The Wreck (7 page)

She tugged him to his feet.

“Carly?”

She led him inside and started up the
stairs.

“Where are we going?”

She smiled over her shoulder. In her
bedroom, she turned to him and slid her hands under his T-shirt.

He shuddered. “Carly, honey, this is
not
a good idea.”

She raised an amused eyebrow and reached
for the button on his shorts.

“What if your parents come back early?”

She crossed the room and flipped the lock
on the door.

Brian groaned. “This is insane. We
can’t
.”

Returning to him, she backed him up to
the bed and tugged the shirt over his head.

“Oh God,” he said. “Are we really going
to make love in a
bed
?”

Carly smiled as she nodded. They’d had
that luxury only one other time, when they’d gone to Michigan to tour the
campus and find a place to live. With just one night to spend in a hotel,
they’d made the most of it.

He brought her down on top of him and
untied her halter. Cupping her breasts, he said, “I love you, Carly. I love you
forever and ever.”

Carly wanted so badly to tell him she
loved him just as much.

“I know, honey,” he whispered. “I can see
it in your eyes.”

When she bent to capture his bottom lip
between her teeth, he gasped.

He got rid of their shorts and held her
tightly to him. “Are you still taking the pill?”

She nodded.

“Were you hoping we’d be together like
this again?”

Her eyes shimmered as she nodded again.

Easing her legs apart, he slid into her.
“No, don’t close your eyes, Carly. I need you to look at me.” He held her eyes
for several long minutes before he dipped his head to graze his tongue over her
nipple.

She came apart under him, silent even in the
throes of passion.

He managed to hold on to his control long
enough to urge her up and over again. This time he joined her.

“Carly,” he gasped against her ear,
sending a shiver through her. “You have no idea how often I’ve thought about
that last time under the willow.” He lifted his head so he could see her face.
“You, too?”

She nodded and reached out to bring him
back to her. With a soft, sweet kiss, she tried desperately to tell him
everything she wished she could say. When he trembled, she knew he understood.
She had forgotten how his body felt on top of hers, how it felt to take him
inside of her, how his chest hair felt against her breasts, and the way the
muscles in his back rippled under her hands when he loved her. He shifted to
move onto his side, but she stopped him.

He raised a questioning eyebrow. “Again?”

She smiled in agreement.

“At
some point we need to figure out where we’re going from here,” he said as they
lay facing each other. “I mean, we’re still engaged, right?”

With a finger to his lips, she told him
this wasn’t the time for serious business.

“We only have a month before freshman
orientation starts,” he reminded her.

Like she didn’t know exactly how many
weeks, days, and hours they had left. Soon enough she would have to tell him that
she had written to Michigan to request a one-year deferment on her scholarship.
She wouldn’t be ready to move halfway across the country in just over a month,
even if he would be right by her side every step of the way.

Somehow she had to find a way to tell
him. And then she would have to find a way to get through the lonely weeks
without him until he came home for Thanksgiving and then Christmas. But that
was a conversation for another day. Today she just wanted to enjoy being with
him after two long weeks of wondering if she would ever see him again.

“I forgot to tell you earlier I had lunch
at Miss Molly’s the other day. Mrs. Hanson asked me to pass along the message
that you can come back to work whenever you’re ready. She said you’ll always have
a job there. Nice, huh?”

With her head resting on his chest, Carly
nodded.

Off in the distance they could hear the
boom of the fireworks and waited until the rapid-fire finale had ended before
they got up to get dressed.

As they were leaving her room, he stopped
her. “Thank you for this. I’ve been so lost without you, Carly.”

She reached up to bring him down for
another kiss.

By the time their parents returned, they
were back on the porch swing.

They
fell into a routine after the holiday. He worked every day at the law firm in
town and spent the evenings and weekends with her. Sometimes they “talked”
using the pad and pen, other times they were content to just be together
without the pressure to deal with all the loose ends that awaited resolution.

Two weeks after the Fourth of July, he
asked her again to take a walk with him. “We don’t have to go to the willow,”
he pleaded. “We can find a new place. I need to be with you, Carly. We never
have a minute alone here.”

She shook her head.

Making an effort to keep his cool, he
asked, “You can’t or you won’t?”

She reached for the pad and wrote,
“Can’t.”

Brian stared at the single word on the
white page for several seconds before he looked up at her. “What are you
saying?” Up until then he’d thought she was hiding out at home so she wouldn’t
have to face a world without their friends. Now, as he wondered if there was
something more to it than that, the icy knot of fear that settled in his gut
reminded him of the night of the accident when she’d had to be sedated to stop
screaming. “Do you feel like you can’t leave the house?”

With a hesitant nod, she confirmed his
fear.

“Carly, honey,
come on
! What do
you think will happen? I’d be right there with you.” With his hand wrapped
tightly around hers, he stood and headed for the porch stairs, determined to
show her she was wrong.

Resisting him with everything she had,
she fought wildly to get free.

He turned, and the terrified expression
on her face stopped him cold. His heart started to beat faster as he studied
her for an endless moment. “If you can’t leave this house, how will you go to
Michigan?”

She looked down at the floor.

And then suddenly he understood. “You’re
not going, are you?” He pushed his hands through his hair as he struggled to
absorb the blow. “
When were you going to tell me?”

