Get in the car, asshole.”

My feet stop in the middle of the turnaround where I’ve been pacing since I stormed out of the plantation house and away from Shelby thirty minutes ago. I look up to see a sleek, silver BMW idling right in front of me with the passenger window down and an irritated woman leaning over the center console, glaring at me.

“Not in the mood right now, Meredith,” I reply as I start to turn away from the vehicle.

“I don’t give a shit what kind of a mood you’re in. Get in the car.”

I hear the locks click as she releases them and leans back against her seat, her hands on the steering wheel and her fingers tapping against it while she waits for me to do as she says.

Fucking Meredith Prescott. There was a time when I thought the two of us might be friends when Shelby introduced me to her that summer six years ago. Friends who constantly bickered with each other, insulted each other, and couldn’t be in the same room together more than five minutes before we were throwing sarcastic comments around like a baseball, but we had the love of Shelby in common and that always made us try to get along for her sake. It didn’t always work, but we tried. I liked that she was so protective of Shelby, even if it sometimes pissed me off when she would make comments about how she’d kill me if I ever broke her heart. Going by the look on her face and her cheerful greeting, she’s come to collect on that death threat.

Realizing I’d rather be anywhere than standing in front of this fucking plantation with a woman inside who I can’t keep my hands off even when I’m pissed at her, I huff out an irritated breath and stalk to the car, throwing the door open none too gently and climbing inside.

The engine revs and Meredith presses down on the gas before I even get my door closed.

“If you’re taking me somewhere to dump my body off a cliff, I came with my brother-in-law and he might get suspicious when I disappear,” I inform her, quickly buckling my seat belt as she takes the corner of the turnaround entirely too fast and then opens the car up on the long driveway to the main road.

“Don’t worry, I introduced myself to Daniel and told him I’d be giving you a lift home. He was quite pleased he wouldn’t have to leave early, so he won’t consider you a missing person for at least twelve hours,” she tells me with a straight face, her eyes never leaving the road in front of her.

Meredith has no reason to hate me, unless she’s still mad about the way I left Shelby all those years ago. But she’s also knows damn well I explained why I did that in all the letters I wrote to Shelby after I got my head out of my ass. It’s clear she’s still very good friends with her and is out to right whatever wrong she thinks I might have done.

I clench my hands in my lap thinking about that fucking kiss and how quickly her shock and anger turned to hunger. The softly playing music in Meredith’s car quickly reminds me of other kisses, of pulling Shelby’s car off the side of the road, turning down the car stereo until it was just background noise and losing myself in her. The wind rushing through the open car windows and ruffling my hair sends me back in time to riding horses with Shelby through the back acres of her family property, tying them up to a tree, and spreading a blanket out on the ground where we could touch and taste and do whatever we wanted to each other without anyone finding out.

I close my eyes as Meredith drives, listening to the quiet sounds of the local jazz station on the radio and feeling the warm Southern air on my face, and I think about how quickly Shelby’s body melted into mine tonight and how quickly she opened for me and let me in. She still tasted the same, smelled the same, and kissed the same, pouring everything she felt into me and it messed with my fucking head until I couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as I heard that little moan of need vibrating into my mouth, I pushed her away so I could breathe. She always had that power over me. With just a touch of her lips and the feel of her tongue gliding against mine, I forgot everything around me and all I cared about was her. Her pleasure, her happiness, her life. A few minutes in a dark room and there I was again, forgetting that the woman I loved no longer existed.

“Care to tell me where we’re going at such a high rate of speed?” I question, my eyes flying open and my hand grabbing on to the door handle when she suddenly makes a sharp left-hand turn onto another road.

“Care to tell me why I saw you go into an empty office with my best friend and then, a few minutes later, watched you stomp out of it all pissy and found her in there crumpled on the floor looking like someone just killed her dog?” she fires back.

