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Jogging across the parking lot, the tears began rolling unchecked down my face as my heart broke into a thousand shards. I pulled the fob out of my pocket and unlocked the doors.
Grabbing the handle, my legs gave out from under me, and I went to my knees in the parking lot. Pain shot through them as I clung to the side of the car, my fingers buried in the rubber along the window. I let the sobs come and released the grief from inside my heart.
I don’t know how long I’d been there when the rivulets of water trailed down the back of my head to my mouth. Somehow, I’d missed it was raining, and I knew I had to get up. I just needed to get into the car.
Climbing to my feet, I grabbed the rain-soaked keys off the ground and crawled inside the front seat of Cole’s Audi Q7. I was soaking wet as another wave of grief crashed over me. Leaning forward, I covered my face with my hands as the tears and more sobs tore me limb from limb.
No injury had ever hurt this badly.
Eventually, I was cried out, and the numbness set back in. I leaned back, ruining his leather seats with my soaking wet clothes, and lulled my head on the headrest. It felt a like a million pounds, and the pain throbbing at my temples was excruciating.
When the Black Suburbans pulled around the venue to the back, I knew it was time to go. I couldn’t watch him leave without me.
Thank fuck the wet key fob didn’t deter the car from starting. I just had to get out of there.
Shifting into Drive, I pulled out and headed for the interstate back to Portland. The bag in the backseat with all his favorite snacks shifted and tipped over when I took the turn a bit too quickly.
I turned up the sound system as loud as I could stand it and hit the interstate. The rain came and went as I sped down the highway. One of the drones was sure to ticket me, but I didn’t give a fuck.
Donovan’s words were on replay in my head as he reassured me that my childhood trauma was real, and my reaction to it made sense. I had a long way to go to address everything, but it was a start to having the life with Cole I’d denied both of us. I was going to tell him about going to therapy, but it probably didn’t matter now.
As I got closer to Portland, all I could think about was how holding all my pain in had ruined my life. I’d allowed it to destroy my relationship with the most important person in the world.
Cole.
And I’d never told him why.
Never given him a reason for keeping us in the closet for seventeen years. Because of my selfishness, I’d lost him for good.
The tears started again as I sped up. I needed to get home and crawl into bed.
I wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, then changed lanes to pass a truck.
I didn’t see the lights from the car approaching in the other lane.
Time stood still as the impact to the driver’s side folded the metal and glass into my side, and caused excruciating pain in my arm and stomach that almost took my breath away. The air bags deployed and exploded in my face, cutting off my vision of what was happening. Sounds of screeching and groaning metal across concrete and shattering glass filled my ears as I was tossed around the front seat like a rag doll. The smell of burning rubber and something else I couldn’t identify filled the car as the final slam into something hard immediately stopped all movement, causing me to ricochet off the inside of the car again.
Everything else stopped, but the radio continued to play. Cole’s voice floated into the air from the speakers, singing about heartbreak and walking away from the person you loved. It was their number one hit.
The pain in my body suddenly started to dissipate. Adrenaline, I suppose.
I knew I was probably going to die.
There was comfort in hearing his voice as I left this world. I was okay with dying, because without him, life meant nothing.
And just like the final note in a song, everything went black.
CHAPTER 7
COLE
I wasn’t in the mood to be in this swanky bar, but also tried not to be a stick in the mud. This was my band, and they deserved to celebrate whether or not I wanted to.
We’d finished a late dinner with everyone, and now we were hanging out at a local bar. It wasn’t as good as Alejandro’s, but it would do.
As much as I wanted to be in the moment, my mind was on Patrick and how our life had come to this. He should have been here with me from the beginning. I’d never pushed him about coming out because I knew he was dealing with something. Something had to be holding him back because none of this shit made any sense to me. He could never give me an answer when I asked why, especially after he signed with the Pirates.
Everyone was having a good time while I sat back with a beer I hadn’t touched and thought about how tonight could have been so different for us. Owen was dancing with his girlfriend. She was wrapped around him, and he looked like he was okay with it. She’d driven him crazy while we’d been gone, blowing up his phone before and after every performance, but I guess they’d made up.
