Chapter One
Left Behind
Dina
Whew, it’s over! The semester from hell is now behind me. My grades aren’t what they should be, yet I passed. Do final scores really matter anymore? No one is left to care.
My parents are gone. Seven months ago, a car accident took them from me.
Taking pity on me, my professors allowed me to take my exams late and from home while I was taking in all that happened. Last semester, my grades were enough to get me by during the blur of events. The pain and loss from last term carried into this one, though, and I am simply thankful to have the time behind me.
Getting by, it’s all I have managed to do in everything.
After the joint memorial service, I squared away what I could at the coast and came back to Charlotte for school. It is all overwhelming—having an apartment here that my parents picked out with the Lawson’s and suddenly having to deal with our family home in Emerald Isle, North Carolina, yet not living there.
The Lawson’s are my best friend, Maggie’s, family. Maggie has been my best friend since we met in high school. And her parents were also some of my parents’ closest friends on the coast. They were part of the Hellions Motorcycle Club - my dad was an original founding member. When the Lawson’s moved down the street and I became so close with Maggie, they ended up joining the club to. Now they are the closest thing to family I have left.
Then there was the need to sell the business because, let’s face it, as much as my dad was a great mechanic, I’m not. I get by compared to most girls, but the shop isn’t my goal in life. Roundman, Blaine Reklinger and my dad shared the shop so he easily bought out my dad’s half with a healthy settlement for me. The process has been emotionally so taxing that I am thankful to Roundman and the Hellions for making the sale as easy as possible. Then there have been the meetings … All the meetings with my attorney to settle the case. All of this while trying to adjust to life alone. It’s been too much for me to handle most days.
I had the kind of life most people would envy. My parents were so in love and so supportive of anything I wanted to do. As an only child, losing both my parents simultaneously breaks me to the very soul of who I am. Having no one to share the pain, understand the fears, and to face the loss with me all ends with this empty, helpless feeling inside that I can’t find a way to conquer. Clinging to what once was only spirals my depression further.
I want time to stop. No, that’s a lie. I want time to rewind. I want to stop my parents from ever going to the last car show. The one where another trophy was won, doing what they loved, before two lives were lost and three destroyed. The third being mine. If they would have skipped this one, they would still be with me.
It’s not their fault. No, the truck driver was drunk when he hopped behind the wheel of his beverage distribution rig. He got in the driver’s seat, and I got left behind in the wake of his actions.
For days, weeks, really, I called my mom’s phone just to listen to her voicemail message. I slept in my dad’s T-shirts for the longest time because, at first, they kept the nightmares at bay.
Not anymore.
Day by day, the pain from my loss becomes greater. There is no light coming through the window. Darkness engulfs me. I’m drowning in a sea of my own emotions, and I can’t come up for air. The loss is too deep to see my way out.
The thing is, I don’t need the pain to go away. I need my parents.
This isn’t how things are supposed to be. My parents had that once in a lifetime kind of love. My dad was the bad boy who lived next door to my “follow the rules” mother. He was her first and only love. He worked hard to lay the world at her feet.
How can something so good end so tragically? How could they leave me when I still need them?
Sure, I’m an adult by legal standards, but at nineteen, I still need and want their guidance.
In all the mess that has ensued, I have managed to make it through my freshman year of college. The year began with me having not a single care in the world, outside of school, and ended with me having zero direction and no one to help me tunnel through the challenges of adulthood.
Well, I guess, to an outsider, I have people. I just don’t have the people I want to have with me. The two people who came together in love to make me and raise me. The two people who worked hard to give me a good life. The two people who loved me more than anyone in the world. My parents are gone, and it’s a loss I still can’t seem to face.
My grandparents died when I was younger, and my aunts and uncles were never close with my parents. Maggie and the entire Lawson family have been amazing in helping me navigate the many facets of estate inheritance. I don’t know what I would do without them. On the other hand, they are a painful reminder of my own parents. Even the Hellions MC, while their intentions are good to be supportive of me, have been a constant reminder of what I won’t have again.
In the end, there is no way I could have done any of this without their support. I wouldn’t have returned to Charlotte and gone back to school if it wasn’t for their encouragement.
In all of this, I have enough money for a lifetime. If I budget and don’t spend frivolously, I don’t need to work or even have this education. The settlement from the drunk driver’s company took care of that, thanks to the shark of an attorney the Lawson’s helped me find and hire.
Alas, the Lawson’s begged me to follow through with my goals as if my parents were still here. With the many reminders that they were watching from Heaven, I was told they would want to see me succeed.
What is success, really? If it’s measured in my bank statement, then school isn’t necessary. If it’s measured in accomplishing something one sets out to do no matter what shit-storm life throws at them … well, I’m hanging on, but I make no promises I will finish it out.
“Well, Mom and Dad,” I whisper to the air around me, “I survived my first full semester without you.”
Nevertheless, I’m drowning in despair, and there is no desire within me to reach for a life preserver.
The story continues on in Crash and Burn (Love and Repair Book 1) available now through all major ebook retailers!