I picked up the paper she had given me and read it one more time. It was a copy of a police report. The police had been first on the scene the night of the accident. There were lots of bars nearby and the police had been responding to a disturbance when the call came through. Most of the details had been recorded by the two officers who arrived on the scene and questioned Carter before he had time to weave all the lies into his story.
Reading the statement had been utterly surreal at first. It was like reading a movie script, except I was the star. Well, maybe not the star—probably more like the damsel in distress. Either way, I was part of the action, yet I had no recollection of any of the events.
The way Carter had described the accident, he had merely swapped places with Bella in the car and waited for the ambulance to arrive. He didn’t say much more than that. The police statement revealed the whole truth. Bella’s car had hit ours on the driver’s side, which was why William took the worst of it, but our car ended up sliding up against a guard rail designed to stop cars going over the edge of the hill. The railing has done its job, but parts of the frame of the car had crumpled on the impact and left me with a piece of metal protruding from my calf.
When the police arrived on the scene, Carter was trying to get the passenger side door open, but the car was wedged against the metal rail and there was no way to make it budge. At first the officers pulled him away from the wreck and insisted on waiting for a rescue team to free me from the vehicle. At this stage, it seemed Carter admitted to driving while Bella just stayed in the car. He told the officer that the driver was already dead but that the girl in the passenger seat was still alive. Either five or ten minutes lapsed, depending on which officer you believed, and the ambulance had still not arrived. Then the car started slipping.
The metal rail was not strong enough to support its weight any longer. Inch by inch, the car started slipping over the side of the hill. The two police officers and Carter quickly leapt into action. Between the three of them they were able to keep it on the road, but they knew it was only a matter of time before their strength gave out. After a couple of minutes, one of the police officers lost his footing and the car nearly went over the edge. At that point, Carter decided to act.
He opened the back door, climbed in, and leaned into the front of the car. According to the police report I was still conscious at this point but mumbling incoherently. With Carter’s weight now in the car as well, the police were struggling more and more to keep it on the road. With little time to act, Carter pulled the metal from my leg, at which point I lost consciousness. He somehow dragged me out of the car and onto the side of the road.
Once we were both out of the car, the two police officers gave up any attempt to keep it on the road and focused on radioing in for medical assistance. With no one to support the car, it started slipping again and was about to go over the edge, taking William’s body with it. Both police officers described Carter’s next actions as stupid. He placed me down on the road and then ran back to the car. He opened the driver side door and pulled my brother’s dead body out just seconds before the car went over the hill where it ended up as a crumpled wreck.
I don’t know what had more emotional impact on me, that Carter had risked his life to save mine, or that he had risked his life just so that my brother’s body didn’t go off the side of a cliff.
It would be another ten minutes before the emergency crews arrived, but that was enough time for Carter to save my life again. The metal that had pierced my leg had also ruptured an artery. He stayed by my side and applied pressure to the wound, using his shirt to soak up the blood. The police statement even mentioned that he was holding my hand and begging me to make it through the entire time while I lapsed in and out of consciousness.
The entire time this was going on, Bella was sitting in the passenger seat of her car pretending that she had nothing to do with the accident. Carter had little choice but to admit to being the driver. The faulty birth control pills supplied by PharmaTech were probably the reason Bella crashed the car, but that didn’t excuse the rest of her behavior. She still chose to drink and drive. I would never have gone to prison for someone like that. Carter was a much better person than me.
The police statement didn’t change the uncertain future Carter would have with me, but he had earned the right to make that decision for himself. If he still wanted to be with me, then I was damn sure not going to argue.
I heard a ping over the speaker system that snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Please ensure your seatbelts are fastened and your chairs are in the upright position. We are now beginning our descent to London Heathrow airport.”
Chapter Nineteen
England looked so small on the map. California was about twice that size, so I had, perhaps a little naïvely, assumed that I would catch up with Carter in no time at all. He could have been staying in any of the most expensive hotels in London and living a life of luxury, but I had a feeling he would be at home with his parents. I certainly hoped so, because otherwise, finding him would be impossible. Thankfully, Kerry had given me their address, so I could at least give it a shot.
