of us.
All
of us. Some of us are just luckier than others, and our bad moments have fewer casualties.

I adjust my grip on the steering wheel, and then I say, “Please. I need to know, Kenna.”

Another quiet moment passes, but then she grabs her phone and unlocks the screen. She clears her throat. My window is cracked, so I roll it all the way up and make it quieter in the cab of the truck.

She looks so nervous. Before she begins to read, I reach over and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear as a show of solidarity . . . or something, I don’t know. I just want to touch her and let her know I’m not judging her.

I just need to know what happened. That’s all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

K
ENNA

Dear Scotty,

Your car was my favorite place to be. I don’t know if I ever told you that.

It was the only place we could get true solitude. I used to look forward to the days our schedules would align, and you’d pick me up from work. I’d get in your car and it was like feeling all the same welcoming comforts of home. You always had a soda waiting for me, and on the days you knew I hadn’t had dinner yet, you’d have a small order of fries from McDonald’s sitting in the cup holder because you knew they were my favorite fries.

You were sweet. You always did sweet things for me. Tiny little gestures here and there that most people don’t think of. You were more than I deserved, even though you’d argue with that.

I’ve gone over the day you died so many times, I once wrote every single second of that day down on
paper. Most of it was an estimate, of course. I don’t know if I
actually
spent a minute and a half brushing my teeth that morning. Or if the break I took at work really was fifteen minutes to the second. Or if we really spent fifty-seven minutes at the party we went to that night.

I’m sure I’m off in my calculations by a few minutes here or there, but for the most part, I can account for everything that happened that day. Even the things I wish I could forget.

A guy you went to college with was having a party and you had been his roommate your freshman year, so you said you owed it to him to make an appearance. I was sad to have to be at the party, but in hindsight, I’m glad you got to see most of your friends that night. I know it probably meant something to them after you died.

Even though you had made an appearance, it wasn’t your scene anymore and I knew you didn’t want to be there. You were past the parties and starting to focus on the more important pieces of life. You had just started graduate school, and you spent your spare time either studying or with me.

I knew we wouldn’t be there long, so I found a chair in a corner of the living room and curled up into it while you made your rounds. I don’t know if you knew this, but I watched you for the entire fifty-seven minutes we were there. You were so magnetic. People’s eyes would light up when they would look at you. Crowds would gather around you, and when you’d spot someone you hadn’t yet greeted,
you’d have this huge reaction and make them feel like the most important person at that party.

I don’t know if that’s something you practiced, but I have a feeling you didn’t even know you had that kind of power. The power to make people feel appreciated and important.

Around the fifty-sixth minute we were there, you spotted me sitting in the corner smiling at you. You walked over to me, ignoring everyone around you, and I suddenly found myself the focus of your sole attention.

You had me locked in your gaze, and I knew I was appreciated. I was important. You sat down next to me in the chair and you kissed my neck and whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry I left you alone.”

You didn’t leave me alone. I was with you the whole time.

“Do you want to leave now?” you asked.

“Not if you’re having fun.”

“Are
you
having fun?” you asked.

I shrugged. I could think of a lot more things that were more fun than that party. By the smile that spread across your face, I gathered you felt the same. “Want to go to the lake?”

I nodded because those were my three favorite things. That lake. Your car.
You.

You stole a twelve pack of beers and we snuck out and you drove us to the lake.

We had a favorite spot where we’d go some nights. It was down a rural back road, and you said you knew of it because you used to go camping there with your friends. It wasn’t far from where I lived with
roommates, so sometimes you’d show up at my apartment in the middle of the night and we’d go there and have sex on the dock, or in the water, or in your car. Sometimes we’d stay and watch the sunrise.

That particular night, we had the beer you had taken from the party and some leftover edibles you had bought off a friend the week before. We had the music turned up and we were making out in the water. We didn’t have sex that night. Sometimes we only made out, and I liked that about you so much, because one of the things I’ve always hated about relationships is how make-outs seem to stop when sex becomes a thing.

