Authors: Jamie Blair
KOLTON
Where was Lauren?
Connor stuffed his fourth chocolate chip cookie into his mouth and wiped the crumbs on his pants. He was an okay guy, I guess. We hadn’t talked much.
“There you are.” Kristin came up behind us and wrapped her arms around Connor’s middle. “Kolton, how did you get back here before me?” She glanced around the room and nodded to the doors on the opposite side. “You guys must’ve gone around and come in the other side. Sneaky. Where’s Lauren? Did you mess up her lipstick?” She shrugged her eyebrows suggestively.
“What do you mean? I’ve been standing here the whole time.” Lauren only told me Kristin was smart, she didn’t mention anything about her being nuts. “Isn’t Lauren with you?”
She smirked and tilted her head. “Very funny.”
“I’m not being funny.”
“Stop messing with me,” she said, laughing and shoving my shoulder.
Whatever.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and searched the room. Lauren probably came back in and stopped to talk to someone. She knew everyone here, after all.
“We’re going to go dance,” Kristin said. “When Lauren comes back, come join us, ‘kay?”
“Sure.” I smiled and watched them walk onto the dance floor. After a few more minutes, I felt like a stalker who crashed the prom—the guy nobody knew, standing there staring at everyone around him.
Where the hell was Lauren? Unease crept in, and I fought against it, because we were at prom—what was there to be uneasy about? But Lauren wouldn’t leave me standing here alone like this.
Something felt off.
I made my way between couples to where Kristin and Connor were dancing. “Hey. Where did Lauren go?”
She looked at me like I was stoned. “How should I know. You were the one who lured her down the hall and around the corner.”
It felt like a brick dropped inside my head. The realization slammed into me hard and heavy. “No. That wasn’t me.”
“What?” she said. The music was too loud for her to hear me.
“That wasn’t me!”
She took in my expression and her eyes widened. “Come on.”
With my hand in Kristin’s iron grasp, she dragged me off the dance floor. We ran out into the hall and down past the bathrooms with Connor on our heels. “Around this corner. You—someone—called out to her and she followed him.”
“You didn’t recognize him?” We rounded the corner. “Lauren?” I called.
“We thought it was you.” Kristin darted ahead. “Lauren!”
I could hardly see, it was so dark. There was the sound of shoes sliding, and Kristin squealed. “Ouch! Shit!”
“Kris, are you okay?” Connor was right beside me. We were only a few feet away.
“Yeah,” she said. “The floor’s wet in front of this door.”
“I wish we could freaking see.” I said, trying to avoid the puddle.
There was only enough light to not run into each other or the walls.
“I don’t think this is water,” Connor said, helping Kristin to her feet. “Your dress…”
“What the hell?” Kristin twisted around, looking at the dark splotches on the back of her dress.
“It looks like blood,” Connor said, bent over getting a closer look.
Blood?
Dread flared through my veins, ice cold and fevered, probing me forward. I grasped the doorknob and flung the door open.
My world crashed around me. Lauren lay crumpled in a pool of blood against the wall. I fell to my knees and grabbed her. “Lauren!”
OhGodohGodohGodplease. Please!
“Oh my God!”
Kristin cried, hysterical.
“Oh my God!”
“Lauren?” I shook her gently. “Please, open your eyes.” Choking back tears, I felt for a pulse. It was faint.
“I’m calling 9-1-1,” Connor said.
Kristin knelt beside me, shaking and sobbing. “Lauren.” She picked tendrils of Lauren’s hair out of the blood drying on her face.
I pulled the red handkerchief that matched Lauren’s dress out of my breast pocket and dabbed the blood from her face. “She’s alive,” I whispered. It was all I could manage.
She was alive and had to stay alive.
She was everything. She was my future. My life was laying on the floor in a pool of blood.
LAUREN
Faint wisps of memories lingered in my head—flickers of how I ended up in a hospital bed. My face was sore and swollen and covered in bandages and tape.
“Please talk to us.” Mom sat beside me on the bed with her hand on my leg. “How could this happen?” she whispered. Her face was splotchy from crying.
Amy knelt beside my head. “What do you remember?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” It was all a blur that I couldn’t piece together.
“How can we help?” Mom scooted closer to my head and rubbed my arm.
“I don’t know.”
“Hey,” Amy brushed my hair back and lowered her face closer to mine. “Look at me.”
I turned my head, blinked back the tears, and she came into focus. Her brows were drawn together. “I feel like I’m dying,” I said, and started bawling.