Picking up the pen that had fallen to the
porch floor, she wrote, “Soon.”

He was incredulous. “
Soon?
We’re
due to leave in
two weeks
, Carly!”

“Do you really think I can go like this?”
she wrote frantically.

“Why not? You can get around and go to
class and do everything anyone else can do.”

“Except talk!” She underlined talk
several times.

“You can write notes. I’ll talk for you.
We can do this, Carly. I
know
we can. There’s nothing we can’t get
through as long as we’re together.”

“I can’t.”

He took a deep breath in an attempt to
calm the burst of panic. “What about our engagement? You said you’d marry me.”

“I still want to. That hasn’t changed. It
never will.”

“So what? We get married and live in the
house you won’t leave for the rest of our lives? Is that really how you expect
me to live?”

“I hope in time I’ll feel differently.”

“What if you never do? Where does that
leave me?”

“I need some more time. I’m sorry.”

He kneeled in front of her and took her
hands. “Listen to me,” he said, suddenly feeling as if his very life was on the
line. “The best thing we can do for ourselves is get the hell out of this town
and start a whole new life somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t haunted by
memories and ghosts.”

Her eyes filled, and she turned her face
away.

With a hand on her chin, he brought her
back to him. “We have a chance to start all over. School is paid for, we have a
place to live, and after everything that’s happened, I guarantee you our
parents would be thrilled to see us married and living together in Michigan. We
can have everything we’ve ever dreamed of, but I can’t do it by myself. You
have to help me, Carly. You have to try.” His voice broke, and tears filled his
eyes. “Please.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she tore
her eyes away from his to write, “I’m not ready. Maybe next year I’ll be
stronger.”

After he read what she’d written, he
studied her for a long time. And then, without another word, he stood, went
down the stairs and out the gate.

The
next day he called to say he was having dinner with his parents and wouldn’t be
by to see Carly. The second day, he said he had to work late. By the third day,
she was convinced she’d finally succeeded in pushing him away for good.
However, he came that night and every night that followed, but he was quiet and
withdrawn.

Carly could feel him pulling away from
her, as if he was preparing himself for the long months of separation that
loomed on the horizon. When they were down to just two days before his departure,
she decided she couldn’t stand his brooding silence for another minute. She
wrote, “Talk to me.”

After a long pause, he said, “I’ve made a
decision.” His face was set into a hard expression that frightened her.

“What?”

“When I leave here the day after
tomorrow, I’m not coming back. Ever.”

“WHY?”

“I need that fresh start we talked about.
I need to get away from here, away from all the bad memories.”

“Away from me?”

“No.” He reached for her hand. “I want
you to come with me. I’ve told you that every way I know how. Even if you don’t
go to school, you could live with me and be with me. You’re choosing not to.
Now I have to make my choices.”

“What about your parents?” she asked as a
feeling of desperation unlike anything she had ever experienced settled over
her heart.

“They understand if I keep coming back
here every few months I’ll never get over what happened. So they’ll come to me.
They have no more desire to celebrate holidays in that house than I do. We’ll
go skiing for Christmas or take a cruise, maybe. I don’t know. We haven’t
decided yet.”

Carly forced herself to ask the only
question that mattered. “What about us?”

He swallowed hard. “If you force me to
leave here without you, if you do that to me, Carly, there is no more us.”

She dissolved into deep but silent sobs
that shook her body. The pad slipped off her lap and landed with a thump on the
porch.

He gathered her into his arms. “I love
you with all my heart, and I always will. But I can’t put my life on hold until
you work out whatever it is you’ve got going on. I lost my brother, Carly, and
all my best friends except for you. I saw the same things you did—the same
horrible things—yet I’ve managed to go on. I don’t understand why you can’t do
that, too.” He brushed away her tears and then his own. “I know you loved Sam,
but he was
my
little brother. I loved him more than you did. I sound
like a jerk for even saying that, because this certainly isn’t a contest, but
my loss was bigger than yours.”

Carly was filled with shame, because she
knew he was right. But knowing it didn’t explain why her reaction was so
disproportionate. There was no explanation. She caressed his face and tried to
convey how she felt with the eyes he read so well.

“Think about what I said. I’ve got a ton
of stuff to do tomorrow, so I won’t see you, but I’ll come by before I leave on
Thursday morning. My parents are driving out with me and flying back. If you
change your mind, there’ll be room for you in the car.” He kissed her cheek and
then her lips. “It’s time to step up, Carly. If you love me like you say you
do, it’s time to fight for us.”

Filled with despair, she watched him go.
He was doing what he needed to do to survive, and she understood that—better
than anyone else possibly could. But after more than four years of loving him
so desperately, how would she ever live without him? What kind of life did she
have to look forward to if it didn’t include him?

She lay awake for two nights trying to
marshal the strength she needed to overcome her fears and regain control of her
life. She tried to visualize herself walking through the gate and getting into
the car with Brian and his parents. But then she would remember how the fire
had consumed her friends, and she knew there was no way she could get into a
car. As the sun rose on the day he was due to leave, she accepted that she
couldn’t do it, even for him. She wasn’t ready. Maybe one day she would be but
not today.

He came by at ten that morning as
promised. Downstairs, she heard her mother talking to his parents as he trudged
up the stairs to where she waited for him in her room.