I don’t answer her, not because I’m angry she’s calling me on this shit, but because I suddenly have that image of Shelby in my mind and it does something funny to my heart. I want to hate her for what she’s become. I want some time to be furious that I had a moment of weakness. I can’t do that when Meredith is giving me this image and making me wonder if there really is a little bit of my Shelby left inside there somewhere. I can’t let that penetrate my brain. I won’t allow it, because if it’s true, if she really is in there, buried underneath all the similarities to her mother, the things I said to her tonight would be really shitty and that would make me an asshole, just like Meredith called me.

Maybe I am an asshole and the things I said were a little out of line, but they were right, dammit. She can lie all she wants about how happy she is and how good her life is, but all I had to do was take one look at her to know the truth. She’s still here, in the same fucking spot I left her, because it was easier than trying for something more.

Neither one of us says anything else as Meredith continues into downtown Charleston, turning down a familiar road right on the opposite end of town. It’s the road my old public high school is on, and the school is the only building located on this stretch of road. A half mile down from the turnoff, Meredith turns into the school parking lot, killing her headlights in the middle of the empty lot and slowing the car down until she finally stops. I notice we’re on the south side of the sprawling, one-story brick building and it’s pitch dark over here, all the streetlights and spotlights located around the front main entrance, a few hundred yards from where we are now.

Turning my head, I see Meredith’s profile in the glow of the dashboard lights as she stares out the front windshield.

“You’ve been gone a long time, Eli,” she says softly, the sound of the idling engine forcing me to lean closer to hear what she’s saying.

“I’m glad you’re okay, but you’ve been gone a long time,” she says again.

“I think I know how long I was gone, Meredith. I have the scars to prove it.”

My hands clench into fists as they rest on top of my thighs, pissed off that I got in the car with her, just to listen to her tell me what an asshole she thinks I am. She has no idea what I went through to get back home. She has no idea the kinds of horrors I saw or lived through. Who the hell does she think she is? I get it. She’s Shelby’s best friend and she’s looking out for her, but give me a fucking break. Shelby doesn’t need a guard dog. She seems to be doing just fine in her happy little bullshit life.

Meredith laughs, but it’s hallow and there’s nothing funny about the serious look on her face as she continues staring at something in the dark out of the front windshield.

“You’re not the only one with scars, Eli. And I’ll say this again, you were gone for a long time. Maybe you should stop and think about the fact that she thought you were dead for five years. She loved you. She gave you everything. You broke up with her in a shitty note and then you died without giving her any kind of explanation or closure and she’s had to live with those thoughts in her head all this time. You gave her a kind of strength that I never thought possible for her, and then you left and she had to figure out how to pick up the pieces without that strength she so badly needed. I did what I could, Eli, but I couldn’t fill up the holes in her heart that your dying left behind,” Meredith says quietly, twisting the knife in my heart a little harder as she continues.

“A lot of things happened while you were gone. Things you know nothing about. So before you decide to rip my best friend apart again, maybe you should know about at least one of those things.”

Her arm closest to the driver’s side door reaches out and she presses a button that turns her headlights back on, flooding the area in front of us with bright light. My heart starts thundering in my chest and my palms start to sweat, but I don’t really know why. The image in front of us that is suddenly on display thanks to her headlights makes me cringe. I’ve seen things like this before, similar displays on high school lawns—a mangled vehicle with a sign warning students not to drink and drive or not to text and drive. An excellent scare tactic for new drivers so they know what could happen if they make stupid choices.

Something about the image in front of me tugs at the back of my mind and my hand blindly reaches for the door handle and I push it open. My eyes never leave the crushed pile of metal and glass as I unfold myself from the car, move around the door, and walk slowly across the asphalt, unable to stop until I’m just a few feet away from the wreckage.

My heart is beating so fast I wonder if Meredith can hear it as she gets out of the car herself and I hear her heels clicking on the ground until she stops right next to me and we both stare at the image in front of us. The car, if you can even call it that anymore, is just a pile of twisted metal with the driver’s side door completely collapsed in on itself. I can only assume whoever was driving this thing wrapped it around a tree with the way the vehicle is now in the shape of a U. All the windows are gone, save for a few jagged pieces of glass still attached to the door frames and the roof has been completely peeled back like someone took a can opener to it.

