K. Bromberg - Crashed

“Mom …” The sob is hiccupped as Quinlan re-enters the waiting room. We both turn to face her as she walks toward us, all eyes in the room on her. I watch Dorothea’s face shifts gears as she goes from fierce protector to maternal soother. She pulls Quinlan into her arms and kisses the top of her head, squeezing her own eyes shut tight as she whispers words of encouragement that she fears are lies.

I feel like a voyeur—wanting my own mother more than anything right now—when Dorothea looks up at me over the crown of Quinlan’s head. Her voice is a hushed murmur but it stops my breath. “It’s your turn now.”

“But I’m not …” I don’t know why I’m so shocked that she’s giving me this opportunity. The rule follower in me bristles, but my traumatized soul stands at attention.

“Yes, you are,” she says, a tight smile on her lips and sincerity flooding her eyes. “You’re helping make him whole—the one thing I’ve never been able to do as a mother and that kills me, but at the same time the fact that he’s found it in you …” She can’t finish the sentence and tears well in her eyes, so she reaches out and squeezes my hand. “Go.”

I squeeze it back and nod at her before I turn to go to the man I can’t live without, fear mixed with anticipation streaks through me like fireworks on a pitch black night.

I stand outside of the intensive care unit and prepare myself. Fear and hope collide until one big ball of anxiety has my hands trembling as I turn the corner to stand at his doorway.

It takes me a moment to gain the courage to raise my eyes and take in the broken body of the man I love. The images in my head are worse—bloody, bruised, total carnage—but even those couldn’t have prepared me for the sight of Colton. His body is whole and unbloodied, but he lies there so motionless and pale. His head is wrapped in white gauze and his eyelids are partially closed, the whites of his eyes showing somewhat from the swelling of his brain. He has tubes coming out of him every which way, and the monitors beep around him constantly. But it’s not the sight of all of the medical equipment that breaks me—no—it’s that the life and fire of the man I love is nonexistent.

I shuffle toward the bed, my eyes mapping every inch of him as if I’ve never seen him before, never felt him before. Never felt the thunder of his heart beating against my own chest. I reach out to touch him—needing to desperately—and when I hold his hand in mine, it’s cold and unresponsive. Even the calluses I love—the ones that rasp deliciously over my bare skin—are not there.

The tears come. They fall in endless streams as I blindly sink down into the chair beside the bed. I grip Colton’s hand with two of mine, my mouth pressed to our joined hands, my tears wetting his skin. I cry even harder when I realize the all too familiar Colton scent that feeds my addiction has been replaced by the antiseptic hospital smell. I didn’t realize how much I needed that scent to be there. How much I needed that small, lingering piece of the man I love to remain when everything else has changed so drastically.

Incoherent words cross my lips and muffle against our entwined hands. “Please wake up, Colton. Please,” I sob. “You can’t leave me now. We have so much time we need to make up for, so many things that we still need to do. I need to cook you horrible dinners and you need to teach me how to surf. We need to watch the boys play little league and I need to be in the grandstands when you win a race.” The thought of him getting back in a car makes my heart lodge in my throat, but I can’t stop thinking of all the things we still have left to experience together. “We need to eat ice cream for breakfast and eat pancakes for dinner. We need to make love to each other on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and when you walk in the door, I’ll push you up against it because we just can’t get enough of each other. I haven’t had my fill of you yet …” My voice fades as I close my eyes and rest my forehead against our hands, Colton’s name a repeated prayer on my lips.

“You know, I’ve never been as angry with him as I was last night.” Beckett’s voice jars me from my scattered focus.

I look up through blurred eyes to see him leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes focused on his best friend. I know he’s not expecting a response from me—and frankly, I’m hoarse from crying so I give him the only answer I can manage, an incoherent murmur before turning back to look at Colton.

“I’ve been pissed at him plenty of times, but last night took the cake.” Becks breathes a long, frustrated sigh, and then I hear his feet shuffle across the floor. He sits down in the chair opposite me and hesitantly reaches out to squeeze Colton’s free hand. He looks over toward his friend’s impassive face before holding my gaze across the lifeless body of the man we love. “When I knew Colton was willing to let you walk away without telling you the truth or putting up a fight...” he shakes his head in disbelief as tears swim in his eyes “...I don’t think I’ve ever been so pissed off or wanted to throw a punch at someone as much as I did when he told me to leave your room.”

