working to get my head sort of straight with Dr. Perry, and I just need to tell you the truth. And I don’t know how you will feel afterward. You might walk out of here this time and really never speak to me again. You might end up hating me.” Tears clogged my throat. “But I need to tell you something.”
A change came over Sebastian. Since I knew him so well, I could see it. A wall dropped, and he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “I could never hate you, Lena.”
My heart shattered into a million pieces at the almost brutal sweetness of those words. He had no idea. None. He could hate me. That was real. But I took a deep steadying breath anyway and said, “When I got into the car the night Cody was driving, I...I wasn’t drunk. I could’ve stopped him. I didn’t.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sebastian didn’t move. He didn’t speak for the longest moment. His steady gaze didn’t leave my face as he finally said, “What happened that night wasn’t your fault, Lena.”
“I am partially at fault,” I said, using Dr. Perry’s phrasing. “That’s why I haven’t talked about what happened this whole time. I could have stopped Cody. I should have. But I didn’t.”
He straightened, that muscle flexing along his jaw again. Another pregnant pause that stretched my nerves thin. “Tell me what you need to say, Lena.”
My lips moved without sound at first, and it took a couple of seconds for me to get the words out right. I wanted to do what Dr. Perry had told me to do: to rewind and start from the beginning, no matter how hard it was.
“After you and I... After we talked at the party, I went and hung out with Abbi and Keith. They were having an intense conversation. I don’t know about what. It was kind of like they were arguing and flirting at the same time. I sat with them for a while but didn’t drink anything. Just water and I think... No, I’m sure I drank a Coke. Then it was getting late, and I just wanted to leave.”
That night, sitting on the chair beside Abbi, I had been thinking only about Sebastian, about him and Skylar disappearing, having no idea that in a matter of hours, none of that would matter.
I took another gulp of air and didn’t look at him, because he knew why I hadn’t come to find him like I’d promised. “Megan was ready to go home, too. She was hungry and wanted chicken nuggets. I don’t even know how Cody ended up leaving. Megan and I were walking with Chris and then Cody was just there. Chris was pretty messed up. Someone said he’d been drinking since that afternoon, and he said he was too tired to drive. Cody took the keys, and he seemed fine at first. I swear he did. But I remember seeing him reach for the handle of the driver’s door and miss it.”
Closing my eyes, I spoke through the rawness. “I asked him if he was okay to drive and he said yes. He actually seemed kind of annoyed about the question. I didn’t want to get into the car. It was instinct, I guess. I was just standing there, and then Chris was telling me to get in the car and Megan was pushing me and Phillip was joking around like he always was and Cody said he only had one drink that night, but I knew...I knew...that wasn’t the case. He said he was fine, though, and I...I didn’t want to be that person, you know? The one who makes a big deal out of nothing.”
Tears pricked my eyelids. “But I guess I became a different kind of person, because I should’ve tried to stop him. I knew he’d had more than one drink. His face was flushed. I shouldn’t have gotten in the car, because he wasn’t okay to drive, and God...it happened so fast. I texted Dary and was about to text Abbi where I was. The radio was on. Music was playing. I remember wind coming in through the windows. I remember thinking that we were going fast and then I heard Cody shout and Megan scream. And that...that was it.” I let out a shaky breath. “So, you see, I could’ve done something. Stopped him. Stayed behind. Driven the car myself. I just did the wrong thing, and I’m...”
I didn’t know what else to say.
I was done, and I wanted to slip off the bed and hide under it, but all I could do was sit and wait for the anger and the disappointment. Part of telling him was dealing with how he felt afterward.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked at Sebastian.
His face was pale and tight. His hands were on his knees, his knuckles bleached.
“You...you remember the accident?”
I nodded. “Up until I lost consciousness. Something hit me in the head, but I remember the car hitting the tree and flipping. I remember the car rolling. It...it was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. I thought...” I trailed off, because Sebastian had to know what I thought.
I’d thought I was going to die.
“Jesus.” He closed his eyes tight. Then he said, “I knew.”
“What?” I breathed.
He leaned forward again, the chair creaking under his weight. “I’ve always known you weren’t drunk that night.”
“I don’t understand.”
His hands slid off his knees. “I think I’ve only seen you drunk once, and that wasn’t at a party. It was when Megan dared you to drink the bottle of wine your mother had forgotten about in the cabinet. You were too trashed to walk upstairs and Megan had to come get me to carry you to bed.”
A watery smile pulled at my lips. Damn Megan. I’d forgotten about that messy wine-induced horror show. “I got so sick.”
