Page 68 of Crashing Into Me

“Really?” He asked curiously. “Give me a hint.”

“Nope,” she teased.

They started walking back towards Paula’s car when Kayden lost his footing in the snow, and she helped to steady him before he fell on his face. As he stood straight, he frowned.

“Who’s that?” He asked, pointing to someone behind her.

She turned, and there stood Sam, holding a bouquet of roses on the sidewalk.

“Sam?” She asked, perplexed.

Before she could get another word out, she was blinded by the headlights of the car careening towards them.

AS HEATHCLIFF CLOSEDthe bathroom door behind him, Maureen watched the horror unfold before her eyes. Heathcliff’s squad car was driving straight towards her son and his fiancée.

“Kayden!” She shrieked.

The next few minutes in Maureen’s mind happened in a fog. Kim, in the driver’s seat, rammed the car into them, sending them sailing into the air. The squad car swerved in the snow and crashed into a light pole, causing the transformer to explode. The lights on Patterson, including every building, went dark. People were screaming, but Maureen didn’t realize right away that they were her own shrieks until Heathcliff ran in from the bathroom into the room and startled her.

WHERE WAS KAYDEN?The question pounded through Lana’s mind as she lay sprawled in the middle of the street, the world tilting in and out of focus. She tried lifting her head, and pain detonated through her leg, sharp enough to rip a cry from her throat.

But then she saw him.

Kayden lay face down in the snow only a few feet away, terrifyingly still, his body half-buried in crimson-streaked drifts.

“Kayden…” The word broke from her, frayed and trembling.

She dragged herself toward him, her palms slipping against the icy pavement. Each inch forward set fire through her body, the agony so intense she tasted copper on her tongue.Just get to him. Just check his pulse. Just make sure he’s alive.

But just inches from reaching him, her strength simply evaporated. Her arms buckled beneath her, and she collapsed, gasping. White sparks flared across her vision—pinpricks bursting like stars only to fade into spreading darkness. The world narrowed into a tunnel of blurred light and distant sound.

Still, she reached for him.

Her hand trembled as she stretched toward his mangled fingers. Someone was screaming—far away, or maybe right beside her? Echoes of voices, real or imagined, the sound of footsteps, running. Nothing felt real. The wind howled down the street, carrying the metallic smell of blood,so much blood.The snow beneath her palms was slick and cold, stained red. She couldn’t tell whose it was. Maybe both of them.

Her vision flickered. The edges collapsed inward, shadows swallowing what little light remained.

She stretched one final time.

Her fingertips brushed his.

Ice.

Blood.

Stillness.

Please… stay alive,she thought, the words barely forming in her mind.

Cold.

So much blood.

Then everything went black.