Before You Break

His hands released my ass and slid back up to my hair. “Did you even realize what you were doing to me that night in the bathroom?”

He pulled my bottom lip into his mouth and sucked it hungrily as I whimpered against him. “Ella, you make me fucking crazy.”

Then he gave me a melting kiss, his tongue slowing us down to its drugging rhythm.

And this kiss. This one.

It made me swoon so completely that I nearly turned liquid and slid onto the ground into a soggy mess. I knew we were in public but I didn’t even care.

No guy had ever told me I was sexy. Made me feel this desirable.

I was the sweet, cute, good girl.

Never gorgeous. Beautiful. Sexy.

But with Qui

But the saner part of me—the rational part—knew that we’d need to stop. Eventually. Before we put on an erotic show for the world to see.

But for this singular, mesmerizing moment, as the moonlight filtered through the gleaming pine needles, I wanted—I needed—this final, toe-curling kiss.

Chapter Eighteen

Qui

“Suicide prevention line. This is Gabriella.”

I tried finding my confident voice. “Gabby.”

Even though I didn’t feel like driving headlong into a tree tonight, I still found it tough to dial this number. Gabby had sort of become a salvation for me, and for that I would be eternally grateful.

“Daniel,” she said, her voice laced with worry. Maybe she thought I was holding a damn revolver to my head or something.

“Hi.” I had driven out to the cliff again tonight and now sat perched along the edge.

“Hi.” I heard her swallow. “How are you feeling tonight?”

“That’s kind of why I’m calling.” This time as I looked down into the shadowy water below, I didn’t feel the urge to jump.

“Okay,” she said. “Go for it. I’m here to listen.”

“The last time we spoke, I told you what happened that night,” I said. “The night that changed my life. Changed a lot of people’s lives.”

“Yes, of course. I remember,” she said and it sounded like she took a sip of something. Coffee, soda, water.

I didn’t know anything about her. What she looked like, how old she was, where she lived. Only that she was this calming voice. This peaceful force that permitted me to spill my guts. Spill my soul. There was something about her that felt so familiar to me, but it may as well have been her gentle demeanor, her insightful advice that made me feel so comfortable.

“I’ve been thinking about the power I held in my hands that night,” I said. “I mean, I shift my car one way, crash into a truck, and everybody’s world is turned upside down.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“Powerless.” I took a deep breath. “It’s so crazy, but that’s exactly how I felt. Because of everything going on inside of me. And inside of the car.”

There was a long silence as Gabby considered what I’d said.

“You were just trying to get your friends home. And struggling to figure out how you felt about a certain girl. Typical stuff that happens in a teenager’s life,” she said. “See, Daniel. That’s why you’re a good person. You couldn’t help everything that happened; it was just an accident. You weren’t trying to mess with anybody’s life.”

This time when she told me I was good, I didn’t even flinch. I didn’t try to fight it. I’d thought about it long and hard since the last time she’d told me the same thing.

She paused and I heard her chair squeak as she adjusted herself. “If your best friend had been in the driver’s seat, how would it have gone differently?”

“Maybe he would have had more control,” I said. “Of his emotions, of the car.”

“You’d never know that for sure,” she said. “Even if someone appears to have it all together all the time, you can never predict the other factors that come into play. Road conditions, state of mind, others drivers’ actions. Everything comes together to create those circumstances. That’s what makes life so mysterious, so fragile, so precious.”

I thought about how many times I’d driven with Bastian when he’d had one too many. It was the exact reason why I’d started laying off the booze and become the designated driver. I was afraid he’d kill us. And instead, I’d been the one to kill him. And I wasn’t even drunk.

“Is that what bothers you—the fact that you lost control of the car?” Gabby asked.

“The uncertainty of what happened in that moment is probably what kills me the most.”

“Uncertainty keeps a lot of people up at night,” she said. “Tell me what you mean.”

“My passenger . . .”

“The girlfriend.”

“Yeah. She said that she noticed the truck veering close to our lane as we got on the freeway. So maybe it was my fault. I didn’t notice or react in time,” I said. “For days after she blamed me, screamed at me, that her boyfriend was dead.”

“It’s natural for a person to direct his or her anger somewhere in a time of grief. Even you did that—you directed yours inward,” she said, and I realized how right she was.

Still, I couldn’t tell her that my parents had paid off the truck driver, that he’d admitted his guilt, because it didn’t matter. I couldn’t believe any of that was true. “It all happened too fast. I got on the freeway, the truck was in the lane next to me, and we sideswiped each other.”

“What else do you remember, Daniel?”

“I remember seeing the truck in my peripheral view. But I also remember her fingers interlaced in mine and how that felt. And just being on automatic, driving along, and then boom,” I said as my stomach clenched and the tears loomed at the corners of my lashes, threatening to splash down my face. “The impact. Our heads swinging forward and the car spi

My throat closed up and my voice became ragged as I tried to suck in air through my teeth.

“And then silence. Eerie, ugly silence. For hours, it seemed, but it was probably only seconds,” I whispered as I remembered all of it. “And then heavy breathing . . . groaning, as she and I tried to get out of the car. Then the blare of a siren. The sounds of voices . . . shouting . . . a commotion.”

“And what did you think in that very moment, right before the rescue squad got there?” she asked. “What was the one thought that entered your mind?”

“I thought . . . I thought . . .” No one had ever asked me that question before, and, fuck, that moment was so crazy. It was like the very second before a tornado obliterated everything in your life. That’s how singular that moment had felt. “I hoped—I prayed—that the worst thing that’d happened had been totaling my father’s car.”

We fell into silence, while I steadied my trembling hands, my shaky breaths. I’d just revealed my memories and feelings about the car crash. Something that for years had consumed, eradicated, and destroyed me to the very depths of my soul.

After another minute, Gabby asked, “And has that feeling you had in the car—that things might end up being all right—been smothered completely, Daniel?”

“That’s why I called tonight,” I said. “Because you asked me a question the last time we talked.”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “I asked what kept you alive.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I recognized what it was the other day.”

“What is it?”

“I realize that I still have a tiny sliver of hope buried deep inside me.” It was the emotion I’d experienced the moment I stepped foot in my garage during spring break. Admitting that out loud was freeing. It loosened the mud, the grime, the cement—caked around my guilt-filled grave.