by Ella James
All I have left is my secret. And a flame of pride, because I never let her near it.
I get into my car, and I start driving. I don’t think of what I’ll do or say. I don’t think of anything but him.
I need to see him. Need to hear it from his mouth.
I’m speeding down a rural highway, en route to his house, when I have to dim my brights for a large SUV.
It looks like Kellan’s Escalade.
THE NEED FOR CLEO is an agony. I’m so numb, the only place I really feel it is my chest. It’s like a fire in there. The deadened parts of me can sense the heat. My throat and face. My throat aches. My shoulders and my arms and everything feels... bad. My fingers rub the leather of the wheel. I have this urge to shift my legs, but I remember that I’m driving.
I fix my eyes on the dark road and I think desperately of where I’d find her. I want to see her one last time. I know I can’t... but it’s so fucking hard. Denying myself this.
As I drive, I think of what she’d say if she knew. What she might do.
I don’t know. I do know.
She would hold me. It would feel good.
Today was bad.
I can’t keep doing this.
My eyes blur.
Even through the haze drifting around me, I know what I have to do. Before he comes. Robert.
The car is bumping over the shoulder before I realize that my hands must have slipped. I hit the brakes. The Escalade fish-tails in the grass. Jolts to a stop.
I lean over the steering wheel.
Cleo. I can only whisper. I’m so tired.
I lift my head and try to will my brain to think. I can’t pass out here. Need... to keep driving. But—no wrecks. I don’t want a wreck that hurts someone.
I sift through the haze. Cleo. Not at the sorority house. My lips curve a little as I picture her sitting in her car atop the parking deck. She would wait for me there. It would be a fantasy.
The fire is back.
It wakes me up.
I look between the treetops and the moon.
Something... please.
I get out of the car. It’s like my body... thinking on its own. I stumble in the grass and tip my head back.
There. The sky.
I don’t want it. I would tell her I don’t want to. I want her. I can’t. I know. I have to hurry. Now I’m... just too tired.
I get into the car. I dream while I drive. Warm hands and her hugging arms. My mom’s got cookies. Lyon with the football. Cleo on the bed.
She says, “You can talk to me, you know.”
I start to whisper. I press a hand to my forehead... so I can think.
The bridge is near here... right? The rail is bent. The drop is steep.
I tell her all the things. The whole story. Flat green pastures gleam under the moon. I pass a cow beside his fence.
My speeding heart begins to slow, as if it knows the score. My mind clears like the sky as clouds shift, revealing a bright moon. Pale light winks over my hood.
Some ways ahead, the road bends left. I press the pedal: fifty-five... then sixty. I take the curve at seventy.
Cleo... Cleo.
The road runs straight. I can see the bright lines of the bridge’s metal rails.
It’s definitely him. And I’m a stalker freak, because I’m tailing him. I wasn’t going to. It started with an innocent U-turn. Why go to his house if he’s not there? But then I saw his car pull over on the roadside. So I dimmed my lights and stopped a hundred yards or so behind him. When he got back in and turned onto another road, a more rural road, I just... kept following.
What do I want?
No idea.
Through the woods, I follow him. Along a winding road pinned in by fields. Beside the fence line, cows cluster. Bright moonlight stripes the long fields, casts crooked shadows through an orchard of pecan trees.
Pine-needles shimmer with moon dust. Kellan’s inky car glints as he swerves a little to the right.
I picture her head between his thighs and press the brakes a little, halfway hoping that he’ll see me in his rear-view mirror.
My eyes trace his silhouette. I can’t see hers...
I picture her pink lips around his dick. The way his legs flex, right foot heavy on the pedal. The Escalade surges forward as if my narrative is true. I see a creek off to my left, glinting in between the trees. The road squiggles, and Kellan’s Escalade dips into the left lane for half a heartbeat. I touch the brakes again, a mime of what I wish he’d do, but Kellan flies around the bend.
I punch the pedal. “Slow down, Kell...”
Next time I sight him, he is riding with the car’s right side on the shoulder.