But with you, the make-outs were always just as special as the sex.

You kissed me in the water like it was the last time you would ever kiss me. I wonder if you had some sort of fear, or premonition, and that’s why you kissed me the way you did. Or maybe I only remember it so well because it was our last kiss.

We got out of the water and we were lying naked on the dock under the moonlight, the world spinning above our heads.

“I want meatloaf,” you said.

I laughed at you, because it was such a random thing to say. “Meatloaf?”

You grinned and said, “Yeah. Doesn’t that sound good? Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.” You sat up on the dock and handed me my dry shirt. “Let’s go to the diner.”

You’d had more to drink than me, so you asked me to drive. It wasn’t like us to drink and drive, but
I think we felt invincible under that moonlight. We were young and in love, and
surely no one dies when they’re at their happiest
.

We were also high, so our decisions were slightly more impaired that night, but whatever the reason, you asked me to drive. And for whatever reason, I didn’t tell you I shouldn’t.

I got in that car, knowing I had tripped on the gravel as I reached for the door. I still got behind the wheel, even though I had to blink really hard to make sure the car was in drive and not in reverse. And I still chose to drive us away from the lake, even though I was too drunk to remember how to turn down the volume. Coldplay was blasting so loud over the radio it was making my ears hurt.

We didn’t even get very far before it happened. You knew the roads better than I did. They were gravel, and I was going too fast, and I didn’t know the turn was so sharp.

You said, “Slow down,” but you said it kind of loud, and it startled me, so I slammed on the brakes, but I know now that slamming on brakes on a gravel-top road can make you lose complete control of the car, especially when you’re drunk. I was turning the wheel to the right, but the car kept going to the left, like it was slipping on ice.

A lot of people are lucky after a wreck because they don’t remember the details. They have recollections of things that happened before the wreck, and after the wreck, but over time, every single second of that night has come back to me, whether I wanted it to or not.

The top was down on your convertible, and all I can remember when I felt the car hit the ditch and begin to tilt was that we needed to protect our faces, because I was worried the glass from the windshield might cut us.

That was my biggest fear in that moment. A little bit of glass. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t even see your life flash before my eyes. All I worried about in that moment was what would happen to the windshield.

Because
surely no one dies when they’re at their happiest
.

I felt my whole world tilt, and then I felt gravel against my cheek.

The radio was still blasting Coldplay.

The engine was still running.

My breath had caught in my throat and I couldn’t even scream, but I didn’t think I needed to. I just kept thinking about your car and how mad you probably were. I remember whispering, “I’m so sorry,” like your biggest concern would be that we would have to call a tow truck.

Everything happened so fast, but I was calm in that moment. I thought you were, too. I was waiting for you to ask me if I was okay, but we were upside down in a convertible, and everything I’d had to drink that night was flipping over in my stomach, and I felt the weight of gravity like I had never felt it before. I thought I was going to puke and needed to right myself up, so I struggled to find my seat belt, and when I finally clicked it, I remember falling. It was
only a couple of inches, but it was unexpected and I let out a yelp.

You still didn’t ask me if I was okay.

It was dark, and I realized we might be trapped, so I reached over and touched your arm to follow you out. I knew you’d find a way out. I relied on you for everything, and your presence was the only reason I was still calm. I wasn’t even worried about your car anymore because I knew you’d be more worried about me than your car.

And it’s not like I was speeding too much, or driving too recklessly. I was only a little bit drunk and a little bit high, but so very stupid to believe even
a little bit
wasn’t too much.

We only flipped over because we hit a deep ditch, and since the top wasn’t even up, I thought surely it would be minimal damage. Maybe a week or two in the shop, and then the car I loved so much, the car that felt like home, would be fine. Like you. Like me.

“Scotty.” I shook your arm when I said your name that time. I wanted you to know I was okay. I thought maybe you were in shock, and that’s why you were so quiet.

When you didn’t move, and I realized your arm was just dangling against the road that had somehow become our ceiling, my first thought was that you might have passed out. But when I pulled my hand back to figure out a way to right myself up, it was covered in blood.

