Page 42

Samantha

My eyes flutter open as consciousness slowly seeps back into my battered, bleeding body. A pulsing ache pounds in my skull and every muscle throbs in an agonizing rhythm. Confusion swirls through my foggy mind as I try to remember what happened; the violent crash; grabbing the wheel from Jake; the car spinning out of control; the thunderous pain as my world went dark.

Jake. Oh god. Jake.

I turn my head to the left, vision still blurry, and blink repeatedly to clear it. When I can finally focus, pure horror slams into me at the sight of my brother slumped over in the driver's seat, impaled by a thick tree branch jutting obscenely through the shattered windshield. Crimson blood is everywhere – running down his face, soaking his shirt, pooling on the seat in a thick, obscene puddle. His chest barely rises and falls with shallow, uneven breaths.

"Jake," I cry out, my voice hoarse and laced with panic. Ignoring the stabbing pain, I frantically claw at my seatbelt until it releases. I have to get to him, have to help him. Dragging my aching body across the center console, I reach for him with trembling hands.

"Jake, look at me! Please, open your eyes!"

His eyelids slowly lift halfway and his unfocused gaze meets mine.

"Sam..." he whispers, his voice faint. "It's... there’s no point."

"No, don't say that.”

“It’s true.”

“No. No,” I say, again and again, like a prayer. My hands shake as I examine his gruesome wounds. Where do I even begin? I knew he would get hurt — just as I knew I had to stop him — but seeing my brother impaled by a tree branch, his body nothing more than a mangled mess of flesh and bone, is too much.

I wanted to hurt him, to stop him, not murder him.

But it seems all I can do is bring the worst destruction to the people I love.

My hands tremble violently as I press them against the gushing wound in Jake's chest, trying desperately to stem the relentless flow of blood. It pours out, hot and slick, quickly coating my fingers and palms in a sickening crimson. I can barely think through the haze of panic and desperation consuming me.

"You're going to be okay," I choke out. "You’re not dying. You’re not. Please, don’t do it. Just hold on. I'll get help, Jake. Just hold on."

Jake's eyes, hazy with pain, meet mine.

"It's too late, Sam," he whispers. "I'm... I'm sorry. For everything. I didn’t mean to…"

Something snaps inside me, and I grit my teeth and push even harder on his wound, my desire to save his life now matched by the fury raging inside me. Even now, with death closing in, his words ring with that familiar undercurrent of selfishness. Always thinking of himself, even to the bitter end. Hot tears sting my eyes, then burn their way down my cheeks.

"Why, Jake? Why didn't you trust me enough to tell me the truth? How could you betray me like this, after everything?"

His expression, etched with agony, shifts into something almost like confusion.

"I... I didn't think you would..."

He trails off, but in that moment, I see the awful reality with devastating clarity — he didn't think of me at all; through all the years, all the times I dropped everything to help him, to support him, to clean up his messes... it wasn't because he trusted me or cared for me. He never saw me as a person at all. Just a convenience. A solution to a problem. A tool to be used.

His breathing stops. The blood that surges through the gaping hole in his chest slows, each dying pulse of red a reflection of his dimming heartbeat.

“I love you, Jake,” I whisper. “And I hate you, too.”

The light fades from Jake's eyes and his body goes still. I stare at him in numb disbelief, my hands still pressed against the gaping wound as if I can somehow hold his life inside. But it's too late. He's gone.

A strangled sob tears from my throat. Despite everything he's done, the lying and betrayal and selfishness, he was still my brother. Flashes of memories flicker through my mind—happier times from our childhood, all the laughs and inside jokes we shared, the hot dogs and popcorn at the baseball games with dad, the way he used to look at me when we were in high school and he thought of me as just his big sister and not a bailout. Before his demons consumed him. Before he shattered my trust and ripped my world apart.

Now, he'll never have the chance to make things right between us. We'll never be able to rebuild what we lost. I’ll never have the chance to tell him all thing things I should have said. A profound emptiness yawns inside me at the realization.

With shaking hands, I reach out and gently close his eyelids. He almost looks peaceful now, the lines of pain smoothed from his face. In death, he's finally free from the addictions and poor choices that ruled his life. A flicker of pity stirs in my heart. Jake was deeply damaged, but underneath it all, I know he was in pain, too. I just wish he had let me help him carry that burden instead of letting it destroy him, destroy us.