“Yeah, you did.” He tilted his head, his own smile sad. “And as soon as I got you upstairs in your bedroom, I then had to carry you to the bathroom, where you turned into a volcano of vomit.”
Oh gosh.
Sebastian had held me up with one arm around my waist, and Megan had scooped strands of hair back from my face. That was two years ago.
It had also been the first and only time I’d gotten drunk.
For some reason I never thought that Sebastian even remembered that.
“I know you don’t drink more than a couple of mouthfuls, and unless you decided to change it up that night, I knew you couldn’t have been drunk,” he said.
“So...” I wet my lips, stunned. “So you suspected this whole entire time that I was sober and got in that car anyway?”
Sebastian nodded. “I didn’t know if you really remembered the accident or not. You said you didn’t, and since you wouldn’t talk about it, I figured you didn’t have solid memories of it. Knowing that you do, though? Hell...”
I was thunderstruck.
His gaze held mine. “I probably would’ve gotten in the car.”
“What?” My entire body jolted, and I started to stand, but my knees went weak.
“I probably would’ve done the same thing,” he said. “Shit. I know I would’ve. I would’ve taken Cody for his word, and I would’ve gotten in the car just like you did. I don’t even know if I would’ve thought about it as much as you had.”
“No. You wouldn’t have. Sebastian, you would’ve stopped him. You—”
“I’d been drinking that night and had been planning to drive you home,” he interrupted, collapsing back in his chair. “I told you that before. I could’ve been Cody. I know I could’ve been. Drink a couple of beers, think I was fine and then get behind a wheel. I cannot even count how many times I’ve done that.”
I started to say it wasn’t the same thing, but it was, and I didn’t know what to say or do. I was expecting him to be furious and disappointed in me, but his expression showed none of those things, and neither did his words or actions.
He got up, walked over to the bed and sat next to me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to at that moment.
I realized as he stared at me that he really had known the truth this entire time. He’d known I could’ve done better, I should’ve, but he also had been honest with himself. He knew he’d been in that situation himself and had made bad choices, but, as Dr. Perry said, he’d gotten lucky. He’d never had to pay the consequences for those decisions.
It didn’t make what he’d done okay.
It didn’t make what I’d done okay.
But he wasn’t judging me, and he had ne
ver judged me. This whole entire time I’d been so afraid of what he would think of me, and he already knew. He knew and was still there for me. He knew and still said he loved me.
My shoulders lowered centimeter by centimeter. “You don’t hate me? You’re not disgusted or dis—”
“Stop. I could never think those things, Lena. Not about you.”
A wave of relief rose, tinged with a deep sorrow that started loosening its razor-sharp claws. My voice was thick when I spoke. “But how? I’m so disgusted with myself. I h-hate myself.”
“You made a mistake, Lena.” He leaned in closer. “That was what happened. You didn’t kill them. You made a mistake.”
A mistake that cost people their lives.
I shuddered, lifting my hands to my face. Smoothing my palms over my cheeks, I willed the wetness gathering to go away, because I was tired of crying.
“Lena,” he said, voice low and rough. “Come here.”
Sebastian extended his hand.
I was moving before I gave thought about what I was doing. My hand folded into his, and when he hauled me into his lap, knees on either side of his hips, my arms went around his waist.
He clasped the sides of my face and, without saying a word, he kissed my cheek once and then twice, and he kissed away each tear that fell, and a heartbeat passed.
I broke. Ripped right open.
He made a sound in the back of his throat and then pulled my face to his chest. Tears streamed down my face, dampening the front of his shirt within seconds. His arms swept around me and he held me tight, held me close as I cried for Megan, for the guys, for Abbi and Dary, and for myself.
* * *
We lay side by side in bed, our faces separated by only a few inches. It was late, well past midnight, and the morning was going to come soon enough, but neither of us were sleeping. We had whispered to one another after the tears had subsided. I told him about the guilt, how it weighed on me, about how I wanted nothing more than to go back to that night and make different choices. I told him about the nightmares and how my mom knew the truth, how disappointed I knew she really was but wasn’t saying. I admitted to wishing I hadn’t quit volleyball. I told him how I talked to Keith today and what I realized. I even told him about Abbi.
Sebastian listened.
“Are you going to talk to them?” he asked. “Abbi and Dary?”
“I need to.” My arms were folded against my chest. “It’s not going to be easy, but I need to.” I shifted my legs. “Has Abbi said anything to you about the accident?”