Blood that was supposed to be running through your veins.

I couldn’t grasp that. I couldn’t fathom that a silly wreck on the side of a county road that landed us in a ditch could actually
hurt
us. But that was your blood.

I immediately scooted closer to you, and because you were upside down and still in your seat belt, I couldn’t pull you to me. I tried, but you wouldn’t budge. I turned your face to mine, but you looked like you were sleeping. Your lips were slightly parted and your eyes were closed, and you looked so much like you looked all the times I spent the night with you and woke up to find you asleep next to me.

I tried pulling you, but you still wouldn’t budge because the car was on top of part of you. Your shoulder and your arm were trapped, and I couldn’t pull you out or get to your seat belt and even though it was dark, I realized moonlight reflects off of blood the same way it reflects off the ocean.

Your blood was everywhere. The entire car being upside down made everything even more confusing. Where were your pockets? Where was your phone? I needed a phone, so I scrambled and felt around with my hands, looking for a phone for what felt like an eternity, but all I could find were rocks and glass.

The whole time, I was muttering your name through chattering teeth. “Scotty. Scotty, Scotty, Scotty.” It was a prayer, but I didn’t know how to pray. No one had ever taught me. I just remember the prayer you had given over family dinner at your parents’ house, and the prayers I used to hear my foster mother, Mona, pray. But all I’d ever heard people do was bless food, and I just wanted you to wake up, so I said your name over and over and hoped God would
hear me, even though I wasn’t sure if I was getting his attention.

It certainly felt like no one was paying us attention that night.

What I experienced in those moments was indescribable. You think you know how you’ll react in a terrifying situation, but that’s the thing. You can’t
think
in a terrifying situation. There’s probably a reason for how disconnected we become to our own thoughts in moments of sheer horror. But that’s exactly how I felt. Disconnected. Parts of me were moving without my brain even knowing what was happening. My hands were searching around for things I wasn’t even sure I was looking for.

I was growing hysterical, because with each passing second, I became more aware of how different my life would be going forward. How that one second had altered whatever course we were on, and things would never be the same, and all the parts of me that had become disconnected in that wreck would never fully reconnect.

I crawled out of the car through the space between the ground and my door, and once I was outside and standing right-side-up, I puked.

The headlights were shining on a row of trees, but none of that light was helping us, and then I ran around to the passenger side of the car to free you, but I couldn’t. There was your arm, sticking out from under the car. The moonlight glimmering in your blood. I grabbed your hand and squeezed it, but it was cold. I was still muttering your name. “Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, no, no, no.” I went around to the windshield
and tried kicking it to break it, but even though it was already cracked, I couldn’t break it enough to fit through it, or pull you out.

I knelt down and pressed my face to the glass and I saw what I had done to you then. It was a stark realization that no matter how much you love someone, you can still do despicable things to them.

It was like a wave of the most intense pain you could ever imagine rolled right over me. My body rolled with it. It started at my head and I curled in on myself, all the way to my toes. I groaned, and I sobbed, and when I went back around the car to touch your hand again, there was nothing. No pulse in your wrist. No heartbeat in your palm. No warmth in your fingertips.

I screamed. I screamed so much, I stopped being able to make sounds.

And then I panicked. It’s the only way to describe what happened to me.

I couldn’t find either of our phones, so I started running toward the highway. The further I got, the more confused I grew. I couldn’t imagine that what happened was real, or that what was
happening
was real. I was running down a highway with one shoe. I could see myself, like I was ahead of me, running
toward
me, like I was in a nightmare, not making any progress.

It wasn’t the memories of the wreck that took time to come back to me. It was
that
moment. The part of the night that was drowned out by the adrenaline rush and hysteria that bowled through me. I started making noises I didn’t know I could make.

I couldn’t breathe because you were dead, and how was I supposed to breathe when you had no air? It was the worst realization I ever had, and I fell to my knees and screamed into the darkness.

BOOK: Reminders of Him
6.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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