Choking back tears, I force myself to climb out of the crumpled car. Every muscle screams in protest with each movement; the pain is a white-hot agony that tears through my battered body. Blood—both Jake's and my own - covers my trembling hands, makes my grip slick and unstable, and it is a screaming, hammering fight to force open the car door and extricate myself from the wreck of plastic, steel, and blood.

Finally, free of the car, I stand unsteadily on the side of the road as the world relentlessly spins around me. Directionless. Hopeless.

What now? Jake is dead. Diesel is gone. I have nothing left. No one.

My feet carry me forward, one painful step at a time, as I shamble along the shoulder like a zombie. Tears stream down my face, mix with the blood and grime to form a mask of shame and suffering. A scream builds in my chest and claws its way up my throat. I let it loose. Howl of anguish and rage and despair. Again and again I scream until my voice cracks and dies, too.

Until I am reduced to this pitiful, broken, wailing thing.

Not a human. Just broken. Broken, and so alone.

My fingers drift to my chest, finding the bandage covering my fresh tattoo. Diesel's mark. The one I begged him to give me, to show that I was his. It pulses in time with my broken heart, each throb a reminder of what I've lost. Of what's been taken from me. Of what I destroyed.

The rumble of an approaching engine barely registers through my haze of grief. A car pulls up beside me and rolls to a stop. The window hums down and a concerned face peers out at me and takes in my battered appearance with worried eyes. A man. In his late forties, early fifties, maybe. I don’t really care. He’s a person, and in this moment, an annoyance, too. I want to be left alone, left to my grief and pain.

"Miss, are you alright? Do you need help?"

I blink slowly. The man’s words take a long moment to penetrate the fog enshrouding my mind. Help? No, there's no help for me now. Jake is dead. Diesel is dead. I'm beyond saving.

I shake my head numbly.

"No. No, I don't need help." My voice sounds foreign to my own ears, flat and lifeless. "But can I borrow your phone? Please?"

The man hesitates, clearly torn between their instinct to aid someone in obvious distress and respecting my refusal.

"Are you sure? I really think you should let me call for some help… like the police or an ambulance."

"I am calling for help," I interrupt. "Just not for me. Please. I need to borrow your phone. It's an emergency."

Something in my tone must convince him of my urgency. With obvious reluctance, he hands his cell phone out the window to me. I take it with a muttered thanks, my bloody fingers leaving macabre smears on the screen as I quickly dial the number for The Noble Fir.

It rings once, twice.

Then Molly's familiar voice answers, sending a pang through my chest. "Noble Fir, this is Molly."

"Molly, it's Samantha," I say, struggling to keep my voice steady. "Listen to me. It's a trap. Moretti is setting the club up. He’s going to attack the clubhouse.”

I hang up. I can’t wait for her response; I don’t want to hear it. If I talk to her, she might try to convince me to come to the clubhouse, and I can’t face the friends and family of the man I betrayed and murdered.

I hand the phone back to the man. “Thank you.”

The man's concern only seems to deepen at my cryptic words to Molly. He leans further out the window and his eyes search my face for answers he’d never understand, even if he knew what questions to ask. "Are you sure you don't need a ride somewhere? Anywhere at all? You're clearly hurt..."

I shake my head again, feeling disconnected from my body. The physical pain is distant, muted beneath the devastating crush of emotional agony. What does it matter if I'm injured? My heart, my soul, my life is already shattered beyond repair. "No. Thank you, but no. I just need to walk."

He frowns, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving me alone in such a state. "But what are you going to do? Where will you go? You need medical attention."

A bitter, broken laugh escapes my lips. What am I going to do? Where will I go? Good questions. Ones I have no answers for. My entire life, my entire world, has crumbled to dust in mere hours. I have no direction. No plan. The future stretches before me, bleak and empty.

"I don't know. I'm just going to walk. And keep walking. Maybe I’ll try to start over, I guess. Or maybe I'll die out here. Bleed out on the side of the road. It doesn't really matter anymore, does it?" A fatalistic numbness settles over me as I speak the words aloud.

The man's eyes widen in alarm, but I don’t wait for his response.

I turn, and I walk.