“No. Nothing beyond what everyone else has said. Nothing about you.” He inched closer. “Abbi has gotten really close with Keith, and I think she’s helping him deal with everything on his end.” He reached over the small distance and hooked his fingers around a strand of my hair that had fallen across my cheek. “What’s going on with Keith is so different. No one blames you or your family. They don’t know what you told me, and even if they did, I think most people would understand you made a mistake.”
A deadly mistake.
“But with Keith, everyone knows his family furnished the alcohol. They were the adults, and it’s really tearing his family up,” Sebastian explained quietly. “No one is really saying anything to Keith, but he’s having a rough time. Not to sound like an ass, but he’s letting his friends help him and...”
“And I didn’t,” I finished, feeling gross. I hadn’t really even thought about what Keith was going through.
Sebastian trailed a finger over my cheekbone, drawing my gaze back to him. Something, I wasn’t sure what exactly, had changed between us. It was almost tangible, and I think it had happened when he kissed away my tears and held me through the worst of them.
“You really not going to homecoming this weekend?” he asked.
The change of subject made me think of Skylar. “What about you?”
“Was going with some of the guys.”
“Not Skylar?”
His brows shot up. “No.” He laughed. “Why would you think that?”
I felt my cheeks heat. “You guys have been getting chatty again.”
“We’ve always been chatty,” he replied drolly. “She’s actually going with someone from Wood.”
“Really?” Surprise flashed through me. “I heard that you two were talking about homecoming.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “We talked about it, but not going together.” His gaze searched mine. “She knows I’m not going back there with her, and you should know that, too. Just because things...didn’t pan out the way I hoped doesn’t mean I’m going to play someone else.”
Things panning out had to do with me. I knew that.
Sebastian smoothed his thumb over my jaw. “There’s always prom.”
I liked how he said that. “There is prom.”
He was silent for several moments and then said, “Thank you for tonight.”
I frowned. “You’re thanking me?”
“Yeah.” His hand slid down to my shoulder and he squeezed. “You’ve been carrying this around and you’re not doing that by yourself anymore. You’ve told me. You’re going to talk to Abbi and Dary. You’re really not alone in this anymore.”
A tired smile tugged at my lips. “Shouldn’t I be thanking you, then?”
“Nah. I didn’t do anything. I just listened.”
But that was incredibly powerful.
“It’s all you,” he added.
Sebastian was sort of right. A lot of it was me.
My sleepy smile spread. Tonight...talking to Sebastian, was big, because either I could let what I’d done wreck me or I could learn to live with it.
That was the only choice I could make at this point, and I had to make the right one this time.
I was going to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dr. Perry was so ecstatic with my progress Wednesday morning he gave me an assignment. Two, actually, not counting the talk I needed to have with Abbi and Dary.
“There are two things I want you to do,” he said. “Both are incredibly important to the grieving process. First off, I want you to dedicate one day a week to grief.”
My brows pinched. “Like, the whole day?”
“Not the whole day, unless you feel like you need that,” he clarified. “It can be just an hour or several hours. What I want you to do on that day is spend time remembering your friends. Look at old pictures, visit their social media accounts if they’re still available, write about them. I want you to think about them, remember them and process those feelings. Do you think you can do that?”
I could. It would be hard, especially looking at their pictures and seeing their last posts, but I could do it.
“Grieving them isn’t an easy thing to do, especially for you. Mainly because you feel a responsibility toward what happened. And it’s never easy grieving the deaths of those who ultimately played their own role in their deaths.” He rested his arms on the table. “I see a lot of anger and uncertainty when working with families of those who have overdosed. What you need to remember, at the end of the day, is that these people were your friends. No matter what happened, you cared about them and you are allowed to grieve them.”
Nodding slowly, I said, “I can do it.”
“What day?” he immediately followed up.
“Um.” I wrinkled my nose. “I could do Sunday evenings?” I also thought Sunday evenings were kind of depressing anyway.
“Sounds good. The second thing I want you to do is actually a commitment.”
I raised a brow.
“By the end of the year, I want you to visit their graves.”
My stomach immediately tumbled at the thought.
A sympathetic look filled his eyes. “I know. When you see their graves, it’ll be very final, but I think that for you, it’s necessary. You were unable to attend their services. Visiting their grave site may do more for you than just providing closure.”
Pressure clamped down on my chest, but I nodded. ??
?I can do that.”
Because I had to.
Because I had made the decision to not let the choices I made on August 19 define my life or wreck it.