“Well, we were both being stubborn asses,” I concede, wishing that we could be back in that hotel room—repeat the day—so that we just could stop fighting and I could wrap my arms around him a little tighter, a little longer. I wish I could rewind time so I could warn Colton of what was going to happen at the track. But I know it wouldn’t matter. My reckless rebel thinks he’s invincible and would have climbed into the car anyway.

I look back up at his face and he’s anything but invincible now. The sob rises in my throat, and I try to hold it back but fail miserably.

“He’s so used to thinking he’s not worth any of the good fortune that’s come his way. He’s never given me specifics, but I know he thinks he doesn’t deserve any better than what he was from, wherever he came from. He thinks he’s not enough for you and—”

“He’s everything,” I gasp, the truth in my words resonating clear within my soul.

A ghost of a smile turns up the corners of Beckett’s mouth despite the sadness in his eyes. “I know, Rylee.” He pauses. “You’re his lifeline.”

I lift my eyes from Colton to meet his. “I don’t know how that’s going to help him now. I left him last night after you walked out of the room,” I confess, staring again at our two hands intertwined, guilt consuming me. “After what he said to me, I kept thinking, I can’t be with him anymore under these circumstances. I thought I could stick around—help him heal everything that’s broken—but I couldn’t stand around and be cheated on, so I left.”

“You did the right thing. He needed a taste of his own medicine. He was being an ass and was using his fear to fuel his insecurity … but he went after you, Ry. That in itself tells me he knows how much he needs you.”

“I know.” My voice is almost a whisper and is drowned out by the incessant beep of the machines. “I’d gladly walk away from him again and never look back if it would prevent us from being here right now.”

I say the words without any conviction because I know deep down that wherever Colton is, I would never be able to stay away from him.

We sit for a bit, each battling our own thoughts when Becks stands abruptly, his chair scraping across the floor and shattering the antiseptic silence in the room. “This is fucking bullshit. I can’t sit and look at him like this.” His voice is thick with emotion as he starts to walk out.

“He’s going to pull through, Becks. He has to.” My voice breaks on the last few words, betraying my confidence.

He stops and sniffles before turning around to look at me. “That fucker is stubborn in everything he does—everything—he better not disappoint me now.” He shifts his attention to Colton and strides to the side of the bed, the grief turning into anger with each passing second. “It’s always got to be about you, doesn’t it, Wood? Self-centered bastard. When you wake the fuck up—and you will wake the fuck up because I’m not letting you go out like this—I’m going to kick your ass for making us worry.”

He reaches his hand out and, in contradictory fashion to his gruff words, lays a hand on Colton’s shoulder for a brief moment before turning and walking out of the room.

I’m left alone with the man I love, the weight of the unknown pressing down upon us but hope finally starting to bleed through the edges of the pain.

Colton

I can feel the car—the engine’s rumbling in my chest that tells me I’m alive—before I even see it slingshot out of the backside of the turn. I focus on my hands. They’re shaking, fucking trembling. I can’t hold onto the wheel, to my thoughts, to fucking anything at all. The wheel shudders beneath my goddamn fingers. Fingers that can’t quite grip to control the fucking chaos unraveling around me.

The confidence I own in a place that’s always been my salvation is fucking gone. Dust in the motherfucking wind.

What the fuck is going on?

The sound of metal giving—fucking shredding—mixed with the squeal of rubber sliding across asphalt echoes all around me. Jameson’s car slams into mine. And with the impact—the jolt of my body, the theft of my thoughts—my memories crash and collide like our cars do.

The thought of Rylee sucker punches me first.

The fucking ray of light against my goddamn darkness. The sun shining through this crash-crazed haze of smoke. The one and only exception to my fucking rule. How can I hear her sobs through my headset and yet see her doubled over in shock from a distance? Something’s fucked up here. Like bat-shit crazy fucked up.