“Fuck them,” she’d said fiercely, rolling towards me. “Let’s just go. They can’t stop us. They won’t. We’ll go as far as we have to to get away. Let’s just leave.”
“When we’re eighteen?” I frowned at her.
“No, soon. As soon as we can. Before something can happen that keeps us apart.”
Natalie couldn’t have known what was coming. But it was like she’d had a sixth sense, some instinct that terrified her into thinking we were going to be forced apart sooner than later. We hatched a plan—not a good one—but a plan to run within a week, to take off for a state that would let us marry without parental permission, or we’d just hide out until we were eighteen and could marry wherever we wanted. I took my hidden savings from the fights and used a small amount of it to buy her the tiniest ring I’d ever seen, a sterling silver promise ring with a diamond so little she could barely see it, but she’d cried when I gave it to her the night before we were supposed to leave.
I didn’t care about the money I was leaving behind. I didn’t care about the nice things, or the lifestyle, or the parties. I didn’t care about the fancy college education I’d never have. All I needed was Natalie and my motorcycle, and those two things belonged to me without question.
Until she was taken away from me in an instant.
The shape of her, walking across the street towards me, her hand raised in greeting. The crash of the car hitting her, a sound I would only later realize wasn’t accompanied by the squealing of brakes that would have come from someone trying to stop to avoid hitting her.
Natalie’s scream, a sound I’ll never forget.
The car screeching away, her body lying in the middle of the road.
Blood on her mouth.
Blood on the asphalt.
The feeling of my chest cracking open, like dying, like nothing I’d ever felt before.
The night that made me who I am today.
* * *
My eyes flyopen as I’m jerked out of the nightmare, but I don’t move. Years ago, I might have sat bolt upright, gasping and sweating, but not now. I’ve had it too many times, to the point where now sometimes I know I’m dreaming before I even wake up. But it doesn’t help because everything in the nightmare actually happened. I’m just reliving it, over and over again.
Usually, the nightmare ends with me holding Natalie in the middle of the street, screaming, crying, begging for her to wake up even though it’s clear that she’s dead, that her skull is cracked open, that no one could lose that much blood and live. It never includes everything that came after, the months that I couldn’t go to school that resulted in me being held back a year, the suicide attempt, the days when I thought I couldn’t go on. The way I slowly closed up, becoming a shell of myself, hateful and angry with everyone around me. I blamed myself, even though I couldn’t fully articulate why, and I stopped going to hang out with the Sons. The only place I ever saw any of them was at the fights, but I stopped recognizing them, stopped doing anything except lashing out in every way I could.
I stopped caring. I wouldn’t leave, but I wouldn’t play their game either, no more than I had to. When Natalie died, so did I.
But tonight, the nightmare kept going. I found myself back on that street, empty and dark except for the full moon hanging overhead, standing in the middle of it with no real idea how I’d gotten there or why.
Until I saw her.
I knew it couldn’t be real, even in the dream. I knew it when I saw the hair matted to the side of her head with blood, not blowing around her face in the breeze, the way her jaw hung slightly askew, instead of delicate and perfect. I knew I was seeing Natalie, but Natalie after the accident, not the Natalie I’d loved.
NotmyNatalie.
But it didn’t stop the nightmare from continuing, from holding me frozen in place as she wafted down the street to me, as she took my face in her hands, slanting her broken mouth over mine, until I tasted her blood on my lips as she begged me in a hollow, echoing voice—
Save me, Jaxon. Save me.
Take me away from here.
Save me.
Don’t let them hurt me anymore.
Somewhere in those words, her voice blended with Athena’s, and then Athena was behind me, her hands on my waist, her broken, naked body pressed against me until all I could smell and taste was blood, the blood of the women I loved, the women I’d failed.
Until I woke up in my own bed, my pulse racing and my throat dry.
As I lay there, I know that there won’t be any more sleep for me tonight. I also know that Cayde and Dean have Athena covered, that they don’t really need me to take a shift checking up on her. In fact, it’s probably better if I don’t.
So instead, I get dressed in the dark and slip out into the hall.