My head feels hot. My pulse picks up. I reach into my lap, to call who? The road curves sharply right and Kellan runs again into the left lane.
Fuck.
I top out at 75 mph and press the brakes out of sheer fear. But Kellan doesn’t.
Kellan disappears around another wooded bend.
I come around it... see a bridge. The sheen of moonlight on its metal rails. The glow is blotted—for one second. The rails are blotted by his car. I hear the Escalade punch through the guardrail with an awful screech. I watch in horror as it tumbles toward the water.
I RUN DOWN THE SHOULDER, I slip, I tumble down the hill that skirts the murky swampland. I scramble up just feet from the dark water, which splays about as wide as a skating rink.
The Escalade is near the middle of the reed-laced marsh, nose-down in the water... pointed a little left, toward me. It’s still moving, sinking ever so slowly into the muck. The waterline spills over the windshield. As I gape at it, the right side of the Escalade sinks down a few feet.
“Oh Jesus, God, fuck fuck!”
I jerk my shoes off, yank my pants off, and splash into the chilly sludge. I’m screaming, waving my arms above my head. I flop forward, belly-first, and try to freestyle, but the weeds are too thick. My arched feet fumble for the muddy bottom. I kick hard, but my feet touch nothing, so I’m swimming, gasping.
I hear a low glug-glug and see the car tilt even further downward on the front end. Fear cuts like a knife. Adrenaline makes my arms and legs move faster. My thigh bumps something hard. I shriek—fuck just a log. I’m almost there. Oh fuck, Kellan—what if he’s not even in the car?
Treading water, I try to look around. The night bears down around me, dark and textured. I surge forward.
“Buckle up for safety, Cleo...”
Please be in there!
Oh God, I can barely see the driver’s side door. There’s a door behind the driver’s door... the back door, I can open that. My throat constricts as I stroke closer to the car. It looks so large and dark. Over the stink of swamp I smell burned rubber, maybe even smoke.
I try the back door handle. How surreal to pull the handle up and brace my foot against the car’s body and tug. It won’t open!
I groan and pull harder, and the door opens! But the water that rushes into the Escalade somehow sucks it shut again.
“FUCK!”
I pull again, and when the door cracks open, causing a cascade of water to spill into the car, I keep pulling.
There is no doubt—not even any doubt inside my mind that I will get to Kellan—so I tug as hard as I can on the door and thrust my body at the gap between the door and door frame. My forehead smacks on something. I let out a sob and then I’m in the car! Water! It’s up to my boobs, but in the front seat...
“Kellan,” I sob. Fuck, the front is underwater almost. Is his face submerged? I jerk the door shut to stop it flowing in. My limbs are clumsy, my heart pumping as I splash between the front seats. Oh, his face... It’s not submerged, his head lolls leftward and there’s blood—
“Kellan! Wake up!” I grab his face before I realize don’t do that; the neck, and “KELLAN.... please!” The car jolts as it sinks further still, and I scream. The seatbelt! Got to get the seatbelt! Don’t look at his face! I reach into the tarry water and I feel
and... there! My clumsy fingers press against it... tiny, cool, metallic... it comes undone. I’m panting as I work the belt off of him. I try. It’s hard. He’s big. He isn’t moving.
What if—
No.
I slap his cheek. His eyes open, blinking blood... His head is bleeding.
“Wake up! Damnit, fuckshit, wake the fuck up... Come on!” I grab his right arm, tugging violently. I jerk him toward the back of the car and realize instantly that he will have to move himself. “Come on, you have to swim!”
There’s water to our necks now; Kellan’s head is tilted back. “Kellan, please!” I start to sob. He blinks twice, slow and dazed. His eyes roll... his eyes find mine.
“Come on, baby... Come on, we have to swim!”
I grab his arm, clawing his bicep as I tug him toward the back seat. “MOVE YOUR LEGS!”
He groans... his body twists... and then he slams against me. We move in a tangle to the back seat.
