Page 52 of I Wish I Would’ve Warned You (Forbidden Wishes #3)

COLE

Back Then

That Night

When I realized the type of “family” man my father really was.

T he acrid stench of burning rubber yanks me out of sleep before I even realize I was drifting.

The world is sideways.

I'm crumpled against the passenger side door, earbuds still in, music muffled beneath the high-pitched screech of tires against pavement. My favorite band is still playing. A love song—totally wrong for this moment.

But the noise that cuts through it is real.

It’s the sound of metal, speed, chaos. It’s him .

I jerk upright and scan the cabin. My father is gripping the wheel with one hand, the other raised like a conductor in a symphony he’s too drunk to lead.

His mouth moves to the words of some old country song, eyes glassy, distant, unbothered.

The car veers wildly between lanes, a pinball bouncing off imaginary rails.

Cold air blasts from the vents like a freezer door left open, but the scent inside the car is warm. Thick with overpriced cologne. Sweat. Whiskey.

He jerks the wheel around a minivan, laughing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shove my seatbelt off and launch forward, climbing into the front seat. My pulse is everywhere at once—neck, chest, ears.

“Oh, son,” he drawls, like we’re having a road trip moment. “Don’t you just love this song? Gotye really nailed it. Somebody that I used to know… ”

“Pull over. Now. ”

“Lila’s not answering my calls anymore,” he slurs, ignoring me. “Says she deserves more than a relationship behind closed doors.”

“Brake!” I grab the wheel as we skim the shoulder. “Hit the fucking brakes!”

“Okay, okay,” he mutters, like I’m being dramatic. He taps the pedal.

The car lurches.

Forward.

Faster.

“Shit,” I whisper. “Dad—please— pull over .”

“I am slowing down.” He sounds hurt. “You’ve got to stop yelling and just listen .”

Eighty. Ninety. One-ten.

Up ahead, the road curves. Too sharp to make at this speed. Headlights flash in the opposite lane. Someone honks. The wheel jerks.

“She says she wants more,” he says dreamily. “But I want her. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

Then the sirens start. Blue and white strobe through the rearview mirror. A cruiser’s closing in.

Time stretches.

Then shatters.

The car flips—metal screams, glass bursts, gravity disappears. My head cracks against something hard. The roof caves. My vision blacks out, then snaps back in.

We slam to the pavement. Right side up.

The windshield’s a spiderweb. My door is empty glass. I’m bleeding. Shirt soaked. Chest sticky.

Mine?

I move my fingers. My arms. My legs. Pain flares, but I can move.

Smoke rises from the hood. Gasoline stings my eyes.

“Dad,” I croak, throat raw. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, son,” he coughs. “You?”

“Yeah.”

We’re outside the vehicle now. Sitting on the shoulder, slumped in gravel and glass. Someone must’ve pulled us out.

A voice calls out, distant but growing. “Is anyone else in the car?”

A flashlight slices through the smoke. A uniformed officer approaches.

My father lifts a hand. “We’re it. Just me and my son.”

The cop nods. “Who was driving tonight?”

Silence.

I stare at my father. Blood in my mouth. On my hands. On his shirt.

He stares at the cop, then back at me.

“I need one of you to take a Breathalyzer,” the officer says calmly.

“My son was drinking,” my father says, voice low and rehearsed. “I know he has to face the consequences… but as a courtesy, can you book him later this morning?”

My lungs stop working.

I wait for the cop to ask anything . To use his eyes. To see the bruises, the bleeding, the placement. But instead, the man squints at me.

“You know,” he mutters, “usually the drunk driver walks away clean. Nice to see karma give someone a bruise for once.”

He turns to my father. “Let me call my supervisor. Hold tight, Mr. Dawson.”

As the officer walks away, my father leans in, breath still laced with whiskey.

“I owe you,” he says. “Whenever you need a favor—whatever it is—you just say the phrase: Warned You . I won’t ask questions. I’ll do it.”

I say nothing.

“Son, did you hear me? I owe you. This was my wake-up call. I swear.”

Still nothing.

EMTs arrive and wrap gauze around my head, take my vitals, draw blood. One of them whispers that I’m lucky.

But luck doesn’t explain the seizures that follow. The blackouts. The years I lose to a truth no one believed.

Later, a doctor clears me. “Just a gash,” he says.

Just.

A police officer drives us home. I shower blood from my skin before the sun rises. Then sit in a holding cell for six hours.

My father posts bond without a word.

The charges stick to my name.

And if I hadn’t met Emily the night I came back to Nashville—if she hadn’t looked at me like I was worth knowing, worth saving —maybe my version of Warned You would’ve been simple:

Don’t ever speak to me again.

But instead, he whispered:

“You know I’ve got a lot at stake. If I go down for something like this… you’ll lose out too. You’ll lose me. ”

I looked him in the eye.

“What the hell are you saying?”

He smiled, confident. Delusional.

“Come on, son… You don’t really need me to spell it out for you, do you?”