Page 3 of Between Never and Forever

We just wanted to have fun, but it wasn’t as fun when Dex followed me into that car, unwilling to let me go on my own and gave me a look about as stormy as the weather.

“It’ll be fine,” I whispered to him because Gabriella was between us, giggling still.

Yet, the night was dark, the roads slippery, the rain heavy on the windshield.

How safe did you feel on a bridge in a vehicle going seventy on a highway in icy rain? Safe enough to text? To tell your friends in the back seat you’re fine, you’ve got it under control?

“Kyle. You’ve got to slow down,” Dex yelled right as Dimitri swore from the front seat.

But it was too late.

Kyle’s confidence that night cost him his life. When he looked up from his text, he was veering into oncoming traffic. He overcorrected, yanking the steering wheel straight towards the railing.

The vehicle crunched all around our bodies in a way I never expected.

I vaguely remember the sound of the collision into the siderail. It was deafening, so booming it rattled our bones as the front of the car scraped, metal on metal, against the side of the highway. It all happened so fast.

And so slowly.

The car almost seemed to halt. The air was pushed out of my lungs at the slicing pain of the seat belt. But the sound I’d never forget was that of Gabriella’s screams. They pierced through the air, filled with fear. She hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, and the momentum carried her forward as we were jerked back.

The car flipped off the edge of the highway. Flipped over and over. The impact and her screams were loud, but the silence as the car fell and tipped upside down was louder.

Down, down, and down.

Into the dark depths of the water.

When we hit the lake, our fragile bodies jerked all around in the dark, and the lights of the car immediately went out.

It was probably only a second of us floating there, suspended on top of water before it began to sink, but it felt like forever before I heard Dex’s voice, pointed, direct, and determined—“Do not panic, Kee. You hear me? Don’t fucking panic.”—but it held fear.

We were too young. None of us knew what to do in a life-and-death situation.

“I can’t… I can’t swim well.” I wiggled as the blood rushed to my head. We were all hanging upside down by our seat belts as water crept toward our heads fast. I reached for the button but found it harder to press with the pressure of my body against it. “I can’t get—”

He reached around me and undid my buckle as he yelled to his brother, “Unbuckle and get the hell out.”

I hit the roof of the car that was now sinking and the water’s freezing temperature immediately made me gasp. Dex was there to catch my gaze.

“I got you, Kee. I got you, okay?”

I shook my head, trying to glance around and see where everyone was. I saw Dimitri struggling with a door, but Kyle wasn’t moving. Dark liquid was dripping from his head. Was it water or blood? And then I saw the hole in the windshield.

So big that a body could have fit through it.

Shattered.

Water rushed in, and my eyes widened.

“Kee.” Dex’s hands went to my face. “Focus. You’re going to follow me, okay? I. Got. You.”

“No. What?” I whispered before I screamed, “Don’t get me. Get her! Get Gabriella! Where is she?” I tried to yank my face away in a panic, but he was pulling me forward. “Where is she?” I think shock was taking over as I started to shake, my clothes soaking in the inky black liquid that was rising faster and faster. The car was sinking, which meant we were about to be under water, under a sheet of ice in the dark.

No one heard about people surviving car crashes in freezing water. They heard about the tragic results, and we were about to be one.

“Fuck,” he swore over and over as he pushed at the door. It didn’t budge. “Get ready to swim. We’re going through the windshield—”

And then his face disappeared as we went under. I don’t remember taking a breath or grabbing back on to his hand. I don’t remember how he and Dimitri somehow got the door open or if we went through the hole in the windshield once we were fully submerged by them pulling me through it.