I walk closer, my feet leaving the asphalt and stepping onto grass, my hands starting to shake when I see something stuck to what’s left of the back bumper. It’s scratched and faded and detaching at the edges but I know what it is. I know what it says and I should know, since I put it there before she left for New York for her audition.

Dance Your Ass Off!

A stupid little bumper sticker I found. A cheesy gift I gave her to make her smile and take away her nerves about her audition. She threw her head back and laughed that beautiful laugh of hers that always made my stomach drop like when you go down the first hill of a roller coaster. She jumped into my arms, wrapped her legs around my waist, and told me it was perfect. Made me walk over to the back of her car, with her still clinging to me, while I slapped it on the bumper. Then I opened the backseat and tossed her inside with a squeal, following right behind, climbing on top of her and getting rid of her nerves another way.

My scalp tingles with sweat and my stomach rolls with nausea as I stare at what’s left of the red Honda Civic in front of me. She was so proud of that fucking car that was five years old and had a hundred thousand miles on it when she bought it. And I was so proud of her for refusing to use any of her mother’s money to buy it, waiting tables in the next town over so her mother wouldn’t know, working her ass off in between preparing for the audition and spending time with me, just so she could save enough to get it on her own.

I hear a noise in the quiet night, and realize it’s coming from me. I can’t stop the grunt of pain that flies out of my mouth thinking about her being in that car when this happened to it. There’s nothing left of that fucking red Honda Civic that I always made her let me drive and always loved pulling off somewhere secluded so I could hear her shout my name and listen to her loudly proclaim how much she loved me. We could do and say whatever we wanted in that car, however loudly we felt like it, without me having to sneak her into the apartment I shared with Kat after she’d gone to sleep or creep into an empty tack room at the stables without anyone seeing us.

“After the accident, the high school called and asked if they could use it for this display. She wasn’t drinking and driving or texting and driving or any of that shit, but the car was enough of a mess to get the point across to their students,” Meredith tells me quietly.

Being tortured and beaten for five years hurt like a bitch, but this is worse. This hurts deep down into my soul and it feels like someone is reaching into my chest and pulling my heart out with their bare hands.

“When?”

I choke the word out roughly, not wanting to know when or how or why, but unable to stop myself from asking. I feel my body swaying from side to side as I stare at the twisted metal and broken glass and the driver’s side door that is so bent it’s a wonder she’s still standing and breathing.

“The night you left.”

Meredith’s words hit me like a bullet to the gut and I have to press my hands into my hips and lean forward before I throw up.

“She got the acceptance letter from Montclair Dance Company and the first thing she did was drive to your apartment,” Meredith continues, oblivious to me dying inside right next to her while I listen to her talk and hear the words I said to Shelby earlier, screaming through my head.

“Your sister had no idea what she was doing there, didn’t know anything about the two of you. Knew you’d left a letter behind for Shelby and assumed it was a letter of resignation from the stables,” Meredith goes on. “Handed that piece of shit good-bye letter over and shut the door in her face. It was raining pretty hard that night, and she was upset. She’ll tell you until she’s blue in the face it was all her fault. She’d been crying, she wasn’t paying attention, she was going too fast, but that’s bullshit. There’s only one reason she was crying and not paying attention.”

Because of me. Because of me and that fucking letter I wrote her. No good-bye, no real explanation, if I wanted my sister to finish college and continue to have a roof over her head, and Shelby to have her dance career, I just had to leave and forget the police report I’d seen. I had to make it so Shelby wouldn’t ask questions and she wouldn’t try to come after me. Telling her I was in love with someone else was the only way I knew how to guarantee that. The only way I knew for sure that she would hate me and want nothing to do with me, move on with her life, forget about me and have the future she’d always dreamed of.

I’d rather be anywhere but here right now. I’d rather be back in that hellhole getting the shit kicked out of me than standing here in front of the wreckage I made of Shelby’s life.

“She hydroplaned, lost control of the car, and slammed into a truck. The force of that collision sent her off the road and slamming into a tree,” Meredith explains.