“Cleo...” He grabs me, looking confused. “What—”
“Shhh, I’m opening the door now, kick against the seat and push yourself out of the car.” The Escalade lurches leftward now. I sob and tell myself to shut the fuck up.
“Right now, Kell! I’m opening the door now, come on! Get in front of me...” I push his broad back forward, putting him in front of me, so I can push him out. I reach around him to push the door open. Stupid. I can’t push because he’s in my way—but Kellan pushes. He pushes the door, and I push him, and together we get the thing open.
Water pours in, so fast I almost don’t catch a last breath before the car is nearly full.
I push Kellan again, and he disappears into the murk.
The second I swim out behind him is the longest of my life. When I break the surface I find him treading water, moaning with his head tipped back.
I nudge his shoulder. He fumbles and chokes. I push his chin up. “Swim!” Rich boy—can swim. “Toward the shore!” I hit him and he gasps.
“My shoulder...” Water laps around his head. His face is pained. I grab a breath of air and sink and shove him with both arms. Resurface.
“Fuck...” I give his back a shove, but I can’t move him. He’s too fucking heavy.
Fuck... That slimy—duh, the ground! That’s the ground under my feet! “Kellan...”
I just barely get my arm around his neck before his eyes roll back into his head. My feet are mired in mud... I try to swim, to kick against the awful slimy ground. I cry as I struggle... then it’s shallow; I can stand completely but I can’t lift him. I struggle to the shore with him, pulling his torso out onto the mud. He’s bleeding... from his nose? His mouth?
I look around for help, but I don’t have my phone. I start to cry. I touch his head, his bloody face.
“Oh God! What do I do?” I wrap my hand around his mouth, feeling for breath. There it is, a little bit...
I’m running toward my car when I hear sirens.
“YES, I REALIZE NO VISITORS right now, but I just want an update.” I smack my fist against the front of the looming counter in the Emory University Hospital ER and bite my tongue so I don’t cuss this fucking woman out.
My hair is damp from sticking my head in the bathroom sink, the crevices of my fingernails are stained with Kellan’s blood, I’m wearing scrubs and paper shoes and my head aches—and no one will tell me shit.
“I’ve called a doctor, and we’re waiting on her, ma’am,” bitchy receptionist explains. Bitchily.
I glare at the yellow smiley faces on her hot pink scrubs and whirl around to sit back down.
The ambulance ride was awful. I mean... I’m glad one came, of course. Apparently a fisherman heard the wreck and called 9-1-1, which is a good thing, but the ride itself? Traumatic.
The EMTs pulled two Fentanyl patches off Kellan’s bare shoulder, which explained his blue lips, but after they got an oxygen mask on his busted face, they couldn’t figure out why he was bleeding so much from his nose and mouth. They wrapped his left arm against his bruised chest and I held his right hand until someone stole it from me to stick an IV into him.
They kept talking about overdoses and something called “narcan,” which I’ve since learned can help people who overdose on opiates. I said I was his girlfriend and they started asking me the basic questions like his age. I got his hand again, the fingers curled and cold, the wide, cool palm swathed in tape, an IV line curling around our joined hands, and as I stroked his fingers, I realized I know almost nothing about Kellan. I don’t even know his real, true, legal last name.
I explained what I do know to the EMTs and told them that I thought he might use a doctor at Emory, and someone, somehow, sometime confirmed that we were headed here.
The ride was long. My eyes swept up and down him as I folded his big hand between my warmer palms. I could see the awful, awful bruising on the left side of his ribcage as they tucked his arm against it... strapped it down and then they covered up his pretty abs, his perfect arms and shoulders.
The blanket was gray... and underneath the plastic mask his face was gray. The female ENT kept pulling the mask off and wiping his face with this white cloth thing, but it didn’t work. His nose and mouth kept bleeding. The few times his eyes would open, he looked hurt and scared and looked around until his gaze found me, and I would touch his hair and rub his shoulder as his body shook.