I had never heard of the town in which he lived and didn’t even know how to pronounce it, but it wasn’t far from London and I didn’t anticipate a long journey. The first thing I did after the plane landed was take the train into London. This involved going in the opposite direction from where I needed to go, but a taxi from Heathrow would have been far too expensive and there were no direct trains.
From King’s Cross train station I was just a short underground train ride away from all the infamous sights of London. There was still plenty of daylight left and I could have made a trip to Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, or just taken in Big Ben. I’d wanted to see these sights since I was a little girl and my dad had started buying me progressively bigger and bigger jigsaw puzzles of foreign cities. The London puzzle had been one thousand pieces and had taken me weeks to complete, although that was partly because William had hidden three of the pieces and taken great pleasure in watching me struggle. Big brothers were like that sometimes.
The puzzle looked like a photograph, but after getting thoroughly confused a few times when watching movies set in London, I realized it had been somewhat exaggerated. Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London were not all next to each other on the River Thames.
Even if all those attractions were right outside the train station, I still wouldn’t have gone to take a photo. None of them would have looked as impressive as Carter standing before me.
After ten minutes of fiddling around with the ticket machine, I finally found the correct ticket to take me to Salisbury, which was the nearest station to Carter, but the machine wouldn’t take my American bank card. I dashed over to a ticket booth to buy one the old-fashioned way. The train wouldn’t depart for another thirty minutes, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, so I went to wait for it on the platform.
By my standards, I had packed light, but British trains—or at least the one I got on—were not meant for people with suitcases. I clambered on board and ended up having to squeeze the small suitcase between my legs when someone complained that it was taking up a seat. The train journey was going to be at least two hours, and there was no way I could sit like this the entire way. Much to the utter bemusement and horror of the businessman next to me, I hitched up my trouser leg and pulled off the artificial limb, giving my one remaining leg a bit more space. It says a lot about rush hour commuters that the man next to me never said a thing and no one else seemed to even notice that a girl had pulled a leg off and sat with it on her lap.
There was no room to get any work done on my laptop and I couldn’t focus on reading. Instead, I stared out of the window, first at the increasingly suburban areas of London, then at some smaller English towns, and finally just the countryside. It looked beautiful with the sun beaming down on the grass t
hat was full of cows and sheep. Unfortunately, after about an hour and a half, the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the weather looked increasingly gloomy with every minute.
With a frustrating predictability, the rain started to fall just minutes before my train pulled into the station. I was one of the first people off and I made it to the taxi rank before a queue formed, which was quite an accomplishment, considering. I pulled up Carter’s address on my phone and read it out loud to the taxi driver. His reaction was to pull out a small GPS device from the glove compartment, which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
As the taxi left the shelter of the train station, any illusions I had that the storm might pass were soon shattered by the noise of rain hammering down on the car. In my haste, I’d never even thought to bring an umbrella on my trip to England.
The app I was using on my phone estimated that the journey would take around twenty minutes, but it had barely been fifteen when the taxi driver pulled to the side of the road and totaled up the fare. The sun had set in astonishingly quick time and it was now dark outside.
“Are you sure this is it?” I asked, looking out of the window even though I could barely see through it for the rain.
“Yes, yes, it’s just down there,” the man said, pointing down the road. “I can’t drive any further because it is a one-way street, but it’s just a one minute walk, at most.”
The map on my phone was not showing the road as being a one-way street, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I threw money at him, and despite his unhelpful demeanor, I gave him a generous tip.
I struggled forward in the rain, trying to pull my light jacket up to cover my head with my free hand while the other dragged my suitcase along the concrete. After a couple of minutes I realized there was no one-way street, but the taxi was long gone at this point. I ducked under a nearby tree, thinking that might offer some temporary protection from the rain, but instead the rain just collected into large drips on the ends of leaves before falling down my back.
The map on my phone showed that Carter’s house was nearby. I just had to keep going down the same street and then take a left. It was a four-minute walk, but I would be drenched to the bone in less than twenty seconds, anyway, so the distance hardly mattered.