Her arms pulled me to her. She kissed the top of my head and rocked me. “I’m so sorry. Will you talk to me about it?”
I pushed myself away and looked down at my hospital gown, remembering my beautiful dress. “His brother. His brother did this.”
Struck by panic, I recalled the slash and burn of the knife across my cheek in the dark. I gasped for air and touched my face.
She pulled me to her again and held on tight. “That’s what the police told us. Why did he do this to you?” Her voice was calm, but edged with hysteria that could crack her composure any second.
“I don’t know.” Visions spun and merged. I’d thought Kyle was Kolton at first, when I followed him down the hall. Then I was pulled inside the dark closet with two fierce blue eyes focused on my own.
I sobbed into her shoulder, making my bandages wet and soggy. It all happened so fast. One minute the world was mine. The next….
KOLTON
I went to the only place I could sort through the spinning blackness cluttering my head—our dune.
Although it was the middle of the night, it was still humid. The moon reflected off the waves. I lay back and let the heat seep into me and the gulls’ barks penetrate my mind. I couldn’t sleep in that hotel room without Lauren. I ached for her. I needed her laugh to shake loose the disgust that clung to the walls of my stomach. Disgust at myself for hurting her.
This was all my fault.
There’d been a voicemail waiting on my phone.
Tabby.
I’m so sorry, Kolton
, she’d said.
It’s all my fault. He did it for me
. She was sobbing.
Kyle did it for me. I love you. I didn’t want her to have you. God, Kolton, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he’d do this.
Exhaustion teamed with the anger swimming in my mind. The weight of sleeplessness crushed me. I curled up in Lauren’s spot and filled myself with her. I summoned her hair, its smell, and how it felt in my hands. I summoned her warm breath in my ear. I summoned her full, delicate lips on mine.
The sound of the waves crashing wasn’t loud enough. I had to get nearer. Their breaking had to crush me. The water had to smother the fire that raged inside me.
I ran to the edge and let the tide roll over the tops of my feet. I stepped forward, one foot, the other, over and over, up to my knees, wading out to my chest, bobbing on my toes until my head went under.
I held my breath, contemplating slipping deeper underwater. Only one person stood between me and the endless seconds racing by into black nothingness.
Lauren.
She was my life raft. Everyone else was an anchor weighing me down, holding me back. Lauren set me free.
And now she was gone. I couldn’t subject her to the memory of tonight by being with me.
I sat in my car in the dark, soaked, debating where to go. Home meant facing Mom and too many questions I wanted to avoid.
Lauren’s cottage drew me. My car drove, as if on autopilot, into her driveway. Idiotic as it was, a pang of disappointment shot through me looking up at the vacant house, standing dark. But her presence was still so strong there, it seemed like she should’ve been at the door waiting for me.
My fingers dragged along the weathered wooden railing as I climbed the stairs. I cupped my hands on the windowpane and looked through into the kitchen. If I stood there long enough, my shear will might make her appear on the couch, or sitting at the table.
I slouched down onto the deck and leaned back against the house under the window. I had nowhere to go, and I had to tell Lauren that we couldn’t be together.
LAUREN
Kolton disappeared when I needed him the most. I knew what was happening inside his head. His emotional pain was just as strong as my physical pain. I could hear him saying, “Everything I touch turns to shit, Lauren.”
Now he had my face as evidence.
Not that he’d seen my face.
He’d called and talked to my mom the morning after it happened. He’d gone back home already.
Every minute that passed without hearing from him came with more and more anger. How could he be so selfish? He could drown in the pity of his own life and still be here for me.
It wasn’t until the day after I got home from the hospital, three total after the attack, that he called.
“Hi,” I said, with only a hint of uncertainty and irritation in my voice.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not, and I’m fine. Thanks for calling and asking.”
“
Please
,” he said, the word rasp and urgent. “You’re not fine, and this happened because of me. I knew what I was getting you into. I knew it couldn’t work out. You deserve better. I should’ve stayed away from you. I knew I’d end up ruining you.”
“Stop. Kolton, stop.”
“Lauren, I love you, and because I love you, I have to stay away from you. You’re going to have an incredible life, but only if I’m not around to destroy it.”
“No!” I shot up in bed, making my head spin. “This isn’t about you! This isn’t your decision. We’re going to school together in the fall. Everything is going to be perfect, do you understand me?”
“Lauren, I hurt you. I’m sorry. I can’t let it happen again.” He took a great, shaky breath. “Goodbye.”
“No,” I whispered, but it was too late, he’d hung up.