There was a neck brace on him, I noticed. When did that happen. His body was hidden under blankets but I watched his feet... stripped of their Keen sandals. His toes would curl as the EMTs shown light into his eyes and pulled the blanket back to stick a needle in... his thigh? He jerked. Their voices moved too loud and fast. The crackle of the radio... my mouth kissing his fingertips.
The male EMT prodded the inside of his left elbow and nodded at the female. “Lots of tracks there,” he said, covering the arm again.
“Track marks, like from shooting up? Needle marks?” I wailed.
The female EMT screwed up her face. He gave me a no shit look, and I started to cry. I never really stopped, just tried to keep it quiet as they labored over him, and Kellan’s eyes opened and shut and I said sweet things to him.
By the time we reached the ER drop off, Kellan’s face was snow white. The female EMTs told me to “stay put,” Kellan was in shock and needed blood. I had to let go of his poor, cold hand and stop myself from running with them as they spirited his cot into the ER.
Someone brought me dry pants and these weird shoes, and I cried some more, and talked to a cop who was nice and handed me a towel from his trunk.
Someone from the hospital—some sort of advocate woman—popped up and took her own notes as I answered questions for the accident report. And then the advocate told me she’d find out about Kellan, and she led me to a plastic chair.
That was coming up on three hours ago now. Physically, I might be the healthiest person in this room, but I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. I feel like I’m being psychologically tortured.
Just when I think I’m going to end up wringing smiley-face receptionist’s neck, a short-haired brunette in a white coat comes through the double doors. Her eyes dart around the room as she says, “Cleo Whatley?”
I rise and she blinks at me. She seems distracted, almost skittish. She tries to smile, stops half-way, and pushes a strand of short gray hair out of her green eyes.
“Cleo.” She waves me to her. “Has anybody spoken with you yet?”
I shake my head. She ushers me down a short, white hall, into a small, white room with a brown table and three chairs. She sits on the side with only one chair and nods at the two in front of her, which makes me cry because if Kellan was with me there would be two of us for two chairs, but that makes no sense...
The doctor plunks a tablet on the table and glances down into her lap, then up into my face.
“Hi there.” Her face is stuck somewhere between kind-and-understanding and gravely serious. Which makes my stomach do a flip.
“Can you te
ll me how my boyfriend is?” I manage hoarsely.
My voice breaks on the word “boyfriend,” as I remember that he’s not. He’s got a pregnant girlfriend. How fucked up is it that I still want him?
A box of Kleenex slides across the table toward me and I realize I’m crying again. I take two tissues and dab my cheeks.
“Is he okay?”
Her mouth flattens. Her face looks like no. “What do you know about Kellan’s health, Cleo?”
I look worriedly into her wide brown eyes. To see where she is leading me, so I can shelter myself. But I can’t tell. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I... think he has a drug problem. Maybe?”
She blinks, completely poker-faced. I watch her chest rise on an inhalation. “What makes you think that?”
My throat tightens—and I can tell I’m right in my guess. He does have a drug problem. Shit.
“Like I said, I found a bunch of pills at his house... recently.” I rub my finger over a ragged cuticle. “Also, the ambulance. They said... I saw pain patches. On his back.” My stomach twists so hard I have to swallow to be sure I don’t throw up on the table. I look at her. She says nothing. “Is he okay? You’re scaring me.”
“Cleo...” The doctor leans toward me. Her eyes widen. “What do you know about Kellan’s mental health?”
My throat tightens as if she’s slung a noose around it. “Nothing.” I bring a hand up to my chest. “Is there something I should know?” My voice wavers.
The short-haired doctor sits back in her chair. She looks almost relieved. “In June, he was admitted for an overdose attempt,” she says, stroking her hair out of her eyes.
I gape. “He was?”
She nods. “He spent two nights in the psychiatric unit here, but he was discharged. I’m going to tell you about that,” she says slowly, “but first you need to know he’s being transferred to another hospital.”
“He is? Why?” My heart pounds as my head throbs.
“We’re moving him to New York. It will be a plane transfer, and it will happen soon. There is an option for you to go along, if you want that.”