With the map committed to memory, I picked up my suitcase—dragging it along the ground would only slow me down—and left the quasi-shelter of the tree. The rain made short work of my thin Californian clothing, and as predicted, I was soon soaked through.
I moved as fast as my artificial leg and the wet road would allow as I turned onto Carter’s street. He was number twenty-one. My eyes strained to make out the house numbers, but the streetlights merely lit up the rain in front of my eyes, making it even harder to see what lay in the distance.
I managed to see what I thought was a number seventeen on a door, but then the next house was apparently number twenty-nine so I must have been wrong. At least I knew what side of the road his house was on. I retraced my steps, but the next number I could pick out was number fifteen. The suitcase started to weigh down on my arm, so I resorted to dragging it until a wheel got stuck in a drain. I tried to pull the suitcase free, but it was wedged tight. I knew it was only a suitcase, but right now it seemed to perfectly sum up how I felt: stuck in the road and going nowhere.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in through my nose. To an onlooker I would have looked strangely calm and serene standing there in the rain. What I did next took me by surprise.
“Carter!” I yelled. I took another deep breath. “Carter!” I screamed, louder and stronger this time. Lights turned on in living rooms all around me, and I saw curtains open as people looked out at the crazy lady.
I felt stupid, but what the hell—I’d come this far already. I threw my arms open and screamed his name one last time. “Carter!”
“Emily?”
I spun around to confront the voice from behind me. The street lamp shone down on Carter, who stood there in the rain wearing an increasingly wet sweater and khakis.
For a moment I just stood there, looking at him. I’d spent most of the trip here thinking about what I would say to him, but now that he stood right in front of me, I had no idea what to say.
“Emily, what are you doing here?” he asked, taking a step toward me.
“You saved my life.”
“I don’t under—”
“Kerry explained everything. You saved my life the day of the crash. I’m so sorry, Carter. I didn’t mean to push you away. I just wanted to keep you safe and away from this whole mess. I… I…”
I had no words left in me. Warm tears streamed from my eyes and mixed with the cold rain dripping down my cheeks. Carter snapped out of his malaise and closed the distance between us in two quick paces.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said, pulling my soaking wet body in toward him. “God, you’re freezing.”
“I want to be with you,” I said. “Will you forgive me?”
He released me from his embrace and put his hands on my shoulders. “I told you Emily, there is nothing to forgive. Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
I looked into his eyes and a smile started to form on my lips. “I love you, too.”
Carter effortlessly picked up my suitcase from the road and took hold of my hand. We were both drenched now, and I could see at least three people staring at us through the nearby windows.
He laughed and shook his head. “I still can’t believe you’re here. You came all this way for me?”
I nodded. “Yes. That, and I want to see Big Ben.”
He laughed again. “Come on, let’s get out of the cold and rain. The house is warm and we have the fire on.”
“You have no idea how appealing that sounds right now. Throw in a hot bath, and I will owe you big time.”
“I think that can be arranged. I need you nice and relaxed.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because it’s time for you to meet my parents. I’ve spent the last week talking about how amazing you are. They’ll be home soon and would love to meet you.”
Carter opened the door to his parents’ quaint, cozy home. I’d never been introduced to a man’s parents before, but then I’d had a lot of firsts with Carter, and I was sure there would be plenty more in store for me in the future.
We stripped on our way up the stairs, leaving a trail of wet clothes behind us, and sank into a hot bath together. There was no room to do anything in the tub other than bathe—and there was barely room for that—but we were happy just talking. We’d only been apart a week, but we had a lot of catching up to do.
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading my book and for supporting an independent publisher. I really hope you enjoyed it—I know I loved writing it.
If I may be so bold, I would like to ask a favor of you. Most people do not leave reviews, but if you enjoyed the book (or even if you didn’t and have some feedback for me) please do consider writing a review. Independent publishers like myself are entirely dependent on reviews—we cannot sell books without them.
Thank you!
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About the Author
Miranda Dawson is a 25-year-old Californian who can’t find the man of her dreams and so writes about him instead. She likes reading romance novels and watching scandalous television shows. Her writing is influenced by both!
You can contact me at [email protected] or check out my Facebook page.
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Crash - Part Four Page 8