I can hear the tears in her voice and I see out of the corner of my eye as she wipes the wetness off her cheek and continues talking while staring at the car in front of us.

“When she hit the tree, it pinned her leg against the door. They called it a comminuted femur fracture—the bone was broken into more than two distinct fragments,” Meredith explains through her tears, which have now turned into full-on sobs as she spits out the words that make me wish I could take back everything I’d said to Shelby.

My knees give out and I fall to the wet grass, pressing my hands into the ground to keep my body up when all I want to do is curl up and die, knowing all the hateful things I said to her.

“Parts of the door broke off, slicing right through her thigh,” Meredith continues to speak. “Those parts cut off the blood flow to her leg.”

I sit back on my legs and bring my hands up to my face, trying to block out all the images racing through my mind of Shelby driving that car. Shelby crying and upset because of that fucking note I left behind. Shelby losing control and being in pain. Shelby losing everything because of me. Because I tried to stand up to her mother and it backfired. Because I wrote her a note and broke her heart, thinking I had no other choice.

“She had two emergency surgeries to fix the artery, and had to wait two weeks before they could try and fix the fracture,” Meredith explains through her tears. “For a while they thought they might have to take the leg because it had atrophied so badly. Then, weren’t even sure she’d be able to walk again.”

I claw and clutch at my hair to try and get my words to stop, but they won’t go away. I said them to her with such anger and disgust that it sickens me. Even while I said them to her, I saw the devastated look on her face but it didn’t register. I just wanted to hurt her because it hurt me so much that I came home and the woman I loved wasn’t there.

This is why. This pile of broken metal is why. I left her alone and I left her broken and then I came home and accused her of giving up. She stood there in front of me, so proud and trying so hard not to let it show how much my words must have cut like a knife. My words would have killed her. She wanted to dance more than anything else in this world and I yelled all that stupid shit about throwing it all away. I fucking yelled at her.

I hear Meredith move across the grass and I drop my hands from my head as she squats down next to me. Our eyes meet and I’m sure we both have similar looks of grief since I can still see the tears falling down her cheeks and my heart feels like it’s breaking in two.

“I know you went through a lot of shit while you were gone,” she tells me softly. “Shit I can’t even comprehend, and I’m sorry for that. But Shelby went through a lot, too. She’s still going through a lot, so give her a fucking break. She’s excellent at hiding her pain, pretending like she’s fine, but she is not fine. She is not okay. She’s going to kill me when she finds out I told you about this, but I don’t care. Because she. Is not. Okay. I don’t like you very much for what you did to her when you left and I really don’t like you very much for what you did to her tonight, but I can’t keep standing around, watching her do this to herself. Jesus, do you know how hard it is to stand by and watch your best friend just give up? She’s the most important person in my life, Eli, and she’s killing me. She’s breaking my heart.”

Meredith quickly swipes at the tears that have fallen down her cheeks as she stands up and I push myself from the ground to stand next to her, both of our eyes moving to the car, even though I know neither of us want to look at it anymore and have to think about what happened inside of it.

“There are things going on in that house that you don’t understand. Things I don’t even understand,” Meredith whispers. “I know I shouldn’t be such a bitch to you, when I actually have a shoe box full of proof that you really did care about her, but I can’t help it. She’s my best friend and that’s my job. I don’t like you very much, Eli, but the only time I have seen any kind of spark in our girl’s eye in the last six years was when she was out on that dance floor with you tonight. Get your shit together, quit being a dick to her, and bring her back.”

She turns and walks away from me and I hear her car door open and close. I take a few quiet minutes and force myself to continue looking at the car and wish I could go back in time. Wish I could take away all of her hurt and pain and especially take away all the things I accused her of.

I’d go through a thousand more years of hell just to erase this from her life.

I’d die a thousand deaths just to make it so that accident never happened.

With one final glance, I turn and walk back to Meredith’s car and she drives me back to Kat and Daniel’s house in silence.

I’ll get my shit together and I’ll bring her back.

Goddammit, I will bring her back because I can’t live in a world where Shelby Eubanks isn’t okay.